A majority of North Carolina voters disagree with the prospect of North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signing a religious freedom bill into law, according to a new Elon University poll released Tuesday.
McCrory has repeatedly expressed opposition to signing such legislation. Two religious freedom proposals filed last month have not made it through legislative committees.
The poll found that 63 percent of registered voters said they disagree with the state adopting a religious freedom law. The majority of that opposition comes from young registered voters, women, and Democrats. Meanwhile, 51 percent of Republicans said they supported the idea of businesses being allowed to refuse to serve customers because of religious objections.
The poll’s findings come after national attention fell on similar bills in Indiana and Arkansas. After signing a controversial religious freedom bill into law, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) was forced to clarify the law in response to criticism from local and national figures. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) decided to send a religious freedom law back to the state legislature for reworking.
McCrory has repeatedly questioned the need for a religious freedom bill.
“What is the problem they’re trying to solve?” McCrory asked last month on Charlotte’s WFAE. “I haven’t seen it up to this point in time.”
Last week, North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore said that the House religious freedom bill would not move this session, essentially killing the legislation. In the Senate, Senate Leader Phil Berger hasn’t been as straightforward, saying that Republicans “remain committed to ensuring freedom of religious —and to preventing discrimination against North Carolinians based on their sincerely-held religious beliefs.”
The fate of the bill in the Senate is unclear. It could still pass if it comes up before the April 30 “crossover deadline” where certain bills must pass to be eligible for legislative session. If it doesn’t come up before the deadline, passage is far more unlikely.
In Louisiana, despite criticism from lawmakers, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) has expressed strong support for a similar (but not duplicate) religious freedom proposal made by a Republican state lawmaker.
The poll was conducted among 756 North Carolina residents between April 20 and April 24. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.56 percentage points. Six-hundred seventy-seven of those respondents were registered voters. The margin of error for them was 3.77 percentage points.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding of NC law is that bills can become laws if passed by the legislature even without the governor’s signature. If true in this case, it would make it real easy for McCrory to have it both ways and make sane-sounding statements even as his fringe base gets what they want.
Sigh…North Carolina, what is happening to you in front of my eyes?
The real question is how many people would be motivated to actually get out and vote based on their opposition to this? The people in favor of this might be outnumbered, but if those people against it don’t actually get up and vote when it matters, they win regardless.
A highly motivated minority will often beat an apathetic majority. That’s pretty much the strategy for the modern republican party and it’s been working out pretty well for them thus far (the rest of us, not so much perhaps).
Gee, Governor McCrory asks a pertinent question. What problem ARE these laws meant to solve? The inability to legally discriminate against a minority group? A made-up “War on Christianity”? I suspect the Governor will be getting a nice little love note from the desk of Art Pope soon. “Hsst! Ixnay on the uthtray!”
I really wish TPM, at least, would stop referring to these laws as “religious freedom laws,” and start referring to them as “pro-discrimination laws.” Because that’s what they are. Just because religion is being used to justify them does not change that basic fact. Imagine, for example, if a state tried to pass a law saying that businesses could choose to refuse service to African Americans, or Hispanics, or Jews, or Asians, or Native Americans or women, or people with disabilities or (well, you get the idea), would we really be referring to them as “religious freedom laws?” Just because you believe your religion commands you to discriminate against a certain group of law-abiding people doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) give you a free pass to impose your bigotry on the public through your business practices. I thought we had pretty much settled that back in the days of the desegregation of lunch counters, transportation, etc. But apparently LGBT folks are still considered lesser-than-fully-human by enough knuckledraggers in state legislatures (and sadly, on some courts) that religious-based bigotry is allowed to trump civil rights in the name of “religious freedom.” That’s bad enough as it is, but then to add insult to injury, we have the media and politicians supporting the bigots’ framing of this as some kind of “religious freedom” issue. Look, you can practice your religion all you want – right up to the point where it infringes on the civil rights of others, but not one bit further. This is not a theocracy, despite what the more talibanesque members of the religious far-right might yearn for.
Does it ever matter what the voters want? In all of the states where the oppressive religious agenda is in the forefront, isn’t it more what the Religious Corporate lobbyists want?
This isn’t about freedoms as theocracy and they all cry about Muslim Sharia when they are financially backing a Christian Sharia in our country. They are marching forward with their agenda and propaganda despite what the voters want. As long as the citizens of the US vote for them, allow them to suppress voters who might disagree with them this march will continue, cynically I don’t think the public will really notice until it is too late to stop the march.