The Indianapolis Star published a front page editorial on Tuesday morning criticizing the state’s new religious freedom law and urging state lawmakers to change the legislation to ensure that it does not permit discrimination against gays and lesbians.
“We are at a critical moment in Indiana’s history,” the editorial begins. “And much is at stake.”
“Our image. Our reputation as a state that embraces people of diverse backgrounds and makes them feel welcome. And our efforts over many years to retool our economy, to attract talented workers and thriving businesses, and to improve the quality of life for millions of Hoosiers,” the editorial continues. “All of this is at risk because of a new law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, that no matter its original intent already has done enormous harm to our state and potentially our economic future.”
The editorial urges Indiana leaders to move quickly in fixing the law and to pass legislation prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
“The consequences will only get worse if our state leaders delay in fixing the deep mess created,” the editorial says. “Only bold action — action that sends an unmistakable message to the world that our state will not tolerate discrimination against any of its citizens — will be enough to reverse the damage.”
The editorial argues that since the religious freedom bill does have some support in the state, the legislature should not repeal the bill. Instead, the legislature should simply make sure that gays and lesbians are protected.
“We urge Gov. Pence and lawmakers to stop clinging to arguments about whether RFRA really does what critics fear; to stop clinging to ideology or personal preferences; to focus instead on fixing this,” the editorial says. “Governor, Indiana is in a state of crisis. It is worse than you seem to understand.”
The Indianapolis Star ran the editorial on the front page with an image that reads, “FIX THIS NOW.”
Sounds like a voice of reason to me. It will be very telling now depending on what the Indiana legislature and Governor actually do to move forward … or to double down and claim victimhood. Thank you, Indiana Star.
The defense I have heard of this law amounts to: “It’s like the federal law that Bill Clinton signed.” I’m no lawyer, but many have said it is not. Regardless, the implication is that Bill Clinton is supposed to be an infallible god who never signed bad legislation like DOMA and Glass-Steagall repeal. Times and attitudes have changed in the past 20 years. Making a mistake in 1995 was bad; repeating the same error in 2015 is simply idiotic.
**
REPEAL
THIS
NOW
**
is more like it.
OK folks it’s all better now. Here is a draft of the clarification that was found in a septic tank in Gary last night;
"We the God loving elected officials of Indiana, along with our blessed and humble as pie Governor did not intend to encourage discrimination against anyone by passing our “go ahead and discriminate law”. To clarify, our intent was only to make it possible for businesses to deny service to people whose sexual orientation, faith, disability, skin color, age, political beliefs, choice of automobile or hair style conflicted with our religious dogma. While targeting those of the gay persuasion first we see this as an opening to eventually make it possible for any of the yahoos who live in our backwater state to conjure up any wacky claim to deny service to anyone they feel like and at the same time use the roads, sidewalks, police and fire services, and so on of a civil society. We hope this clarification will alleviate those weak sisters who somehow construe our claim for our God given rights to be somehow discriminatory.
Now would someone please tell those darkies mowing the lawn at our country club to be off the streets by sundown?
It is “like” the federal law, “like” being the operative word. Indiana has broadened the scope of the federal law. The devil is in the details.