Gay marriage has come to South Carolina, which means gay couples are needing things like cakes, wedding halls, and flowers. But one man, the ironically named Rep Steven Hickey, thinks businesses should be able to discriminate against gay couples if their religion tells them they should.

The sponsor of a South Dakota bill that would allow businesses to deny services to same-sex weddings or any others that violate their “sincerely held religious beliefs,” told the Associated Press today that gay rights are taking the United States “down the road of Iran.”

Ironically, Iran is where the faithful are allowed to constantly discriminate against gay people. Prohibiting people from doing that is about as far from Iran as you can politically get.

And what’s more, imagine all the doors that would be opened if we could disobey the laws because of our religious beliefs. Suddenly religious justification might just be found for not paying employees overtime if they work more than forty hours. Oh officer, I know I was speeding, but my religious beliefs tell me that being late is a sin.

You don’t get to break the law because you’re religious. The laws bind you as a citizen of the United States, not as a Christian.

Said Hickey:

Hickey, pastor of a Sioux Falls church, said a court ruling legalizing gay marriage in South Dakota might expose him to lawsuits or prosecution because he believes in traditional marriage between a man and a woman. “Religious rights need to continue to trump gay rights. Otherwise, we’re heading down the road of Iran, where it’s convert or die, be quiet or die,” Hickey said. “If we want to talk about church and state, this is a bill that keeps the state out of my church.”

Religious people do not have the right to discriminate. If your religion insists that the races should be kept separate, guess what, you don’t get to deny service to racial minorities. No matter what your religion says, you don’t have the right to thumb your nose at the law or to discriminate as a business in America.

And as far as separation of church and state goes, businesses are not churches. They are part of the state and subject to its rules.

And nobody will sue Hickey because he believes marriage is between one man and one woman (though, as the years go on and society becomes more enlightened, people may laugh at Hickey and pity him). But if he owns a business that discriminates? Yeah, then he’ll get sued and rightly so. But we shouldn’t let him conflate the two as if they are the same.

When America was founded what set it apart what that anybody could come here and be free from discrimination. The government would protect them. That sentiment has taken us time to refine, but we’ve done it. Despite people’s religious beliefs they can no longer deny service to mixed race couples or to racial minorities. People can no longer hire men over women because of gender alone (not without lying or being otherwise sneaky). Those same protections belong to every American. People like Steven Hickey are the reason America was conceived – it is from people like Steven Hickey that the huddled masses needed laws of protection, and America has given it to them. It’s disgusting to see such a man now representing America. It’s a sad day when somebody elected to represent our country would unmake the American dream because he felt his whims were above the ideal of equality – and it should reflect poorly on the religion that he represents.