San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee (D) has decided to ban city-funded trips to Indiana in response to Indiana’s new anti-gay law.
Lee’s announcement follows Pence signing legislation into law that allows businesses in the state to not serve gay people because of religious objections.
“We stand united as San Franciscans to condemn Indiana’s new discriminatory law, and will work together to protect the civil rights of all Americans including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults,” Lee said in a statement, according to the Indianapolis Star on Friday. “San Francisco taxpayers will not subsidize legally sanctioned-discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people by the state of Indiana.”
There’s been a visible backlash against Indiana since the law was signed. Major companies like Yelp and Salesforce have promised to scale back business in the state in protest of the law.
Pence, in a radio interview after he signed the law, was pressed on if there was any justification for the law. He couldn’t come up with any recent examples.
For the life of me I can’t think of any reason to ever go to Indiana. I think I went to Gary once. Not a garden spot. Otherwise . . . . . no, can’t think of anything. Oh . . . . auto racing. That’s it.
I passed through Muncie once and had some pizza. It was OK.
All of this national criticism is fine, but it won’t move the needle at all for the bigots who passed the law in Indiana. To the contrary, criticism by San Francisco politicians and corporations based in the Bay area will just confirm them in their prejudices. It won’t be until corporations or organizations without any specific ties to those icky gay cities or icky liberal causes stop spending money in Indiana that the GOPers will even think about rescinding the law. In other words, if the National Organization for Sane Gun Laws announced they were moving their convention to some other state, the troglodytes in the legislature would celebrate. If the NCAA or the Big Ten conference announced that they would no longer hold basketball tournaments or conference football playoff games in Indy, that would get their attention. It would be better if Indy 500 drivers announced a boycott of the biggest spectacle in racing, but that ain’t happening in that testosterone- and gasoline-fueled world.
I appreciate what you are saying and wish the NCAA and other equally-powerful organizations would boycott. Nevertheless, each ban costs Indiana money and will hopefully cause other businesses to reconsider their relationships with Indiana and other states with discriminatory laws.
The latest religious freedom rhetoric from conservative Catholic Cardinal Burke:
http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/cardinal-raymond-burke-gays-remarried-catholics-murderers-are-all-the/article_ca293b71-4072-5387-9456-bbdb7b02ef46.html