Dear Mike Pence,
You sir, Governor Pence, are a liar and a coward, and a bigot. Do not pretend, Pence, conservatives, that your legislation is LIKE the federal legislation. It is not. Federal legislation supported religious freedom for individuals when infringed by government. This treats businesses as people -- hello, anti-LGBT Romney -- and it facilitates businesses discriminating in public accommodation against individuals over sexual orientation. It is not about freedom, it is just about facilitating dumb bigotry.
Let's just cut to the chase, and cut through your bullshit. Your statement on the George Stephanopolous Sunday 'talking head' interview was dishonest, and it was nothing more than a clumsy tap dance trying to get around the truth.
It is significant that Pence is trying to tar both Bill Clinton (as a proxy for Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, both of whom support LGBT rights) in advance of a potential presidential run.
ABSOLUTELY, "Hoosiers engage in discrimination." (see the video of the interview at the 10 minute mark); they not only engage in LGBT discrimination, they want it, YOU WANT IT, and they brag about doing it. Do just give it up on having it both ways; you know this law you signed is entirely about religious anti-LGBT discrimination being given proactive and pre-emptive legal cover to let them do so where previously they did not have such legal advantage for discrimination.
The AFA was right there with you when you signed this; they pushed for it, they're candid about what it is: a pro-discrimination bill to legalize anti-LGBT discrimination. PERIOD.
So quit lying about it; you're not any of you going to get away with having it both ways, a discrimination law AND not a pro-discrimination law. You might as well pander to the bigots, Mikey; because you aren't fooling the rest of us.
From Mediaite:
The man, who only identified himself as Ryan, said that as a Christian he understands that some people have a different “lifestyle” than him, but he doesn’t want them coming into his place of business and making his customers “uncomfortable.”
The hosts did not let him off easy, asking directly if he has ever discriminated against gay people in his restaurant. “I have discriminated,” he said openly, explaining that he has pretended there was a problem with his kitchen in order to not serve them in the past.
“That makes you feel OK?” Rachel Bogle asked him. “I mean, when you get a bed at night saying, ‘I’ve discriminated against other human beings,’ you feel at ease with that?”
Ryan said he feels fine about it because he believes he should be able to do whatever he wants in his own restaurant. “We don’t want to have this in our place of business, it’s just not right,” he said. But while the caller was happy to share his story, he would not say the name of his restaurant.
Let me sort this out for you and for your bigot businessman restaurant owner. 'Ryan' wants to be able to tell people they can't eat at his place of business, but he doesn't want to risk losing the heterosexual $$$ of people who would not knowingly patronize the businesses that discriminate.
Let me point out Ryan, let me point out Governor Pence, that LGBT people pay taxes. Those taxes pay for the infrastructure and services that make it possible for this business owner to make money, to operate his business. Our armed forces have gay patriots serving in their ranks protecting this country, so that those businesses may operate, so that state, and all the other states and territories are safe and free.
So unless these businesses want to go somewhere else, outside this country, they have no damned right, no damned freedom to take all the benefits of taxation which includes the LGBT community along with the family and friends who support them being who they are as human beings who were born the way they are. There is no more right to do that, no more ethical or moral justification, no political justification to do that, than there ever was to deny service to a person of color, or a person who is of an ethnicity like being Jewish or Asian, or to deny someone service on the basis of a religion in which they were raised or chose to embrace.
This notion that there is some kind of religious legitimacy to discriminate is one we've seen before, used to try to prop up segregation of races. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now. That belief creates a second class group of citizens, and then tries to smear heaps of lipstick on that pig to pretend it is nothing else.
There will be a severe penalty for you Governor Pence, much larger than I believe you have calculated. Not the least of those penalties, those costs will be to the people in your state who support this law and who elected you. Personally however Governor, you can kiss good bye any hope or dream you might ever have, in 2016 or any other time in the future, to sit in the office of President in our White House.
Bigots are going bye bye. And you gentlemen --- all of you who contemplate and desire to enact laws like this, you damned conservative bigots, are as conservatives always are, on the wrong side of the arc of history. You consistently choose the role of the bad guy, and then you whine about it after you made the choice of your own will. Your values are flawed, your morality and ethics are dirty and ugly. YOU FAIL.
It is only a matter of when, not if, your law will be flushed down the toilet of shitty historic legislation, where it will end up on the dung heap of human hatred.
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