Posted on 04/03/2015 1:16:29 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
This is how Indiana Gov. Mike Pence wins: Moral superiority, “religious freedom,” social media hypocrisy and the problem with #BoycottIndiana
Let's stop patting ourselves on the back: Public pressure hurt Indiana's activists and enhanced governor's profile
This morning, members of the Indiana General Assembly and a selection of Indianapolis business leaders appeared at a press conference to announce amendments to the RFRA that Gov. Mike Pence signed into law last week. The changes represent a limited victory for supporters of human rights. If you think the ill-conceived, celebrity-endorsed consumer boycott of Indiana had anything to do with the alteration of the law, you should pay closer attention. In particular, pay attention to who stood next to the legislators at this morning’s press conference. The actual events that have unfolded in the past week tell a different story.
Pence and the Indiana Legislature passed and signed an unneeded law with outrageous potential for abuse. Though the bill does not mention LGBTQ people, its timing, following on the heels of the judicial establishment of legal same-sex marriage in Indiana and, before that, the failure of the state’s marriage amendment, is suspect at best. But the real goals of this law were otherwise, and chances are, if you advocated a boycott, you helped accomplish at least one of them.
The bill’s first purpose was to shine the national spotlight on Pence in advance of his 2016 presidential announcement. Mission accomplished. While progressives are shouting about electability, the entire GOP field is making its customary shift to the right in order to woo the absolute extremes of the conservative wing of the party in order to open pocketbooks and launch primaries.
The second goal was to establish a law that would be litigated all the way to the Supreme Court—a dubious honor that state legislatures all over the country have been pursuing, mostly with bills restricting reproductive rights. Whether this goal is still achievable after the law’s alteration remains to be seen.
As usual, the Internet exploded in self-congratulatory moral superiority. Celebrities and corporations alike took advantage of the situation in order to call attention to themselves and their own high ground, and everyday people showed themselves to be champions of civil rights on social media. Social media activism can be and often is powerful. But Indiana’s economy as a whole is essentially boycott-proof, built as it is on pre-production industrial materials (aluminum, automotive components, seed and feed corn, etc.), distribution, medical devices, and intellectual property, among other unavoidable purchases. But as long as you employed the #BoycottIndiana hashtag a sufficient number of times, you found yourself on the right side of the discussion.
Instead of impacting the law, though, what your boycott accomplished was to damage the city of Indianapolis, a city where LGBTQ people have been protected as a class from discrimination for 10 years, a city that has been consistently victimized by the state Legislature and governor’s office throughout Pence’s term and Gov. Mitch Daniels’ before it. The state has stripped away the city’s control of its own schools, severely increased income inequality through terrible economic policy, and deliberately situated new employment opportunities, like the Honda plant that opened in Greensburg, Indiana, in 2006, outside driving range of residents of the city. And why shouldn’t they? They’re serving the rural constituents who put them in office and keep them there. Meanwhile, this “boycott,” which has consisted of pressuring organizations to move their conventions out of the city, has further punished the residents and business leaders of Indianapolis who have been fighting laws like this for more than a decade, and who defeated the state’s marriage ban last year.
So now, at the behest of local business leaders, the Legislature has agreed to add protections against discrimination, a compromise that was announced with representatives from the NBA’s Indiana Pacers and Salesforce, among others, standing by. Note that these are not companies that produce consumer products; they’re local leaders taking care of the situation here at home, without your help. Meanwhile, everybody loses: The conservatives who pushed for this law in the first place are livid that the legislators they thought they owned have caved. Those who advocated for a boycott of the state won’t be happy until LGBTQ residents are afforded full class protections statewide, despite the fact that such protections would never even have been up for discussion two weeks ago. And Indianapolis, a diverse, vibrant city struggling hard with education, crime and its own governance issues, has lost an estimated $250 million in future economic impact.
Well, not everybody loses. Owners of a strip-mall pizza dive near the Michigan border, after claiming to have received death threats for expressing anti-gay views, are sitting back watching the donations roll in. A writer nobody knows from anywhere but Twitter is receiving a hundred times the attention for pulling out of a tiny area writing conference than he would have received for attending. A lot of celebrities have raised their profiles through their public expressions of outrage. And Pence has sealed his status as a leading national conservative voice heading into the 2016 election season, and is grateful for your help disempowering the most liberal voting base in his state. Meanwhile a city full of LGBTQ allies is out an irreplaceable sum of money.
And what, exactly, did those who boycotted Indiana boycott? Did they decline to buy that new Honda Civic or Subaru they’ve been eyeing? Cancel their Anthem/Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance? Stop taking their antidepressants or diabetes drugs? What, exactly, is a boycott if you weren’t planning to participate in the subject’s economy anyway? #BoycottIndiana has been nothing more than a soapbox for people to stand on and shout from afar while the people of Indiana fight like hell to get their state back. Make no mistake: Today’s developments were a result of that fight from the inside, not from the deployment of a clever hashtag.
