So it was just politics, just politicians pandering to a special interest?
Yes, apparently that's the case.
On Thursday in a private ceremony (why are they always celebrated behind closed doors if the laws are so desperately needed?) the governor signed the awkwardly named Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the state has been taking a beating ever since.
There's much debate about this impractical law's potential impact, whether it will in fact provide legal protection for businesses and associations that choose to discriminate against members of the GLBT community.
Possibly it will. That's up to the courts to determine.
We've been puzzled from the beginning about just how a business owner could possibly know, with certainty, when their beliefs might be compromised.
Here at the newspaper we've been studying closely those coming in to place an advertisement or to pay their subscriptions, and we can't tell with anything close to certitude who might be gay, just as we can't determine the sexual orientations of our fellow shoppers while out spending our wages in the local stores.
Perhaps worried shopkeepers could post signs in their windows: STRAIGHTS ONLY.
Signs like that worked for awhile (both in the North and South) to keep blacks from commingling with whites, although even then it could be difficult to tell who failed the “one-drop rule” and therefore have to sit in “Colored Only” seats at the Pantheon Theatre just down Main Street from where we're sitting as we write.
Maybe this new law didn't go far enough. Maybe to safeguard that no butcher, baker or candlestick maker would ever have to confront the difficult question of who was OK to serve, the law should have stipulated that members of the GLBT community wear rainbow-hued stars pinned to their clothes while out shopping.
We doubt there will be more than a baker's dozen of businesses throughout the state that will seek the “protection” this new law offers them to discriminate based on their religious beliefs.
Hoosiers are far better than that.
From the outset, this legislation was a solution in search of a problem.
So why was it brought up?
Republicans and the governor couldn't deliver a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage during the last session. So thwarted, this year they set their sights on another way to satisfy the prejudices of a particular segment of their supporters, waved the bloody shirt, bullied a minority group, and got the law they needed.
Opposition to IRFRA has been widespread and far reaching. And it's not just Democrats who have voiced their opposition but Republicans as well, and not only civil libertarians but members of the business community, too, that have raised concerns about the law.
Churches have hardly been silent in their dissent.
The governor has blamed the media for the blowback he and his party have received following his signing the legislation into law. In the days of the Segregated South, governors also blamed the media for stirring up all the trouble over Civil Rights.
Reviewing the reporting on the legislative debates over IRFRA, we in the media reported what both the supporters and opponents said, and unfortunately for the governor and the GOP majority (minus four), what they were saying in favor of the bill echoed the arguments made over a half century ago by supporters of segregation — that white businesses owners shouldn't have to serve black customers sitting at the lunch counter if those owners' religious beliefs held that integration of blacks and whites was wrong.
What irony, that members of the political party founded to end the worst form of discrimination — slavery — should have stooped to using the rhetoric of racists in passing this misguided legislation.
The governor and the GOP majority (minus four) have done a disservice to their party, an unkindness to the GLBT community, and have harmed our state.