Last night, lawmakers in Mississippi passed SB 2681, an Arizona-style "right to discriminate" bill that would allow individuals and businesses to refuse to serve people or groups if they claimed that treating them equally would "substantially burden" their "exercise of religion."

The measure grants wide latitude for people and businesses to pick and choose who they want to serve, as long as they say they're doing it on religious grounds. Even "laws 'neutral' toward religion may burden religious exercise as surely as laws intended to interfere with religious exercise," the bill asserts.

The Washington Blade reports:

In a development that largely went unnoticed on the national stage, the State House and Senate on the same day both approved a conference report for S.B. 2681, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The vote in the Republican-controlled House was 78-43 and the vote in the Republican-controlled Senate vote was 38-14.

The bill now goes to conservative Republican Governor Phil Bryant, who is widely expected to sign it into law. If he does, the measure will take effect on July 1.

SB 2681's language is broad, and its sponsor -- Baptist minister and Republican State Senator Phillip Gandy -- has been careful not to specifically mention LGBT people in his public comments about the bill. But wink-and-a-nod remarks like one, from an interview Gandy gave to conservative Christian website OneNewsNow.com makes the bill's intent perfectly clear:

Sen. Gandy adds that it is not a reflection of the advances homosexual activists have made in pushing Christians into the closet. "We are asked to be tolerant of many things," the lawmaker accounts, "and all we're asking for is some understanding and tolerance of our beliefs as well, that we would not be placed under an undue burden to do something that would violate our religious freedoms and our religious beliefs."

See? This isn't about discrimination against teh anti-Christian homosexual activists. It's about tolerance, you guys!

Of course, equality advocates are calling shenanigans. Details, after the jump.