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| Mike Pence is too cowardly to defend his anti-gay law. He should be that ashamed | Mike Pence is too cowardly to defend his anti-gay law. He should be that ashamed |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| The pathetic thing about Indiana Governor Mike Pence and his water carriers at the Weekly Standard and historically pro-segregationist rag National Review is that none of them will ever have the stones of someone like George Wallace and stand for the modern segregation of LGBT people and pledge never to get out-queered again. The optics are too bad and too unambiguous for their political ambitions to survive. | The pathetic thing about Indiana Governor Mike Pence and his water carriers at the Weekly Standard and historically pro-segregationist rag National Review is that none of them will ever have the stones of someone like George Wallace and stand for the modern segregation of LGBT people and pledge never to get out-queered again. The optics are too bad and too unambiguous for their political ambitions to survive. |
| But you only sign a law like Indiana’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act – which radically expands private businesses’ ability to discriminate against against LGBT citizens by preserving bigoted business ownersfrom private litigation – to preemptively pardon people who want to the ability to circumscribe or reject the civil rights of their fellow citizens. That’s it. | But you only sign a law like Indiana’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act – which radically expands private businesses’ ability to discriminate against against LGBT citizens by preserving bigoted business ownersfrom private litigation – to preemptively pardon people who want to the ability to circumscribe or reject the civil rights of their fellow citizens. That’s it. |
| Related: Indiana governor on defensive over religious law some see as anti-gay | |
| The real political mistake was the strength of the RFRA in the first place: rather than a mealy-mouthed statutory reminder of the constitutional right to religion without government interference to placate a loud minority, it boldly delineates the mechanisms of unaccountable discrimination on a citizen-by-citizen basis and dangerously reminds the rest of us of the control that Christian bigots have had over American society from day one until the present. | The real political mistake was the strength of the RFRA in the first place: rather than a mealy-mouthed statutory reminder of the constitutional right to religion without government interference to placate a loud minority, it boldly delineates the mechanisms of unaccountable discrimination on a citizen-by-citizen basis and dangerously reminds the rest of us of the control that Christian bigots have had over American society from day one until the present. |
| So if you’re going to be a bigot, why be a coward about it? You’d have to ask Mike Pence. Despite over 80 guests at the signing, Pence’s office refused to disclose a list of the attendees and provided an uncaptioned picture instead. Then, on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Pence refused to answer a simple yes/no question over whether the law permitted discrimination against LGBT citizens. | So if you’re going to be a bigot, why be a coward about it? You’d have to ask Mike Pence. Despite over 80 guests at the signing, Pence’s office refused to disclose a list of the attendees and provided an uncaptioned picture instead. Then, on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Pence refused to answer a simple yes/no question over whether the law permitted discrimination against LGBT citizens. |
| Pence wasn’t alone in his efforts to distort his intent. Various outlets, from the Weekly Standard to the Washington Post, mischaracterized the new law as an anodyne 20th addition to the 19 other “religious freedom” laws going back to 1993. But the original (unnecessary) federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act sought to preserve religious groups from government intrusions on their faith. The original example given to justify its passage was to protect Native Americans’ rights to unemployment compensation after a failed drug test from taking peyote in a traditional religious ceremony. But Indiana’s new law goes far beyond official ceremony and citizens’ rights to government benefits. | Pence wasn’t alone in his efforts to distort his intent. Various outlets, from the Weekly Standard to the Washington Post, mischaracterized the new law as an anodyne 20th addition to the 19 other “religious freedom” laws going back to 1993. But the original (unnecessary) federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act sought to preserve religious groups from government intrusions on their faith. The original example given to justify its passage was to protect Native Americans’ rights to unemployment compensation after a failed drug test from taking peyote in a traditional religious ceremony. But Indiana’s new law goes far beyond official ceremony and citizens’ rights to government benefits. |
