Posted on 04/01/2015 9:52:02 AM PDT by Kaslin
"I could have handled that better."
I don't know if the captain of the Titanic ever said that. But Mike Pence did on Tuesday.
The Indiana governor has managed to step on an impressive number of parts of his own anatomy recently and in the process gravely injured what was already a long-shot ambition to run for president in 2016.
Earlier this month he signed the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act in a private ceremony. In attendance were prominent opponents of gay marriage.
In response, great algae plumes of righteous outrage erupted across the Internet. Gay rights groups, the Democratic Party and the mainstream media, in unison, lost their collective marbles and raised unshirted hell. Know-nothings of every stripe cried out that Jim Crow had returned to the land. Shouts of "boycott!" went forth, including perhaps of the NCAA's Final Four, which for Hoosiers is like threatening a boycott of Easter Mass at the Vatican. The Indiana Chamber of Commerce hied to its corporate fainting couch and begged to be rescued.
Pence, desperate to put out the political fire, raced to a TV studio last Sunday to quench the flames on ABC's "This Week." The only problem is that he arrived at the scene with a rhetorical water pistol hoping to put out a five-alarm blaze.
"Do you think it should be legal in the state of Indiana to discriminate against gays or lesbians?" George Stephanopoulos asked.
"George, you're -- you're following the mantra of the last week online [media coverage]," Pence said. "And you're trying to make this issue about something else."
Well, as they say in formal debate classes, Duh.
Two days later, Pence held a press conference to ask the state legislature to rewrite the law to placate the mob.
Pence still had the better part of the legal argument. Indeed, he and supporters of RFRA have nearly the entire legal argument on their side.
The federal RFRA was passed in 1993, in response to a Supreme Court decision holding that Native Americans weren't exempt from anti-drug laws barring the use of peyote, even for religious ceremonies.
In response, Congress passed a law barring the government from putting a burden on religious practice without a compelling state interest. If someone feels their religious rights have been violated, they can go to court and make their case. That's it. Jim Crow laws forced people to discriminate. RFRA doesn't force anybody to do anything.
The original RFRA was a good and just law championed by then-Rep. Chuck Schumer and opposed by right-wing bogeyman Jesse Helms. It passed the Senate 97-3 and was signed by President Bill Clinton.
In 1997, the Supreme Court held that RFRA was too broad and could not be applied to states. So, various state governments passed their own versions. Twenty states have close to the same version as the federal government's, and a dozen more have similar rules in their constitutions. These states include such anti-gay bastions as Connecticut, Massachusetts and Illinois, where, as a state senator, Barack Obama voted in favor of the law.
The law says nothing about gays and was most famously used to keep the Obama administration from forcing Hobby Lobby and nuns from paying for certain kinds of abortion-inducing birth control.
"This big gay freak-out is purely notional," according to legal writer Gabriel Malor (who is gay). "No RFRA has ever been used successfully to defend anti-gay discrimination, not in 20 years of RFRAs nationwide."
Still, the freak-out was predictable. A year earlier in Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer had attempted to sign a similar law before caving to the pressure. Why would the same crowd spare Indiana?
Yes, Pence hoped to throw a crumb to opponents of gay marriage. But what a miniscule crumb this is.
The war for gay rights has been won, and that's basically fine by me. But there are a few holdouts -- most famously devout Christian wedding planners, florists photographers and bakers -- who don't want to be part of such things. Why a gay couple would want a photographer who is morally opposed to their wedding to snap pictures of it is a mystery to me.
But we live in an age where non-compliance with the left's agenda must be cast as bigotry. Everyone is free to celebrate as instructed. This is what liberals think liberty means today.
Got to remember that this is a very important week in the Christian Calendar, called Holy Week, which will end with Easter Sunday. The left is playing around with both faith and emotions.
ONLY that they are right you YOU ARE WRONG..if you disagree!!!
Jonah says: “Why a gay couple would want a photographer who is morally opposed to their wedding to snap pictures of it is a mystery to me.”
Simple: because they are narrow-minded queers who CAN.
Perversion over all!
The truth is I’m all FOR!!! discrimination in many situations. Discriminating citizens per se make good citizens. For instance, I discriminate against all people I don’t like...I tend to avoid them. Is that a crime?
Are sure about that?
THEY KNOW it is, just look at the calendar.
The real truth is that the government’s demand for “equal rights” for sexual deviates is an imaginary “right”, not enumerated in the constitution.
The government distate is itself discriminatory and violates the religious freedom of citizens - a freedom that is enumerated and guaranteed in the constitution.
“Why a gay couple would want a photographer who is morally opposed to their wedding to snap pictures of it is a mystery to me.”
It’s not a mystery at all. It’s about using power to crush opposition; it’s about forcing oaths of loyalty by those to whom the new Fourth Reich and its pagan religion is abominable. It’s about the onset of a law to identify and punish “enemies of the state,” through the use of political officers and a new Gestapo.
