NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, March 29, 2015, 9:40 PM
Michael Conroy/APThe people of Indiana don't need to be protected from gays. They need to be protected from religious bullies like their governor, Mike Pence.
It happens in Indiana this time with a governor named Mike Pence, who tries to make bigotry toward gays sound like God’s will, and uses his own cockeyed version of religion to justify discrimination, the way politicians like him always have in this country.
It is called Senate Bill 101 in Pence’s state, or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. He signed that bill into law last week and in the process dishonored his state, which this week welcomes one of the biggest sports events we have when the Final Four returns to Indianapolis. At a time when Indianapolis and Indiana want to be at their best, the governor of the state shows the ham-handed sensibilities of a bully.
His new law now prohibits any other state laws that “substantially burden” the ability of any person to follow his or her religious beliefs. What that really means, whether Pence will admit it or not, is that he doesn’t want anybody in Indiana to be prevented from following beliefs that could eventually discriminate against gays, or gay marriage.
APPLE CEO TIM COOK SAYS INDIANA'S RELIGIOUS FREEDOM BILL IS BAD FOR BUSINESS
Pence says this is all about tolerance being a two-way street. But he is the one being ignorant and intolerant here, while he waits along with the rest of the country for the Supreme Court to rule on same-sex marriage once and for all. So Pence becomes the latest politician in this country to use his own cockeyed religious beliefs like a club — and would probably be insulted if you compared him with extremists from other countries who do the exact same thing.
On Sunday, the governor of Indiana went running to “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” and told that show’s audience that if he thought his state’s new law would discriminate against gays or anybody else, he never would have signed his name to it. In that moment he sounded like more of a phony and a fool than ever. The rest of us understood Pence perfectly once that bill became law. He only digs a deeper hole for himself every time he offers a new explanation.
“This is about protecting the religious liberty of people of faith and families of faith,” Pence said.
NATE CHUTE/REUTERSDemonstrators told Gov. Mike Pence how they felt about his religious freedom bill at a rally on Saturday.
No, it is not. Pence knows that, unless he is even a slower thinker than he appeared to be in not just becoming another American governor signing off on vulgar legislation like this, but continuing to defend it.
No rights for people of faith, no rights for families of faith, are under attack in Indiana or anywhere else when gays are allowed to marry in this country. The idea that they are is a lie.
Maybe the money quote from Pence, who’s been under attack for days from business leaders all across the country, some of them real big ones like Tim Cook of Apple, was this:
“We have suffered under this avalanche for the last several days of condemnation, and it’s completely baseless. This isn’t about disputes between individuals. It’s about government overreach.”
But even Pence ought to be smart enough to know that historically, the government has to overreach in this country to protect the rights of its citizens against political and religious bullies exactly like him.
Our government, at the state and national level, overreaches right now on sexual orientation the way it has in the past on race and women’s rights and protecting its citizens against the kind of bigotry Pence is endorsing here, the way it did with the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s, and Roe vs. Wade, and the 13th Amendment and Brown vs. Board of Education. Of course that is just the short list in America.
Charles Rex Arbogast/APGay people want the same rights as everyone else, but politicians and religious zealots are getting in the way.
Once it was the rights of black Americans that were a threat to small-minded men and women like Pence of Indiana. Now it is gay men and women who simply want the same rights as the rest of us without having politicians and religious zealots treating literal interpretation of the Bible like a buffet table, going through Scripture and picking out the passages they like.
You know what the Bible really teaches? It teaches kindness and fairness, in Indiana and everywhere else.
Believe me, Charles Barkley won’t be the last to suggest sports boycotts in Indiana, which has hosted a Super Bowl and previous Final Fours and is now home to the NCAA.
You know why Arizona didn’t lose the Super Bowl that was held there this past February? Because its own governor, Jan Brewer, didn’t want to lose another Super Bowl, this one over her boneheaded position on immigration enforcement, the way her state had lost one in the ’90s because of its refusal to recognize Martin Luther King Day.
That decision wasn’t about tolerance or religious liberty. It was about business. Arizona’s governor finally stopped acting like a political slob. So, too, will Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, whose constituents don’t need protections from gays. Just from him.
“God doesn’t speak to politicians,” Charles Barkley told me Sunday. “But cash does.”
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