Have you heard about what may be the latest twist on gay bashing from American conservatives? It’s been all over the news. The Governor of Indiana (if you don’t know don’t ask, but I think it’s one of those states in the interior of the country somewhere near Ohio and Kentucky I would imagine), a Republican of course by the name of Mike Pence, has recently signed a law some critics say would provide legal justification for businesses turning away gay and lesbian customers. How rude you say? Well, for Midwestern conservatives it’s all about religious freedom. Any rudeness is purely coincidental. Say what now? I know, it is a bit confusing. Perhaps I should explain.
One popular take on what’s going on here is that many conservatives in what is known colloquially as the Corn Belt region of the US feel their religion requires them to avoid fraternizing with certain groups of what they consider less godly folk, including in their estimation gay people for example, at least to the extent of refusing to do business with them if they decide to do something outrageously offensive like marry one another. As far as I know these people don’t feel their religion requires them to tell gay people to go f__k themselves or hit gay people on their heads with baseball bats, so I don’t think this new law allows those sorts of activities, but certainly rudeness in terms of we don’t like ‘yer kind here and git the hell out. But it’s all a matter of degree right? The underlying principle is the same: people should be free to abuse other people if that’s what their religion recommends, at least to the extent of embarrassing them and making their lives more difficult by refusing to serve them at one’s place of business.
If you’ve read my blog before you’ll probably have some notion of what I feel is probably going on here. Some people are opposed to what is essentially an idea, in this case the idea gay people have civil rights and should be able to marry one another, but they don’t want to leave their opposition in the realm of ideas and discussion, they want to take it out on people, in this case gay people or at least gay people who are interested in getting married. They feel they should be free to do so because they’re just expressing their beliefs and opinions and what’s wrong with that? A Republican senator from Arkansas, Bart Hester, expressed this all rather nicely when he claimed these sorts of religious freedom laws are about discriminating against messages (i.e. ideas) and not about discriminating against people at all, which would be fine except we’re not talking about refusing to do business with messages, we’re talking about refusing to do business with people. Senator Hester went on to explain requiring conservatives to do business with gay couples wanting to get married is like requiring a Jewish baker to make a cake with a Nazi swastika on it. (I know, it’s a funny analogy right? In other words for conservatives gay people are like Nazis but without I suppose the fascism, nationalism, jingoism, racism, murder, and war mongering, while the conservative Christians who dominate political life in states like Arkansas are similar to Jewish holocaust survivors.) Hmm. I sort of see where he’s coming from, but I’m not sure it’s really the same thing. Or let’s just say I’d have to think about that. I suspect Nazi symbols might fall into some sort of special legal category because, you know, all that stuff actual Nazis got up to. And it seems to me the postulated Nazi sympathizer with the sweet tooth could probably come up with something else to put on his or her cake in place of the offending swastika, but I’m not sure gay couples have similarly obvious alternatives to getting married. I suppose they could join the local Baptist church and throw themselves off a bridge or something like that, but it hardly seems the same thing.
If you haven’t been around as long as I have I suppose I should mention this is all very much consistent with the traditional Midwestern American way of life circa the middle of the last century. In the provincial small town where I grew up the local rednecks who ran the place refused to do business with all manner of people: blacks, Jews, Asians, foreigners, hippies, and so on. Yes, they were opposed to a whole slew of messages in those days: the message that “black” people should feel free to mingle with “white” people, the message that the Jewish religion was as legitimate as the Christian religion, the message that Asian people belonged in the US as much as the ancestors of European immigrants, and so on. All manner of messages. Then the US government got all uppity and started all that civil rights nonsense and we lost a good deal of our freedom to abuse other people to clarify our positions on the messages they personified. Talk about government overreach! It was horrible. No, wait. What am I saying? Actually it made the place a whole lot nicer than it used to be. Sorry. I got so caught up just then trying to think like a conservative I may have gone insane for a moment. But I’m back now. Yeah, as a liberal the freedom to abuse other people isn’t really one of my top priorities, whether it’s motivated by religion or not. In my book it’s in the same basic category as the freedom to steal someone’s car. I suppose it’s a sort of freedom but it suffers from the usual problem with conservative ideas about freedom: it fails to recognize the existence of other people and their countervailing claims to freedom. But that’s conservatism all over, isn’t it? Me, me, me. No wonder the Me Generation laps this stuff up.