| As Garrett Epps noted in the Atlantic, unlike the federal and most state RFRAs, this law “allows any for-profit business to assert a right to ‘the free exercise of religion’”, and to apply it to private interactions. The law states: | As Garrett Epps noted in the Atlantic, unlike the federal and most state RFRAs, this law “allows any for-profit business to assert a right to ‘the free exercise of religion’”, and to apply it to private interactions. The law states: |
| A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding, regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding. | A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding, regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding. |
| In short, if you perceive any transaction between your business and any potential customer as likely to substantially burden whatever beliefs you think you can claim to have, you can refuse that person service and be protected from litigation. | In short, if you perceive any transaction between your business and any potential customer as likely to substantially burden whatever beliefs you think you can claim to have, you can refuse that person service and be protected from litigation. |
| Besides the Weekly Standard and Post, the usual suspects attempted to obscure the real scope of the law – but the smartest Republican presidential hopeful’s dodge came from The False Jeb, who explained that Indiana’s RFRA was about “simply allowing people of faith space to be able to express their beliefs.” It even sounds sort of sunny. This is about space! All of us, just roamin’, findin’ ourselves where we go. It was so good that it snookered people who should know better. | Besides the Weekly Standard and Post, the usual suspects attempted to obscure the real scope of the law – but the smartest Republican presidential hopeful’s dodge came from The False Jeb, who explained that Indiana’s RFRA was about “simply allowing people of faith space to be able to express their beliefs.” It even sounds sort of sunny. This is about space! All of us, just roamin’, findin’ ourselves where we go. It was so good that it snookered people who should know better. |
| Evasive, optimistic explanations like Bush’s come from lessons learned earlier in the Culture War. Republicans have been able to run and fundraise for ages against Roe v. Wade, with the relative certainty that it’s going nowhere. But playing around with “space” accomplishes a lot for Republicans and their anti-abortion compatriots. There remains a space for women to exercise their reproductive rights, but conservatives can make it simultaneously big and small and achieve their agenda. In terms of big space, they’ve put nearly 1m women over 150 miles away from the nearest abortion clinic in Texas by shutting down all but 17 and threatening to lower that number to below 10 in a state of over 268,000 square miles. They’ve builtmore space between women and their reproductive rights by creating a vacuum of licensed abortion doctors by denying them privileges at local hospitals, like in Mississippi. You can fill the spaces around clinics with unscientific anti-abortion hectoring of women patients while literally filling space by violating women with a trans-vaginal ultrasound wand. And you can shrink space by limiting the legal “medical” span for an abortion more each and every year. The great thing is that birth control is still legal – for now – and no one gets hurt! We now just all have a space to explore the things we need. | Evasive, optimistic explanations like Bush’s come from lessons learned earlier in the Culture War. Republicans have been able to run and fundraise for ages against Roe v. Wade, with the relative certainty that it’s going nowhere. But playing around with “space” accomplishes a lot for Republicans and their anti-abortion compatriots. There remains a space for women to exercise their reproductive rights, but conservatives can make it simultaneously big and small and achieve their agenda. In terms of big space, they’ve put nearly 1m women over 150 miles away from the nearest abortion clinic in Texas by shutting down all but 17 and threatening to lower that number to below 10 in a state of over 268,000 square miles. They’ve builtmore space between women and their reproductive rights by creating a vacuum of licensed abortion doctors by denying them privileges at local hospitals, like in Mississippi. You can fill the spaces around clinics with unscientific anti-abortion hectoring of women patients while literally filling space by violating women with a trans-vaginal ultrasound wand. And you can shrink space by limiting the legal “medical” span for an abortion more each and every year. The great thing is that birth control is still legal – for now – and no one gets hurt! We now just all have a space to explore the things we need. |
