Through the Looking Glass

I bet you thought Indiana's Freedom of Religion Act was going to quietly fade from the news once it was signed into law, nope.

The Indiana Republican Party has made so many mistakes with this legislation, starting with even considering it, that they need to taste electoral defeat but that probably won't happen. This past Saturday hundreds turned out to protest at the Statehouse. A noble effort and a demonstration of what needs to happen when our leaders do stupid things. However, it wasn't going to sway Governor Pence or most of the legislators behind this law. So Governor Pence did everyone on the opposite side a favor, he went on the national Sunday talk shows and demonstrated tremendous political ignorance, he refused to answer George Stephanopoulos question "is it alright to discriminate against gays and lesbians in Indiana?" Pence would not answer the question. His non-answer speaks volumes about his personal beliefs, which are not a surprise to this writer or anyone who has followed Pence's career. That attitude helped fuel the controversy to critical levels.

Now Republican leaders in the Indiana House and Senate have had to hold a joint news conference and say they intend to try and fix the law so that no chance of discrimination can occur cause that's not what they intended. If that were true they could have adopted the Democratic amendments instead of saying no. Now the Democratic leadership is calling for the laws repeal. That seems unlikely. So what will the Republicans do?

Let's take a breath and reflect on this law and it's counterparts in other states and it's federal father from 1993. First, Pence should have reflected on the most recent case in Arizona when similar legislation landed on Republican Governor Jan Brewer's desk. Brewer is a hard right politician who was inclined to say yes, but she listened to Arizona's business leaders and the impending backlash and vetoed it. Pence should have done the same thing. There's just one problem, he truly doesn't believe that the GLBT community should be equal. He supports finding ways to reverse that communities progress.

Now back to the future in 1993 when the Federal Government passed a variation of the law which called for the government to demonstrate a high degree of need to interfere with religion. It was a stupid law then and remains so. It does not protect religion from government interference anymore than the current Indiana law does. There are exemptions for government doing what it needs to do. It only provides business with a justification for discrimination, which it already possesses.

You read right. If you don't want to bake a cake or do anything else you do for a living for gay people, don't. Yeah, that's right, don't. To stop a potential commercial transaction all you have to do is show who you really are or lie and say you're too busy. You will have to deal with the consequences of a bad reputation but that's business.

Here's the cold facts. In spite of how much progress has been made in the GLBT community discrimination is legal in virtually every state and at the Federal level because GLBT citizens are not included in civil rights laws.