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The blitz continues.

The Christian Nationalist bill blitz at the State Legislature continued this week. Nearly all bills we have been watching have passed their committees. This includes bills which would actively damage public health, women’s health, LGBTQ youth, and 1st amendment rights in the name of religious extremism.

Some of these bills could head for a floor vote as soon as this week.

Some of these bills have already passed one chamber and will move to the next.

Here are some of the top bills we are working on (scroll to the end of the email to take action)

HB2648: Allowing religious gatherings when other groups can’t — this bill casts aside reason and common sense to force the state to allow in-person religious gatherings during a public health crisis. The extremely broad religious exemptions created by this bill will have unforeseeable consequences and put at risk the safety and health of Arizonans. 

HB2060: Forcing the Pledge and “moral reasoning” time — would require public school students to say the Pledge of Allegiance and requires them to participate in at least a minute of “moral reasoning.” This legislation has the intent of endorsing religious practice, and therefore may confuse public school administrators and educators. It puts schools at risk for liability, and it may result in religious coercion against Arizona students and families. 

SB1362: Expanding AZ’s already too-broad religious refusal statutes — Arizona’s existing religious refusal law is one of the most expansive in the country, and expanding it — thereby further endangering patients’ wellbeing — is both harmful and wholly unnecessary. Patients and their doctors should make their own health care decisions. A health care provider’s religious beliefs should never determine the care a patient receives. No CEO, executive, or board of directors of a hospital should be able to put their religious views ahead of medical standards or women’s health. 

HB2575: Privileging religious visitors – this bill, pushed by the Center for Arizona Policy and the Catholic Bishop’s Conference starts with a seed of compassion, but fails the secular test. It carves out a special privilege for clergy members to visit dying patients in hospitals. The problem? 1) This bill is unnecessary since ADHS has rules which cover this, and 2) The bill’s authors forgot that nonreligious people don’t want to die alone either. All Arizonans — not just the religious — should have companionship at the end of life.

**RTS ALERT** SB1325: Religious privilege in therapy/counseling —  we oppose the strike-everything amendment to SB1325. The proposed language bans banning conversion therapy. You read that right. This law would make it illegal to ban the pseudoscientific, homophobic behavior modification program used by fundamentalist religions. One Republican voted with all of the Democrats to kill an identical bill in committee last week (SB 1482), but its author brought the language back in the form of this amendment.

That can't be all, can it?

Not even close. Here’s everything else on our defensive radar:

SB1457, SB1381, SCR1009: Abortion restrictions & criminalization – bills like these perpetuate myths and lies about women who have abortions and the doctors who care for them. People have a right to autonomy in their own healthcare decision-making, free from guilt, shame, and religiously motivated restrictions and criminal charges. Shamelessly, SB1381 forces birth on pregnant people with disabilities. This is a deeply personal decision best made by pregnant people and their health care provider. Politicians should neither interrogate personal decisions about pregnancy, nor deprive people the ability to become a parent. 

SB1254 — uses state resources to promote unlicensed religious fake pregnancy centers and unlicensed adoption centers, while at the same time censoring information about abortion care. 

SB1452 & 1SB1273— a HUGE expansion of school vouchers, private tuition scholarships, and tax credits, funneling even more taxpayer dollars into religious private schools. 

HB2725 — mandates that people only be able to select “male” or “female” as their gender on government documents, purposefully excluding nonbinary people from being affirmed on any state document

SB1251/ HB2404 — sends $3 million to fake, unregulated religious pregnancy clinics, directly marketing to people searching for anything related to pregnancy on the internet.

1. If you have an account, use Request to Speak to sign in as AGAINST on SB1325 (conversion therapy ban ban), and;

2. Call and email your Legislators about the other bills:

• Use our action alert to send an email to all your legislators at once.
• Call your one (1) State Senator and two (2) House Reps and leave a message with the assistant or on voicemail similar to the script below.

Don't have your legislators' contact info? Look it up here. 

Script:

Hello, I’d like to leave a message for Senator/Representative XXXX. My name is YYYY and I’m a constituent living in Senator/Representative XXXX’s district. Would you be able to give a message to the Senator/Representative? Please be sure to write it down for me.

I’m a constituent living in your district. I believe that government and religion should be kept separate. There are several bills moving through the legislature which I’m requesting you vote “NO”. The bills coming to the floor I’m asking you to vote NO on are:

(LIST BELOW FOR YOUR SENATOR)

SB 1251 - $3M Appropriation for religious pregnancy centers & direct marketing

SB 1254 - Gov’t resources to promote unlicensed adoption and religious pregnancy centers

SB 1273 - Private school voucher and scholarship expansion

SB 1362 - Expansion of religious refusals in healthcare

SB 1377 - Protects churches (or any other business) from liability during a pandemic

SB 1381 - Forced birth / invasion of privacy / abortion criminalizations

SB 1456 - Anti-sex education bill

SB 1457 - Abortion care restrictions & criminalizations

SCR 1009 Perpetuates myths about people who get abortions and the doctors who provide abortion care

(LIST BELOW FOR YOUR REPRESENTATIVES)

HB 2060 - Requires Pledge of Allegiance / at least a minute of silent moral reflection

HB 2404 - $3M to limited service crisis pregnancy centers (same as SB 1251)

HB 2575 - Allows clergy to visit hospitals when others can’t

HB 2648 - Religious services are declared essential during a pandemic

HB 2725 - Erases non-binary people from being affirmed as their non-binary gender on state documents