Victoria Barrett's work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Colorado Review, Confrontation, The Massachusetts Review, and Puerto del Sol. She is the editor and publisher of Engine Books, a boutique fiction press. She lives and writes in Indianapolis.
In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky wrote: “From the moment an organizer enters a community, he lives, dreams, eats, breathes, sleeps only one thing, and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army.” The issue is never the issue. The issue is always building the army. The issue is always the revolution
Guided by these principles, Alinsky’s disciples are misperceived as idealists; in fact, they are practiced Machiavellians. Their focus is invariably on means rather than ends. As a result they are not bound by organizational orthodoxies or theoretical dogmatisms in the way their still admired Marxist forebears were. Within the framework of their revolutionary agendas, they are flexible and opportunistic and will say anything (and pretend to be anything) to get what they want, which is power."......The issue is never the issue, the issue is always the revolution"
Walker: IN Law Outrage From People “Chronically Looking For Ways To Be Upset About Things”
Full 9:00 interview: Walker: Media 'hype and hysteria' driving Indiana backlash
Is there a thread on FR that explains exactly and articulately what this second bill does??
bump
Thanks, this is one issue that it seems so difficult to get specific and credible info here on.
On Obama-care we got lots of details here.,
All we hear is that we will all be locked up forever for opposing gay marriage, not whats in this bill,
not anything we can use to debate with on the Planet Earth.
Here is some information:
"..... "The new legislation marks the first time sexual orientation and gender identity have been mentioned in Indiana law.
The Arkansas measure is similar to a bill sent to the governor earlier this week, but Hutchinson said he wanted it revised to more closely mirror a 1993 federal law.
The Indiana amendment prohibits service providers from using the law as a legal defense for refusing to provide goods, services, facilities or accommodations. It also bars discrimination based on race, color, religion, ancestry, age, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or U.S. military service.
The measure exempts churches and affiliated schools, along with nonprofit religious organizations.
Business leaders, many of whom had opposed the law or canceled travel to the state because of it, called the amendment a good first step but said more work needs to be done. Gay-rights groups noted that Indiana's civil-rights law still does not include LGBT people as a protected class. ........."
Missoulian: Indiana, Arkansas pass revised religious objection proposals
Thanks
But Not good,
What was needed was protections for businesses who cant service celebrations of events that they are morally opposed to, like same sex marriage ceremonies.
Those who call it surrender have a point. Its a bounty on Christians.
If burning a flag is free speech, how is refusing to provide a service not free speech?
I know money is payable for “all debts public and private,” but there is no debt until an agreement is made to provide a service or product.
Isn’t forced labor slavery?
That is what the activist left purports to want, but didn't get - another protected grievance group - but as you can see in the piece above from Salon - some in the gay community know that this kind of activism hurts them and they don't want it. They know that this isn't about "the issue" that is being pushed by the media and anarchists, it's about the rabid left's self-interested revolution against the country.
Isn’t discrimination- a form of expression- free speech, to be protected whether we agree with or are repulsed by what a person expresses or how they express it?
Isn’t the aim of the 1st amendment to protect unpopular speech, particularly political speech... and therefore political expression, which these days includes such ridiculous issues as wedding cakes and pizza preferences?
Do liberals really believe that the descendants of KKK victims should be required by law to provide goods and services to supporters of the clan or to celebrate the clan’s anniversary, etc., on demand?
We lost that fight in the 1960s with the Civil Rights Act,
In 2011 Rand Paul on the MSNBC Maddow show on his own tryed to argue that businesses should be able to pick their own customers, and he got such merciless beating that today he denies what he said on that show ( basically lying) , and he tries to make up to it by proposing stuff that black libs Demand .
No one will take up that fight, so lets move on to related stuff we might win.
They want to use this so-con rout to beat Indiana into passing state wide gay rights protection bills,
Or replacing Republicans who wont with Dems who will.
Its war and our side has pea shooters and libs have canoons and machine guns.
Mike Pence’s name is mud.
I think I can clear this up for you.
Burning an American Flag is considered "Free Speech"...
Yep!
However, burning a Rainbow flag is considered "Hate Speech"...
See the difference?
No thanks, give me liberty or give me death.
Now the Gaystapo can put Christians out of the workplace in Indiana. Next come the churches.
Pray America is waking
Like Walter Williams says:
There is good discrimination and there is bad discrimination.
Throughout the years, I’ve read many of your starter threads......
.......some are spot on and straight to the heart
.......some I question their themes and find them confusing and convoluting
I know, without a doubt, where many Freepers stand......I know because they consistently, through the years, have maintained their credentials of who they innately are..........as we struggle to find truth in this world.
Where do you stand?
I’m a simple person.
I find the author of this present piece you’ve introduced, particularly repugnant ......
Especially attacking the reputation and motives of the mom & pop pizza owners.
What is happening to them is real.......and our response is from sincere citizens trying to fight back anyway we can.
Pence has very effectively taken himself out of any consideration for a vp slot on the Republican ticket in 2016.
Think about it, but at what cost to the republic?
The point of posting this is to show how this is being perceived by all sides.
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