Free Republic

Governor Pence needs to stand up for 1st Amendment, more important than money and definitely don't allow smear merchants to get what they want

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I want to go to Indiana and discuss this supposedly controversial Indiana religious freedom law. It's made to order for the modern-day Drive-By Media. On Saturday and Sunday, ABC, CBS, NBC -- virtually every mainstream media organization -- condemned a new law in Indiana that would protect private businesses from government infringement on their religious freedom. What this means is that the Obama administration wants to do away -- and the media is assisting -- with the whole notion of free markets, the Constitution, and the freedom of religion clause. The administration wants the power to mandate...

Mike Pence is a bigot, according to one of his fellow governors. “When you see a bigot you have to call him on it,” Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Story Continued Below Malloy, the incoming chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, on Monday signed an executive order banning state-funded travel to Indiana in response to a "religious freedom" law signed last week by Pence. Critics say the law, known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, would allow businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians; Pence insists it’s meant only to protect religious communities from government encroachment...

In the political game -- humanity's reward for forbidden fruit chomping in the Garden of Eden -- all disagreements concern power: Who's No. 1 around here; who gets the final say-so. The ludicrous, and disheartening, dust-up over Indiana's new law on religious freedom shows where growing numbers of Americans think power has shifted with respect to society's fundamental and most important institution, marriage. Critics of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, signed into law only last week by Gov. Mike Pence, accuse Indiana of providing citizens legal cover to discriminate against gays -- to deny them jobs or services on "religious"...

Indiana is experiencing its two minutes of hate. It is doubtful that since its admittance into the union in 1816, the heretofore inoffensive Midwestern state has ever been showered with so much elite obloquy. Indiana’s sin is that its legislature passed and Governor Mike Pence signed into law a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, setting out a legal standard for cases involving a clash between a person’s exercise of religion and the state’s laws. To listen to the critics, you’d think the law was drafted by a joint committee of attorneys from the Ku Klux Klan and Westboro Baptist Church. The...

Today’s Indianapolis Star front page uses the headline approach usually reserved for war. Because that’s what this is: culture war, and the mainstream media, as a vital part of the progressive movement, is waging total war for a cause they believe is holy. I’m not exaggerating. To most of the media, there is no other side in the gay marriage debate, or on anything to do with gay rights. There is only Good and Evil. And so we have the spectacle of a moral panic that makes a party that is a chief beneficiary of the First Amendment — a...

... “You guys have said repeatedly that we shouldn’t be able to discriminate against anyone, but if you just ignore the existence of this law, can’t we already do that now? Can’t so-and-so in Richmond put a sign up and say ‘No Gays Allowed?'” she asked. “That’s not against the law, correct?” “It would depend,” Bosma replied. “If you were in a community that had a human rights ordinance that wouldn’t be the case.” “But most of the state does not have that, correct?” the reporter pressed. “That’s correct,” Bosma admitted ...

(CNN)—Gov. Mike Pence pledged Tuesday to "fix" Indiana's controversial religious freedom law to clarify that it does not allow discrimination against gays and lesbians. But he insisted the problem isn't the law itself but how it's being perceived, saying a fix is needed only because of "frankly, the smear that's been leveled against this law." And he said the fix won't involve statewide anti-discrimination protections for LGBT Hoosiers. The first-term Republican governor sought to tamp down the backlash Indiana has faced since he signed the law -- which its in-state supporters had claimed would allow businesses to turn away LGBT...

The pathetic thing about Indiana Governor Mike Pence and his water carriers at the Weekly Standard and historically pro-segregationist rag National Review is that none of them will ever have the stones of someone like George Wallace and stand for the modern segregation of LGBT people and pledge never to get out-queered again. The optics are too bad and too unambiguous for their political ambitions to survive.But you only sign a law like Indiana’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act – which radically expands private businesses’ ability to discriminate against against LGBT citizens by preserving bigoted business ownersfrom private litigation –...

Carrying signs reading “Who Am I to Judge?” and “Love One Another,” hundreds of students, teachers and supporters marched Monday evening from the Mission Dolores Basilica to the Cathedral of St. Mary in San Francisco, where they delivered petitions opposing the archbishop’s “morality clauses” at four Catholic high schools. San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has come under fire for calling on teachers and staff members at high schools within the archdiocese — Sacred Heart Cathedral, Archbishop Riordan, Serra and Marin Catholic — to accept contract and handbook language against homosexuality, same-sex marriage, abortion, contraceptives and artificial insemination. Many of the...