| But Bush’s “space” arguments echo another culture war argument conservatives made in the past, also on a religion basis: the case for segregation. Think Progress’ Ian Millhiser illuminated the similar rhetoric on “space” that anti-gay and anti-black discrimination share. When you’re some Heritage Foundation poltroon justifying a law that denies service to people based on who they love because they can obtain alternate services from other businesses, you’re just using market-speak for Separate But Equal. LGBT people don’t want a better deal or optimum product from the invisible hand of the free market, but any right to patronize a business at all. And god – or whatever else – help them if they live in East Jesus, Nowhere. Having to move to be recognized as LGBT citizens is not a reasonable alternative, but think of the space they can travel to do it! | But Bush’s “space” arguments echo another culture war argument conservatives made in the past, also on a religion basis: the case for segregation. Think Progress’ Ian Millhiser illuminated the similar rhetoric on “space” that anti-gay and anti-black discrimination share. When you’re some Heritage Foundation poltroon justifying a law that denies service to people based on who they love because they can obtain alternate services from other businesses, you’re just using market-speak for Separate But Equal. LGBT people don’t want a better deal or optimum product from the invisible hand of the free market, but any right to patronize a business at all. And god – or whatever else – help them if they live in East Jesus, Nowhere. Having to move to be recognized as LGBT citizens is not a reasonable alternative, but think of the space they can travel to do it! |
| This is all part of a pattern. When driving through the south, a fun game you can play when you see a Christian school is guessing whether it was founded in the same year as Brown v Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act or Roe v Wade. But what initially was a retreat from the rest of the country into protected private enclaves able to discriminate at will has grown outward over the decades, devouring integration, science, reproductive rights, gender equality and taxation with it. | This is all part of a pattern. When driving through the south, a fun game you can play when you see a Christian school is guessing whether it was founded in the same year as Brown v Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act or Roe v Wade. But what initially was a retreat from the rest of the country into protected private enclaves able to discriminate at will has grown outward over the decades, devouring integration, science, reproductive rights, gender equality and taxation with it. |
| Indiana’s RFRA’s only real purpose is to take these impermeable enclaves initially created to avoid the oppressive proximal exertions of other people’s civil rights, expand them under the guise of religious freedom and then immunize those who prefer those enclaves from private litigation until the unwanted and other are pushed away and finally out. Let “them” migrate to the cities, proponents of these laws seem to think, and find their alternative market opportunities there, until there is no reason for them to stay in Real America. | Indiana’s RFRA’s only real purpose is to take these impermeable enclaves initially created to avoid the oppressive proximal exertions of other people’s civil rights, expand them under the guise of religious freedom and then immunize those who prefer those enclaves from private litigation until the unwanted and other are pushed away and finally out. Let “them” migrate to the cities, proponents of these laws seem to think, and find their alternative market opportunities there, until there is no reason for them to stay in Real America. |
| Barring that dystopic end, it’s better, electorally speaking, to retreat and cry religious persecution, while creating a little more space for discrimination each year. Mike Pence’s weasel-speak in defense of Indiana’s RFRA wasn’t the political mistake. He should sound like a coward; it’s a cowardly thing to pass a law to allow your citizens to be bigots without consequence and try to pretend like you didn’t just do that or don’t know that was its purpose. The real problem for Pence now is that the RFRA was so blindingly obvious in its intent that it might not make the state’s intolerant citizens sound like simple folk besieged on all fronts by LGBT people ruining the Christian sanctity of having only one plastic groom figurine on top of the sacramental wedding cake or only one girl name on the tulle wrapping around the floral arrangements prescribed in the New Testament. It might instead make them look not just like bigots, but like powerful bigots who perhaps aren’t the ones who need a law to protect their rights. Incredibly enough, the bigots might not be the victims here. | Barring that dystopic end, it’s better, electorally speaking, to retreat and cry religious persecution, while creating a little more space for discrimination each year. Mike Pence’s weasel-speak in defense of Indiana’s RFRA wasn’t the political mistake. He should sound like a coward; it’s a cowardly thing to pass a law to allow your citizens to be bigots without consequence and try to pretend like you didn’t just do that or don’t know that was its purpose. The real problem for Pence now is that the RFRA was so blindingly obvious in its intent that it might not make the state’s intolerant citizens sound like simple folk besieged on all fronts by LGBT people ruining the Christian sanctity of having only one plastic groom figurine on top of the sacramental wedding cake or only one girl name on the tulle wrapping around the floral arrangements prescribed in the New Testament. It might instead make them look not just like bigots, but like powerful bigots who perhaps aren’t the ones who need a law to protect their rights. Incredibly enough, the bigots might not be the victims here. |