Fear Mongering And Ignorance Won The Day In Arizona - Granite Grok

Fear Mongering And Ignorance Won The Day In Arizona

No one excels at fear mongering like the left and Arizona’s SB 1062.  It was never anti-gay and its veto was not a victory for gay rights (it was a victory for ignorance).   And the same ignorance and fear-mongering that lead to the outcry over nothing will probably suffice to keep most of those who were misled from ever knowing the truth.  We are here to help. Well, Rich Lowry is here to help.

Rich Lowry at NRO

The bill was roughly 998 pages shorter than much of legislation that passes in Washington. Clocking in at barely two pages, it was easy to scan for disparaging references to homosexuality, for veiled references to homosexuality, for any references to homosexuality at all.

They weren’t there. A headline from The Week declared, “There is nothing Christian about Arizona’s anti-gay bill.” It would be more accurate to say that there was nothing anti-gay about Arizona’s anti-gay bill.

The legislation consisted of minor clarifications of the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which has been on the books for 15 years and is modeled on the federal act that passed with big bipartisan majorities in the 1990s and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

Arizona was going to lose the Super Bowl over this? Maybe so. Governor Jan Brewer took no chances and vetoed it. The bill was the subject of a truly awe-inspiring tsunami of poorly informed indignation.

If you’ll excuse a brief break from the hysteria to dwell on the text of the doomed bill, it stipulated that the word “person” in the law applies to businesses and that the protections of the law apply whether or not the government is directly a party to a proceeding (e.g., a lawsuit brought on anti-discrimination grounds).

Eleven legal experts on religious-freedom statutes — who represent a variety of views on gay marriage — wrote a letter to Governor Brewer prior to her veto explaining how, in addition to the federal government, 18 states have such statutes.

The letter argues that, properly interpreted, the federal law that inspired the Arizona statute covers cases that don’t directly involve the government and covers businesses. So Arizona’s changes were in keeping with a law once championed by none other than Senator Ted Kennedy.

Read it the rest of Lowry’s article, then go look up the bill. The actual bill (which I did).  It is not hard to find.  No link, this is a skill we should all learn.  Then read the bill.  It is shorter than this post.  Then tell us what you think it means.

 

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