CNN's Don Lemon acted more like a socially-left activist than a journalist on Friday's New Day, as he moderated a panel discussion on a proposed religious liberty law in Mississippi. Lemon twice misrepresented what the law actually says, and asked a LGBT activist, "Religious liberty — is that just a code for discrimination — I don't want to provide services to certain people? Isn't that just a code?" He was more explicit later in the segment: "People in certain professions...wouldn't have to serve certain people — which, at its base, is discrimination." [video below]

Anchor Alisyn Camerota teased the discussion by hyping that "a new religious liberty bill in Mississippi sparking outrage — some critics call it the most discriminatory measure ever written. It targets gays and lesbians." Lemon, acting as a substitute anchor for Chris Cuomo, turned to the Family Research Council's Peter Sprigg and Rob Hill of the Human Rights Campaign's office in Mississippi. He first turned to Sprigg, and gave his first misinterpretation of the legislation:

DON LEMON: How is this bill different from anything you have seen before? Let's put it up here, though, because it says marriage is between a man and woman — that's what it says — sexual relations are reserved to marriage; and gender is determined at birth. How is this different than anything we've seen before?

Sprigg answered, in part, by going after Camerota's preview: "The intro that Alisyn gave before the break was somewhat misleading in saying this bill targets gays and lesbians. It doesn't do that at all. What it does is it prevents the government from targeting people who hold those traditional beliefs for some sort of punishment or retaliation through government action."

The openly-homosexual anchor followed up by doubling-down on his misread of the bill: "It says, marriage is between man and a woman...it says that sexual relations are reserved to marriage. That's between everyone; that's for...all persuasions. And then, gender is determined at birth. So how is this not targeting the LGBT community when you're saying marriage is between a man and a woman; when the Supreme Court has decided that that's not so?"

Sprigg corrected the record in his reply: "If you read the bill, it's not saying that those things are true. It's saying that those are the beliefs that have to be protected against government discrimination; because those are the beliefs that are being targeted for government discrimination now, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision."

Indeed, that's exactly what section 3 of the proposed Mississippi law says:

The sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions protected by this act are the belief or conviction that:

(a) Marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman;

(b) Sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage; and

(c) Male (man) or female (woman) refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth.

Lemon then turned to Hill and asked his "code for discrimination" question. As you might expect, the Human Rights campaign state director agreed: "Yeah, it is a code. We have robust protections for religious beliefs under the First Amendment of the Constitution.... the First Amendment been used or been allowed to — it was not intended to be used as a way to deny somebody else their civil rights."

The CNN journalist returned to browbeating Sprigg later in the segment:

LEMON: This allows...people in certain professions...wouldn't have to serve certain people — which, at its base, is discrimination — DJ's, photographers, videographers, poets....Clerks and their deputies would be provided a process for recusing themselves from licensing marriage licenses; and judges and magistrates and justices of the peace and deputies would be given a similar process. Didn't we go through this last year in Indiana? Didn't we go through this last year in Kentucky? And the Supreme Court says, no, you cannot do that. It is discrimination.

In reality, the Supreme Court hasn't yet ruled on the constitutionality of state-level religious freedom restoration acts, such as the one in Indiana.

It should be pointed out that back in May 2011, Lemon revealed that he hoped to use his position as a journalist to "change minds" on the issue of homosexuality.

The transcript of the relevant portion of the Sprigg/Hill panel discussion segment from CNN's New Day on April 1, 2016: