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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

In the News: Two Americas.

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Facing Overwhelming Opposition, Arizona Governor Vetoes Anti-Gay Bill

After a week of national backlash, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has vetoed SB 1062, which would have allowed religious beliefs to be used to justify discrimination against LGBT people and others. Explaining her veto, Brewer said, “I call them like I see them despite the cheers or boos from the crowd.” She added that the bill does not address a specific concern and that she knows of no examples of how religious liberty has been under attack.

Opposition to the bill came from individuals and companies across the country, including the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee, Apple, and Mitt Romney. Many other states have introduced similar bills, some specifying that businesses could refuse services to marrying same-sex couples, but most have stalled or died, particularly those introduced this week during the backlash against Arizona.

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Media Matters: Fox News Has A Nasty Anti-Gay Hangover

What explains Fox’s sudden cold feet now that several states are acting to deal with the manufactured threat to religious liberty that Fox News helped create?

To hear people like Fox’s Kelly and Tantaros explain it, laws like Arizona’s SB 1062 simply went a little too far. These laws would be acceptable if they only affected businesses directly involved in the marriage and wedding industry, but giving all business owners a license to discriminate against gay customers too closely resembles Jim Crow legislation.[…]

The distinction between marriage-related services and general services used by gay couples is convenient, but it doesn’t stand up under closer scrutiny.

For one, Fox News has aggressively promoted the idea that requiring equal treatment of gay people in non-marital contexts also infringes on businesses’ religious liberty. […]

… many of the network’s personalities are waking up to the harsh reality that their words have consequences. They’re in the uncomfortable position of to decide between disowning the right-wing talking points they helped promote or siding with measures that even they admit look a lot like pro-segregation laws.

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More …

ThinkProgress: When ‘Religious Liberty’ Was Used To Justify Racism Instead Of Homophobia

   “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

   – Judge Leon M. Bazile, January 6, 1959

The premise of the [Arizona] bill is that discrimination becomes acceptable so long as it is packaged inside a religious wrapper. As Arizona state Rep. Eddie Farnsworth (R) explained, lawmakers introduced it in response to instances where anti-gay business owners in other states were “punished for their religious beliefs” after they denied service to gay customers in violation of a state anti-discrimination law.

Yet, while LGBT Americans are the current target of this effort to repackage prejudice as “religious liberty,” they are hardly the first. To the contrary, as Wake Forest law Professor Michael Kent Curtis explained in a 2012 law review article, many segregationists justified racial bigotry on the very same grounds that religious conservatives now hope to justify anti-gay animus.

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Delta Airlines: Anti-Gay Bills Like Arizona’s ‘Will Result in Job Losses’

“As a global values-based company, Delta Air Lines is proud of the diversity of its customers and employees, and is deeply concerned about proposed measures in several states, including Georgia and Arizona, that would allow businesses to refuse service to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals. If passed into law, these proposals would cause significant harm to many people and will result in job losses. They would also violate Delta’s core values of mutual respect and dignity shared by our 80,000 employees worldwide and the 165 million customers we serve every year. Delta strongly opposes these measures and we join the business community in urging state officials to reject these proposals.”

Conservative Group: Brewer Veto Of Anti-Gay Bill ‘Marks A Sad Day’


The Center for Arizona Policy’s president Cathi Herrod:

“When the force of government compels one to speak or act contrary to their conscience, the government injures not only the dignity of the afflicted, but the dignity of our society as a whole.”

I think that word “afflicted” does not mean what you think it means, sad bigot Cathi Herrod.

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Supreme Court Could Soon Open The Floodgates For More Anti-Gay Laws

In an upcoming decision, the U.S. Supreme Court could either open the floodgates for a new outpouring of anti-gay discrimination laws — or constrict the “religious freedom” movement just as it’s getting started.

Whether Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer will veto Senate Bill 1062 has dominated headlines for the last week, and similar legislation has been introduced this year in Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, Kansas, South Dakota, and Idaho. The proposed laws would greenlight the refusal by businesses and individuals to provide services to LGBT people by requiring the government to have a compelling reason to interfere with someone’s religious belief.

A closely watched case currently before the Supreme Court, Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., has nothing to do with LGBT rights, but everything to do with religious freedom. At issue is whether the federal government can require private businesses to cover birth control for their employees under Obamacare if the employer objects to contraception on religious grounds.

That’s why advocates and legal experts say that if the justices rule that the health care reform law doesn’t apply to those individuals and businesses, their legal reasoning could open the door for more discriminatory legislation.

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Editor’s Note: Feel free to share other news items in the comment threads.


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/ 30 Comments

30 comments

  1. JanF

    Delta was unequivocal in its statement in support of the rights of LGBT. They are not stupid. The teaparty has gone to bed with the religious right and no one wants their bastard child: anti-gay bigotry. Business should kick to the curb these guys who want to harm their businesses.

  4. Portlaw

    of this diary, wonder how we can create one America or if that is even possible with such different views of right and wrong.  

  5. princesspat

    GOP’s “religious liberty” scam just died: Why Brewer’s veto is so momentous

    Back in 2012, a full two years before conservatives insisted that religious freedom entailed the right to discriminate against gay people or gay spouses in both private and public workplaces, Republicans in Washington trotted out the same religious liberty line for the arguably narrower purpose of defending religious employers who wanted to be exempt from the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate.

    ~snip~

    The events of the past week have been especially fascinating in light of that history. The effort to apply the same religious freedom argument to anti-gay measures in states across the country has encountered tremendous resistance, not just from liberals but from business leaders, state-wide Republican elected officials, and GOP celebrities who, for different reasons, seem to get that stomping away from a growing majority of the population with a middle finger hoisted overhead isn’t a smart thing to do.

  6. Rashaverak

    They’re in the uncomfortable position of [having] to decide between disowning the right-wing talking points they helped promote or siding with measures that even they admit look a lot like pro-segregation laws.

    Is it wrong that I’m smiling?

  8. Diana in NoVa

    How revolting that there are actually people who want to discriminate like that! Glad Old Mother Brewer finally got around to vetoing the thing.

    Arizona’s reputation as a “hate state” is probably going to drive away a lot of tourists, so the state’s coffers will suffer. So be it.

  9. princesspat

    No Country for Old Mores

    Arizona’s S.B. 1062, part of the conservative “Jim Queer” crusade to use religious liberty as means of codifying discrimination against people for their sexual identities, once again places conservatives on the wrong side of history and further marginalizes an intolerance-obsessed party during an inclusion-oriented era.

    The Arizona bill, which has been copied by Republicans in several other states, would have allowed businesses to deny services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender customers on religious grounds.

    The backlash to this bill was swift and strong, and rightfully so, as Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, weighed whether to veto it, which she did on Wednesday. But, in a way, the damage to the Republican brand has already been done. The bigotry continues to coagulate. The harsh read of history draws Republicans further into disapproving resolution.

    History doesn’t look kindly on those who stand against equality. Yet, that’s where conservatives have chosen to stand, much to my dismay and their detriment.

    The pace of Americans’ changing attitudes has been breathtakingly swift and shows no signs of abating.

    The entire column well worth the read.

  10. HappyinVT

    I cannot blockquote the whole thing as much as I’d like to but here’s how it ends …

    And so, when it came right down to it in Arizona today, rather than do what was right because it was the right thing to do, rather than strike down the bill because it would have legalized religious segregation as if Arizona was a state in Russia instead of America, Brewer at the behest of her oh so smug religion and her oh so morally superior political party vetoed SB 1062 not because it was blatantly counter to everything the United States stands for but rather because it would have cost Arizona money.

    When Brewer was forced onto the global stage to very publicly choose between state sanctioned Apartheid and the almighty American dollar, not to mention political power, Brewer did the predictable thing.

    She did what these people always do when forced to chose between conviction and profit.

    She took the money.

    So much for republicans’ vaunted ideals.

    So much for the superior morality of conservative religious conviction.

    The simple truth is that if these people really believed in the rightness and righteousness of their religion, they would have passed the bill and to hell with the consequences.

    Make no mistake whatsoever, Folks, if Arizona republicans could have gotten away with it, if they could have signed this bill into law and only gay people and non-Christians would have been negatively affected, they damned well would have – that was the entire point of SB 1062 in the first place.

    Instead, Brewer’s veto lays bare the hypocrisy of this blighted ideology and shows it for what it really is:  hate for hate’s sake and nothing more.

    Common sense, human dignity, and liberty did not prevail today in Arizona.

    Right won out only because these people worship power and money far more than they love their small and hateful God.

    They won’t do what’s right, but they can usually be counted on to do what is profitable.

    And let that be a lesson for future battles.

  12. JanF

    Why ‘religious freedom’ laws are doomed

    Persuading Americans that you should be allowed to discriminate against gays and lesbians is a harder sell than telling them same-sex couples shouldn’t be able to get married.

    A majority of Americans now favor same-sex marriage, in every region of the country except for the South. But non-discrimination is not just a majority position. It’s practically a foregone conclusion. According to a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, 75% of Americans already think it is illegal under federal law to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in employment. They’re wrong – there is no federal law barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Most states don’t ban it, including Arizona. People simply take for granted that it’s the case because an overwhelming majority – 72% – think it should be.

    People already think that it is the law because it is so un-American to discriminate against someone for an innate characteristic. That is why passing ENDA – Employment Non-Discrimination Act should be a no-brainer for Congress.  

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