To the editor:

There is a serious flaw in both the anti-gay bill that passed the Kansas House and the bill passed by both houses in the Arizona Legislature. It lacks a process for identification, the first step in any effective discrimination act.

Refusing to serve African Americans in the segregated South was easy; you could identify them by the color of their skin. Arizona’s anti-immigration bill was similarly easy to enforce; you could usually tell Mexicans by the way they “looked.” But the gay, they look like us. They are our family members, our friends, our coworkers, our soldiers. They are us. Therefore, if these “religious belief protecting bills” are to be effective, they must take a page from the great master. Amend the bills to require all gays and lesbians to sew a pink star onto their clothing.

By the way, for anyone who thinks this is about religion, the same folks who support these bills because they believe homosexuality is a sin also tend to feel that believing in evolution is a sin. But I don’t hear anyone wanting to refuse service to scientists. Or might that be the next step?