It’s been a tense week as American Christians have debated the ramifications of Religious Freedom Restoration Acts approved in Indiana and Arkansas and debated in Georgia and North Carolina.

There has been plenty said about the various RFRA bills up for consideration. Jonathan Merritt hosted a fantastic post on how not all RFRA’s are created equal. It’s clear the language of the RFRA’s, albeit similar, grant far more liberties than the federal RFRA allows, signed in 1993.

The purpose of these bills have been overwhelmingly condemned by corporate America and gay-rights activists as a not-so-subtle intent to discriminate against LGBT individuals. Some of these laws, and their supporters, have been upfront with their intent; others, perhaps through willful ignorance, have played naïve to the ramifications of this legislation. Through it all, media has created a false narrative of LGBT vs. Christian.

This false dichotomy is important to debunk because there are individuals who are both are both LGBT and people of faith. We care about our religious freedoms, how our faith is being represented, and how we as queer citizens are being protected.

The need for religious liberties is not being contested. What’s being debated is discrimination of LGBT persons under a guise of religious liberty.

“As a Christian, I strongly support religious freedom,” Justin Lee, director of the Gay Christian Network told me in an email. “I get concerned when the language of ‘religious freedom’ is used to justify discrimination against any group of people. I don’t want to see a world where cabs, restaurants, hotels, and others refuse service to people just because of who they are. It wasn’t right when people were refused service because of their race, it wouldn’t be right to refuse service because of their faith, and it isn’t right to refuse service because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. That’s not what religious freedom is about.”

Indeed, religious freedom, as established in the First Amendment, was intended for people of faith to exercised their religion without threat from their government. Historically, some groups have similarly bastardized “religious freedom” using religious freedom as a guise for discrimination, mostly as a cover for racism. And for some, broad language like we see in many of the current RFRA’s is reminiscent of of era of legalized racism.

“It’s extremely concerning that so many states are attempting to hide discrimination in these so-called ‘Religious Refusal’ bills,” Joe Ward, associate director of Religion & Faith at the Human Rights Campaign, told me. “What we’re seeing in Indiana, Arkansas and many other states is an attempt to legalize discrimination against LGBTQ people under the false guise of religious freedom. These harmful pieces of legislation can potentially open the door for citizens to not only discriminate against our LGBTQ friends, neighbors and family members, but also, in some instances, against interfaith and interracial families as well.”

The legal right to discriminate is nowhere to be found in the Bible. Participating in basic services is not a “yoking”, as described in 2 Corinthians 6:14-17. Our sexual and gender identities shouldn’t be cause for discrimination. That’s simply not biblical. Yes, Jesus would bake the cake of a same-sex wedding even if he disagreed with the union.

Sharon Groves, former director of Religion & Faith at the Human Rights Campaign, thinks Christians should be reflective when supporting broad RFRA bills:

“When all the distracting legal hair splitting over these recent RFRA cases are set aside, what we have is a failure of religion. These RFRA bills fail to live up to the most basic tenets of every world religion, to love our neighbors. Lawyers might ask ‘do I have the right to discriminate’ but religious people should be asking ‘our my actions causing harm to another.’  I would ask those who support Indiana-style RFRA bills to imagine what it must feel like to be denied service simply because you are different. Then, with the probing honesty our faith traditions demand of us, we must ask: Is the institutionalization of such laws calling out the best of us as people of faith? Do they encourage more compassion, more understanding, more love among the children of God? Do they help us love our neighbors as ourselves? If the answer is no, then we need to desist as an act of faith.”

If RFRA bills are not about discriminating against LGBT people, or any other group of people, proponents of RFRA’s should be willing to accept LGBT nondiscriminatory carve-outs in the bill. Until then, Christians everywhere should stand against RFRA’s that can be used to discriminate — not in spite of our faith but because of it.

Watch Matthew Vines, Director of the Reformation Project discuss “God vs. Gays” narrative on CNN: