Ellen DeGeneres Shares Her Thoughts on Mississippi's Anti-LGBT Law
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The LGBT community has been overcoming obstacles for years and pushing for change in the U.S. A recent bill passed by Mississippi Governor, Phil Bryant, might be undoing that change. Ellen DeGeneres who is part of the LGBT community and an advocate for equality, shared her thoughts on the anti-LGBT law.
DeGeneres did start her message out on a light note joking that she doesn't know what "Mr. Sippi" is doing but she is very worried about what Mississippi is doing. She explained that Governor Bryant signed a religious freedom bill.
In short, the bill allows businesses to refuse service to anyone in the gay community. The justification from Bryant was that he wanted to protect sincere religious beliefs and moral convictions.
After DeGeneres' joke she revealed that the law would legalize the denial of the right to marriage, adoption and foster care services, fire or refuse to employ and decline to rent or sell property to the LGBT community.
"I am not a political person but this is not politics, this is human rights," said DeGeneres.
"When I see something wrong I have to talk about. It's the same thing that I do when I see men wearing spandex in line at Starbucks."
She says that the bill is very personal to her joking that Mississippi is the only state she knows how to spell at first. She says it is the definition of discrimination and that it is also something that the Supreme Court already ruled on, when they made marriage legal for the LGBT community. She joked that gay people have money so they should be able to buy flowers. DeGeneres offered some words of hope those who are in Mississippi and states like it.
She said she was once fired for being gay and lost everything, however, that isn't the case anymore.
Her final message was that we are all more alike than we think and we all want the same things, "love, acceptance and kindness." She is advocating for less hate and more love.
You can watch DeGeneres' speech in the video below.