The Devil is loose in Mississippi, dressed up like a preacher and hollering God’s name. The Guardian reports it here. Growing up in the South, I knew many people who felt that interracial marriage “conflicted with their sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.” Many also sincerely believed that ANY mixing of races — at lunch counters, water fountains, hotels, churches, schools, toilets, etc. — also conflicted with their “religious beliefs or moral convictions.” That’s why we had the Jim Crow laws. This new law in Mississippi makes ALL of that possble again, and more. If you can refuse service to same-sex couples on religious grounds, you can refuse it to interracial couples, mixed-religion couples, unmarried couples, divorcees — to anyone doing ANYTHING that you believe is a sin and don’t want to be associated with. There is serious evil afoot here, and it goes far beyond “political correctness.” It is the re-introduction of state-backed hatred and bigotry, using an obscence perversion of the ideal of “religious liberty” to mask its true and deeply pernicious nature.