EDITORIAL: Hoosiers deserve better leadership than they got last week

A lot has been written in this newspaper and elsewhere about the law and its consequences, and about how the General Assembly fixed it. It’s not clear what will come next and how Indiana’s image might have suffered. A few things were clear, however.

The state was harmed by poor leadership. Being charitable, Gov. Pence didn’t understand problems with the bill and that it was not just like the federal bill and those passed by other states. The alternative is he knew, but supported it anyway.

One egregious error was simply the company he kept. The photograph of the crew in his office for a private and presumably celebratory signing included the state’s most visible and vocal opponents of gay rights. They included Eric Miller, the founder and executive director of Advance America, who stated on the group’s website the law would help make sure churches, Christian businesses and individuals would be protected against the gay rights and gender identity issues the governor said the bill was not about.

It became clear after Pence rushed to sign and defend the bill it was broader than the federal RFRA law and other state RFRA laws. That stripped him of one of his main points, that Indiana had only done what others had done. It also made us wonder which of the people who voted for the bill actually understood it.

Pence looked bad in the Sunday morning ABC interview in which he wouldn’t answer a direct question about whether the law would allow discrimination. By Tuesday, he found an answer to the question for a state-based news conference, but insisted this was all a misunderstanding, a “smear” of the law by its opponents and misinformed reporters.

House Speaker Brian Bosma and (R-Indianapolis) Senate President Pro Tem David Long (R-Fort Wayne) looked less defensive and more informed when they announced the “fix” to the law Thursday morning. They stopped short of what many wanted, and what they ultimately should do: add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes in the state’s anti-discrimination law. But their position that lawmakers should not make a major policy change “on a dime” was valid — as long as the issue is made a priority in the next Legislative session.

Still, the revised bill moved the state in the right direction by placing in state statute for the first time protections for Hoosiers based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This step was taken not only because of the outcry from outside the state, but because tens of thousands of everyday citizens who can vote in this state rose up in anger at the governor and the lawmakers for potential unfairness they saw in the law and the ridicule they brought on Indiana.

Simply put, the citizens of this state deserve much better from those elected to represent them.