More than 300 demonstrators protested
Sunday against a Mississippi law that targets the LGBT community.
The protesters marched from the state
Capitol to the governor's mansion in Jackson.
Mississippi's law, House Bill 1523,
allows businesses to deny services to LGBT people based on their
“sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.”
Human Rights Campaign (HRC) President
Chad Griffin led the crowd in chanting “Shame on you” outside
Governor Phil Bryant's residence.
“We need to show him loud and clear
we're not going away,” he told the crowd.
Bryant has defended the law, saying
that it is needed to balance the scales of justice.
“[W]e believe the scales of justice
must be balanced for those people of faith and those that have other
ideas about their desires in life. And that's what the scales of
justice must do, is be balanced. And we believe that this is a step
in protecting the civil liberties of people of faith just as the
First Amendment of the Constitution does,” he said during a recent
radio appearance.
Last week, opponents of the law, which
takes effect July 1, said that it might violate the federal order
that struck down Mississippi's ban on same-sex marriage.
(Related: Lawyer
who challenged Mississippi's gay marriage ban says new law may
violate order.)