WATCH: The Ultimate Mississippi Gay Tourism Advertisement


Mississippi has gone down the path of states like North Carolina and Indiana before them. “Religious freedom” laws seem to be the new craze coursing through the bloodlines of Republican-led states.

Conservative governor Phil Bryant signed the bill on Tuesday, April 5, which opens the doors to discrimination of LGBT communities on three religious grounds:

“… that marriage is between a man and a woman, that sex is proper only within such a marriage, and that people are male or female based on their genetics and anatomy of birth.”

The unfortunate results of these musty perspectives have real life consequences. It institutionalizes the idea that those of the LGBT community are second class citizens. It’s not preferential treatment to allow them the same rights and comforts as anyone else; That is merely basic equality.

Fortunately, Funny or Die has graced us with a wonderful new advertisement for our friends in the Mississippi state capitol. It speaks of the true ramifications that such a bill will cause. Here is the humorous ad:

“Here you can march to the beat of your own drum as long as that beat hearkens back to 1888!”

It’s a wonderfully funny look into the new laws and also represents the true backwards nature of such policy. Mississippi can turn its back on the progression of a country, but advances in technology and social media will always provide many platforms for these decisions to be utterly mocked. An advertisement such as this proves the point.

The main argument presented is that bills like these help protect persecution from the government for religious beliefs. It is a silly notion to allow refusal of services based on genetics. We have successfully pushed our way back into the years of Jim Crow.

The religious persecution complex runs rampant in the Christian right because of leaders like Ted Cruz. He continually bangs the drum of his religion’s destruction in a democratic United States. Allowing people similar rights to your own is a pretty soft persecution, Ted.

Hopefully this is just a new fad in a long line of discriminatory laws conservatives like to present to the people. For those who love to hang their hat on ‘freedom,’ their version of it sure does seem quite confined.

Featured image screengrab via YouTube