Governor Mike Pence of Indiana seems to have caved into enormous pressure and will ask the state legislature for new legislation to make it clear that Christian florists and bakers could be forced to participate in weddings that violate their religious beliefs.Last week, Indiana joined 19 other states and the federal government by enacting a law to protect religious believers from governmental encroachment on religious freedom. Such legislation was cited in the recent Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision that determined religious employers could not be forced to supply abortion drugs to employees under ObamaCare.In a packed press conference this morning,...

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) said Tuesday he will back an amendment to the state's new "religious freedom" law clarifying that it does not allow businesses to deny service to anyone, and insisted that he never intended to discriminate against members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

As I watched "Good Morning America" today, I saw a segment where the media was bringing pressure to bear on the Indiana legislature and governor. George Stephanopolous was questioning governor Pence: George Stephanopolis:Final question, final yes-or-no question, Governor. Do you think it should be legal, in the state of Indiana, to discriminate against gays or lesbians? And this is how they characterize the debate. They portray one side (theirs) as heroic, and the other side (ours) as evil. Governor Pence was not prepared for this ambush. His response was scatter shot and muddled. Among the things he could have said...

A Christian florist and grandmother who declined to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding because of her Christian belief in traditional marriage has been fined $1,001 by a Washington court and will be held liable to pay the legal fees incurred by the gay couple, which could "devastate" her financially. As previously reported by The Christian Post, 70-year-old Barronelle Stutzman, the owner of Arlene's Flowers in Richland, Washington, was found guilty of violating the state's non-discrimination law in February, after referring Rob Ingersoll and Curt Feed to another florist when they asked her to provide the floral arrangements for their...

March 30, 2015 (NewsBusters.org) -- Media Research Center (MRC) and Family Research Council (FRC) are launching a joint national campaign to educate the public about a Disney ABC sitcom pilot based on the life of bigoted activist Dan Savage. MRC and FRC contacted Ben Sherwood, president of Disney/ABC Television Group, more than two weeks ago urging him to put a stop to this atrocity but received no response. [Read the full letter]A perusal of Dan Savage’s work reveals a career built on advocating violence — even murder — and spewing hatred against people of faith. Savage has spared no one with whom he disagrees from his vitriolic...

In the wake of the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the media have been stacking myth upon myth in order to drive the narrative that right-wingers desperately want to harm gays and lesbians.

Gay activists and their leftist allies told us decades ago that same-sex marriage wasn’t on the agenda. All homosexuals wanted was the benefits of marriage, but not the title. That, of course, was a lie.

My heart is broken right now realizing that harm has been done to LGBT people in this country. Much of it is real involving bullying and sexual abuse, among other things. But much of it is also imaginary leading to imaginary notions about 'enemies'. Those who have conservative religious beliefs about sexuality have been defined by activists that include major business leaders like Apple CEO Tim Cook as bigots, racists, KKK and Nazis. With that notion in their heads and with business- political-media support, one shudders to think what is happening at this moment in the attack on the Indiana...

MILWAUKEE (WKOW) – Governor Scott Walker talked about Indiana's religious freedom bill on Monday in the Milwaukee area for the first time since it became law last week. Walker believes the NCAA will discuss how the bill, which some say gives businesses the right to discriminate against members of the LGBT community, will impact their headquarters and events like the Big Ten Football Championship Game, which are in Indianapolis, in the near future. Despite that, he doesn't think the law will stop most Badgers fans from making the trip to Indianapolis to see the men's basketball team play in the...

Wilco Cancels Upcoming Show In Indianapolis Because Of Anti-Gay 'Religious Freedom' Law Chicago-based rock band Wilco has canceled a show planned for May 7 in Indianapolis, Indiana, because of the anti-gay "religious freedom" bill signed into law by Gov. Mike Pence (R) last week. The band tweeted Monday that they wouldn't perform in the state, saying the Religious Freedom Restoration Act "feels like thinly disguised legal discrimination": The band is not the first group to speak out against the law, which would allow any individual or corporation to cite its religious beliefs as a defense when sued by a private...