On the other hand maybe I’ve got the wrong end of the stick on this one. It wouldn’t be the first time. Republicans in Indiana have been loudly proclaiming the last few days that other people just don’t understand the law. They claim it’s basically the same thing that was passed at the federal level by President Clinton back in 1993 and that now appears in various versions in nineteen other states. They intend to clarify what they had in mind and add language to the law establishing it does not in fact allow businesses to discriminate against gay people. That should be very helpful for people like Governor Pence, who was on television the other day defending the law but who refused to say whether he thought it would allow businesses to deny service to gay people or not. He was asked that question and didn’t answer. Four times. One suspects he thought it probably did but didn’t want to say as much. That’s how Republicans typically operate these days. As the undisputed masters of traditional political double talk they often say one thing in front of their more rabid supporters then turn around and shamelessly tell some other audience something else entirely or in some cases nothing at all. But I don’t know. Maybe the man honestly just didn’t know the answer. I mean we are talking about the Stupid Party after all. It certainly seems within the realm of possibility the Governor just hadn’t bothered to look into those sorts of details, not being gay himself. He just signed the bill into law and went on his merry way. At least, if he had thought the law didn’t support discrimination one would have thought he might have mentioned it, right? Some people were clearly interested. But anyway his fellow Republicans should make everything clear soon enough. Governor Pence has apparently gotten ahead of the game and declared the fact the law doesn’t support discrimination is so obvious any suggestion otherwise represents a “smear” campaign against the law.
While we’re waiting for Indiana Republicans to explain how the law actually works I suppose we might as well spend a few moments speculating about whether it allows discrimination against gay people or not. I mean, the law is on the books so we might as well consider what it might mean, right? Along those lines I was just reading an interesting article that was full of fun facts and opinions on the topic. For example, a University of Virginia Law School professor made the interesting point that as far as he knew it was already legal in Indiana to refuse to do business with gay people because unlike many other states Indiana doesn’t have anti-discrimination laws relating to sexual orientation. (And don’t hold your breath waiting for any such laws. Governor Pence has made it clear he opposes that sort of thing.) So even if the law were to allow discrimination much to the surprise and consternation of its supporters (just a bit of humor to keep things light) it would apparently not be adding anything new but simply codifying existing practice. Another interesting tidbit I gleaned from the article is that Indiana lawmakers explicitly rejected amendments that would have made clear they did not intend the law to allow discrimination and similarly refused to add an anti-discrimination clause. Which brings up a funny story. Apparently conservatives tried to set up one of these religious freedom laws in another conservative stronghold, Georgia, but they pulled their bill entirely when someone managed to add an anti-discrimination clause. No wonder Governor Pence was so confused. And then of course we have the simple fact that advocates of the Indiana law have been touting the idea the law allows businesses to refuse business relating to same sex marriages, which incidentally it seems only one year ago Republicans were still trying to amend the Indiana constitution to ban. Indeed, as I suggested previously that appears to have been the whole point. (Wasn’t I just saying the other day I thought one of the top priorities of the Republican Party in the next few years would be to find some backhanded way to get at gay people now their marriage bans have increasingly been found unconstitutional? What a call!) So what’s the answer? Was the law meant to provide a legal justification for discrimination against gay people or not? I don’t know. But it smells a little fishy to me.
Addendum
I saw even more recently conservatives in the Arkansas state legislature made the national news for trying to pull the same stunt in that state. (One might have thought they’d reconsider their timing given all the concerns about the Indiana law, but that’s how Republicans operate these days, always flying to the extremes. Witness the motley crew of Republican presidential candidates rushing to support the Indiana law including Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz.) I was all prepared to make some hilarious comments about Arkansas, which I remember from my youth for all manner of ugly scenes involving racial issues, but the Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, refused to sign the bill and instead sent it back to state lawmakers with a request they ensure it mirrors federal law and cannot be used as a legal justification for discrimination. Whoa! Didn’t see that one coming! Just when I was about to launch into my usual tirade against Republican bullying he goes and spoils the punchline. Just joking. It’s always gratifying to meet the honorable opposition. You know, I have no problem with religious freedom at all. It’s just that I think we need to consider the freedom of other people as well. I suspect Governor Hutchinson might just agree with that. Maybe we can get together and work something out. I know. It’s weird. Do I need to amend my mental map of the US? Has the Midwest overtaken the Deep South in terms of conservative extremism? We have the counterexample of Georgia of course, where as I’ve already discussed conservatives dropped their support for their own religious freedom law when opponents added language making it clear it could not be used to justify discrimination, but this story about Arkansas suggests a certain amount of change may be in the air. I’d like that.
References
Indiana's Pence to sign bill allowing businesses to reject gay customers. Eric Bradner. CNN. March 25, 2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/25/politics/mike-pence-religious-freedom-bill-gay-rights/index.html.
Gov. Mike Pence: Indiana “ not going to change” anti-LGBT law. Eric Bradner. CNN. March 30, 2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/29/politics/mike-pence-indiana-anti-lgbt-religious-freedom-law/index.html.
Indiana to ‘clarify’ religious freedom law. BBC. March 30, 2015. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32121317.
Is the controversial Indiana law ‘the same’ as a law backed by Obama? Glenn Kessler. The Washington Post. March 31, 2015. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/03/31/is-the-controversial-indiana-law-the-same-as-a-law-backed-by-obama/.
Indiana uses religious freedom against gays. Tim Holbrook. CNN. March 31, 2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/31/opinions/holbrook-indiana-law/index.html.
Arkansas lawmakers scramble to change ‘religious freedom’ bill. Eric Bradner. CNN. April 1, 2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/31/politics/arkansas-religious-freedom-anti-lgbt-bill/.
