Tell us how you really feel, Indy Star.
Indiana’s leading newspaper organized a rebellion in Tuesday morning’s edition. In big, bold white type on a black background, it said “FIX THIS NOW.”
“This” is the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” which has put Indiana at the vortex of a national storm. The paper called not for repeal, but for a new anti-discrimination law to protect gays, lesbians and transgender people essentially from the “religious freedom” law the state just enacted.
The paper’s call to action includes a hashtag campaign, #WeAreIndiana, “a social movement,” it said “to spread the message of who we are and what we want the world to know….”
What it wants the world to know is that “Indiana embraces everyone and we do not discriminate.”
And it was addressed directly to the man the paper endorsed for governor in 2012, Mike Pence.
“Governor,” the paper declared, “Indiana is in a state of crisis. It is worse than you seem to understand.”
In an extraordinary front page editorial, “FIX THIS NOW” the paper said repeal would be “politically unacceptable for the governor and many Republican lawmakers.” Instead, it wants a whole new law “to prohibit discrimination in employment, housing, education and public accommodations on the basis of a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”
“Those protections and RFRA can co-exist. They do elsewhere.”
The display was the sort ordinarily reserved for the worst natural disasters. But as far as the Star is concerned, the law is indeed a disaster.
“We are at a critical moment in Indiana’s history,” the editorial said. “And much is at stake, including “our efforts over many years to retool our economy, to attract talented workers and thriving businesses, and to improve the quality of life for millions of Hoosiers. All of this is at risk because of a new law … that no matter its original intent already has done enormous harm to our state and potentially our economic future. The consequences will only get worse if our state leaders delay in fixing the deep mess created. Half steps will not be enough. Half steps will not undo the damage.”
Republican lawmakers in Indiana had already promised Monday to amend the law, following protests that have rapidly spread to several other states considering similar measures, and generated denunciations and promises of boycotts. But it remained unclear how far the Republican legislature and governor would go to change the law, which is backed by powerful evangelical conservatives in Indiana and across the country.
The law allows businesses accused of discrimination to use religious faith as a defense in court to anti-discrimination laws everyone else must obey, a privilege generally reserved to religious institutions such as churches and temples which, for example, are permitted to give favored treatment in hiring to adherents of their own faith.
Pence, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published last night, said that “despite what critics and many in the national media have asserted, the law is not a ‘license to discriminate,’ either in Indiana or elsewhere. In fact, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act reflects federal law as well as law in 30 states nationwide.”
Many legal analysts disagree. The law treats businesses as if they were individuals or churches, with protection from discrimination lawsuits ordinarily not extended to businesses that serve members of the public, wrote Garrett Epps, a writer who teaches constitutional law at the University of Baltimore, on the Atlantic.com.“The federal RFRA doesn’t contain any such language,” he added, and neither do most of the other laws enacted by the states, which exclude for-profit businesses from protection.
Whether the legislature in the conservative state of Indiana would ever pass an anti-discrimination law protecting the LGBT community, as the Star urged, is another matter entirely.
Advocates could point to the equally conservative state of Utah, which enacted a landmark LGBT rights bill last month.