As in 30’s Germany, the average gay man or woman has very little clue about where the new American National Socialist Worker’s Party is herding them. But because mental giants like ashton kutcher are touting it, they’re all for the trip, if not the destination.
The time is not far distant when leftist politics, theology and philosophy will be eradicated as anti-intellectual, immoral and unacceptable in civilized society. It will be left to the communists, the islamists and queers to perpetuate.
Yes, I included islamists. Haven’t you noticed they are inextricably linked with the Third Reich - socialist - and are supported by liberalism?
So what is it about Mike??? If its not something else.
Perfect example of Pence ineptness, bearing-less captain of the sinking ship.
This is the way liars answer questions.
It was a straightforward question.
He looks and sounds ridiculus.
Question:
Where does it say in the USA Constitution that someone’s SEXUAL PREFERENCE/BEHAVIOR trumps MY RELIGIOUS PREFERENCES???
Pence is right—Discrimination IS a TWO WAY street.
I have to get discriminated against if I am running a business & don’t wish to pay for abortions, birth control pills or similar in my health care plan. I am being forced to set my religious teachings aside & perform work for people I cannot support or congregate with in any other way. They can bankrupt me for my religious teachings & I cannot sue them for their LBGT preferences or behavior.
” ridiculus. “
Spell-czech is yo fiend !
Otherwise, right on, bro.
Because it allows them to use the state to put owners who oppose gay marriage out of business, DUHH!
BTW : I didn't see Pence trying to explain this, or anything.
What if a couple of nudest, gay men want a christian DJ to do their nude wedding dance. Of course he is forbidden by law to decline just because it violated his morals. He can not decline the bigot! Now What if he is an atheist, artist who just can not stand the thought of having to see the 76 year old gay couple and their elderly friends dancing in the nude? Can he decline as it offends his ascetics? If He is Muslim can he throw the couple off the top of the building as they offend Allah? If he is Jewish does his catering company have to cater the wedding pig roast?
I guess since this victory has been won by the left, with help from big busines, the chambers of commerce, the media, low-information types, and a stunningly demagogic propaganda campaign, the same reaction will happen in other states considering religious freedom laws, and once those victories are won, that will be the end of it. Right? The gaystapo will have achieved all that it has aimed to do. They can settle into quiet bourgeois wedded bliss (or their glory hole of choice) and the country can move on to other matters.
Or.....
They will move on to the next step which might include human rights tribunals that punish speech and practices critical of homosexuality, including what religious schools and congregations teach about it. And how long will it be until members of the clergy who decline to officiate at homosexual weddings are charged with violating anti-dscrimination laws?
THEY KNOW it is, just look at the calendar.
so you’re saying that if it weren’t Holy Week, the homo crowd would keep its collective trap shut about the Indy bill...?
To me, this kind of legislation seems to have a lot more to do with OTHER THINGS, other than gays. It seems that the “gay issue” is driving the discussion, but to me, that “gay issue” seems to be a minor point, as compared to ALL of what legislation guaranteeing “Christian Conscience” in business is about.
Unless I’m mistaken about what this kind of bill means, I see this bill as preserving the “conscience” of a Christian owner of a business from serving or doing business with a person who violates that “religious conscience” by who they are or what they represent or what they stand for. SO, in that sense, it is NOT TARGETED at gays, but all sorts of other things that would violate the “Christian’s conscience”!
A sampling of some other things I can think of, in which one would DENY SERVICE to people, would be a group coming in for Pizza who supports ABORTION! That would really violate a Christian’s conscience.
Or, if a Mormon church group came in and had an “after church Pizza gathering” some Sunday afternoon. I would DENY THEM SERVICE as they are one of the largest CULT GROUPS in America ... and as far as I’m concerned Mormons shouldn’t get service from ANY CHRISTIAN BUSINESS WHATSOEVER, ANYWHERE!!
If Mitt Romney were to come in to that Pizza place he SHOULD BE DENIED SERVICE because of clearly being a Mormon!
I would DENY SERVICE to GLENN BECK, too, for his Mormonism!
SO ... it doesn’t appear to be a “gay issue” but a VERY REAL “Religious Conscience” issue and opens the door to CHRISTIAN BUSINESS to serving Christians and not VIOLATING their religious conscience!
What surprises me is concerning religious freedom laws is that I haven’t heard state or federal lawmakers or Obama guard dog Fx News mention Section 1 of the 14th Amendment.
14th Amendment, Section 1:All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States [emphasis added]; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Note that the “privileges or immunities” term which John Bingham, the main author of Section 1 used in that section, is just another way to refer to constitutionally enumerated rights, most of these well-known rights listed in the Bill of Rights.
Yes indeed, all about timing.
So, what are you going to say to Christian businesspeople who can’t go against their faith in serving people who are blatant sinners—sinners who wish to FORCE BUSINESSES into serving them? Next, such business owners should what, be dragged off the street, along with their children, and raped?
I guess making them penniless or in prison is just fine with you.
Try it with Muslims. Go ask for a ceremony that serves ham and BLTs. Get back to us if you still have your head.
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