Indiana Backpedals On Gay Discrimination Law

UPDATE:  After enormous national backlash, Indiana’s Republican-led legislature has announced it will make changes to the religious freedom law that allowed businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians.  

When Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed the controversial law allowing businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians on the basis of religious freedom, he had no idea that conventions, businesses and celebrities would flee the State of Indiana faster than a herd of pigs at an All-You-Can-Eat barbecue. Now, Gov. Pence is backpedalling and claiming the law was never intended to be discriminatory.

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“Was I expecting this kind of backlash?  Heavens no!” Pence said earlier this week, after the CEO’s of 9 major companies penned a unified letter condemning the law and promising to distance themselves from the state until the law is fixed or repealed.

“Regardless of the original intention of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, we are deeply concerned about the impact it is having on our employees and on the reputation of our state,” the executives of Angie’s List, Eli Lilly and others wrote in the letter. “All of our companies seek to promote fair, diverse and inclusive workplaces. Our employees must not feel unwelcome in the place where they work and live.”

The CEO’s of Yelp, Apple, NCAA, PayPal, Starbucks and NASCAR have all joined in support of the Twitter hashtag #BoycottIndiana. Angie’s List immediately halted expansion plans in the state, while Connecticut Gov. Daniel Malloy joined the mayors of Seattle and San Francisco in signing an executive order banning travel to Indiana.  Even the Indianapolis Star published its newspaper with the headline FIX THIS NOW!

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest blasted Pence, saying the governor has tried to “falsely suggest” that Indiana’s law simply mirrors a federal religious freedom law signed by President Bill Clinton.  Earnest made it clear that those claims are “not true” because the Indiana law is “a much more open-ended piece of legislation that could reasonably be used to try to justify discriminating against somebody because of who they love.”

“We see business leaders saying that they are reluctant to do business in a state where their customers or even their employees could be subjected to greater discrimination just because of who they love,” Earnest said. “That’s not fair. It’s not consistent with our values as a country that we hold dear.  And I think that’s what has provoked the strong outcry, and I think it’s what has provoked the previously defiant governor to consider a position of changing the law.”

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After masking the gay discrimination bill under the guise of “religious freedom” then covertly signing it into law, Gov. Pence has since played ignorant to the national response, openly asking why the entire nation is so up in arms over his innocent little law.  However, with the state bleeding businesses and money, Pence is beginning to backpedal.

“It would be helpful to move legislation this week that makes it clear that this law does not give businesses a right to deny services to anyone,” Pence said in a press conference on Tuesday. 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.”

Yeah, right!

Interestingly, the State of Arkansas, which had introduced a similar religious freedom bill, is now acting quickly to change the language of the law so as to prevent it from receiving the same backlash as Indiana. “We want to be known as a state that does not discriminate, but understands tolerance,” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said. “We just didn’t get it perfect through that legislative process.”