In order to further protect the religious people of Indiana, the State Legislature today passed a law forbidding anyone from discrimination on the basis of the intelligence or value of their opinions.
“I was simply shocked to discover how many Hoosiers of faith are dealing with discrimination in their daily lives from teachers, lawyers, doctors, homosexuals, Jews, and homosexual Jewish doctors,” said Governor Mike Pence as he signed the bill. “This law will make sure that people who believe that a carpenter who was killed 2,000 years ago is going to come to life any day now and condemn gay marriages will not face any repercussions as they try to base their decisions on this premise.”
While critics fear that making stupidity a protected class could also be used to justify terrible non-Christian opinions, Indiana’s House Speaker Brian Bosma said that the bill’s intention was not to encourage people to make terrible life decisions, but to support terrible traditions.
“Listen, if someone were to come up with a new reason to hate homosexuals, I’d be as offended as anyone else,” Bosma said. “But if an opinion is hundreds or thousands of years old, that means we have to cherish it. Much in the way that we preserve old buildings or force people to ride in horse-drawn buggies and navigate by the stars.”
“Incidentally, you can’t hold anything I’ve just said against me,” added Bosma. “It’s the law.”
Many Hoosiers of faith say they are grateful that they can now be religious in public, something that they have been terrified to do ever since an atheist was spotted at a rest stop off I-65.
“Whether it’s my decision not to allow gay people to dry clean their suits at my shop, or my decision to homeschool my children so that they know the world is only 6,000 years old, the idea that I should have to justify my opinions on the basis of current knowledge is incredibly offensive,” said Elkhart mother and business owner Melissa Covey. “Thank God I live in a state where the contemporary interpretations of the renaissance translations of the medieval codifications of a Latin text based loosely on the teachings of a possibly apocryphal Roman man who spoke Aramaic are protected from scrutiny.”
“Also,” Covey added. “That man was white. I know it in my heart.”