Businesses Push Back Against Georgia's Anti-Gay Religious Liberty Bill

Major companies are publicly opposing a bill on the desk of Georgia Governor Nathan Deal. Walt Disney and Marvel have promised to take their business elsewhere if the "First Amendment Defense Act" is signed into law. 

The law would prohibit "discriminatory action against a person who believes, speaks, or acts in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such marriage."

A similar law passed last year in Indiana and elicited enough backlash to prompt lawmakers to pass another bill to explicitly provide protections for gay and transgender people. 

Proponents of these laws compare both bills to the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which had broad support and aims to restrict the federal government from placing significant burdens on people seeking to practice their religion. But in Indiana, the state law differed by extending these religious protections to for-profit corporations and by seeming to allow for someone to use his or her religion as a defense in discrimination suits. 

Opponents of the Georgia bill say it could allow discrimination against interracial couples, single parents, and unmarried couples in addition to gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people. Kelvin Williams, the founder of a telecommunications company called 373k says he's moving his company out of Georgia in response to the bill.