The Republican governor of Indiana really, really doesn’t want any Syrian refugees in his home state and he has, perhaps more than any single governor in the United States, gone to great lengths to ensure that not one foot fleeing from the ravaged war zone steps onto his turf.
Mike Pence may have been the 15th governor to rush to publicly announce a ban on all Syrian refugee resettlement in his state immediately following a terror attack in Paris, but he was the only governor who said as much while one such refugee family was actually en route. Two parents and their son who fled Homs, Syria, and lived in a Jordanian refugee camp while being screened for two years were redirected to Connecticut after Pence directed all state agencies to stop resettling Syrian refugees in Indiana.
The mayor of South Bend, Indiana has come out as gay ahead of the upcoming Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage. Lamenting what he called the “disastrous” efforts to pass religious freedom laws in Indiana earlier this year, Mayor Peter Buttigieg, wrote an essay in the South Bend Tribune revealing his sexual orientation.
As most state legislatures recess at least for the summer, and as the Supreme Court decision on marriage equality in Obergefell approaches, it is a good time to review the status of proposed state “religious freedom” bills. These are, in part, a component of the far right’s efforts to reframe their decades-long war against every advance in societal acceptance and legal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans into a noble effort to protect “religious liberty.” The vast majority of such legislative proposals have died, been watered down, or been defeated this year, with the business community playing a critical role, along with clergy and LGBT and civil liberties groups. But the success of several such bills, the controversy around others, and the oral argument in the Obergefell case all suggest – assuming the Court rules in favor of marriage equality – that there is much more to come, including future litigation that may well reach the Court.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence sure has a long way to go if he ever wants to get in the LGBT community’s good graces. (For the record, it doesn’t seem as if this is something that interests the Republican governor much, but we’ll let that slide for the moment.) Responding to backlash over his decision to sign a controversial religious freedom law that threatens LGBT rights, Pence attempted to garner a little goodwill among his critics this week, issuing a letter to the LGBT organization Indy Pride welcoming people to its annual pride festival. There’s just one hitch: Pence’s letter totally neglects to mention anything having to do with the LGBT community, save and except for his use of the word “pride” in addressing the organization.
Purvi Patel, the Indiana woman who was recently convicted of conflicting charges of feticide and child neglect, will appeal her case to the state’s court of appeals, arguing that the prosecution provided no proof she took drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Patel, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for fetal death after maintaining she had a miscarriage, is only the second woman to be tried under Indiana’s feticide law, in a case that her new lawyer, Stanford Law professor Lawrence Marshall, says “cries out for reversal.” Marshall, who is taking the lead on Patel’s appeal pro bono, told WSBT that the conflicting interpretations of feticide and child neglect that led to a dual conviction are “extremely problematic.”
Last week, corporate America appeared to take a rare stand on principle. After Indiana Gov. Mike Pence ® signed a law permitting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, various companies expressed outrage and tried to position themselves as bold defenders of social justice. There was just one little problem: Many of the same companies have been donating to the public officials who have long opposed the effort to outlaw such discrimination. That campaign cash has flowed to those politicians as they have very publicly led the fight against LGBTQIA rights.
A new poll from Reuters/Ipsos found that a majority of Americans think that businesses should not be allowed to refuse to serve a customer based on religious beliefs. The survey also found that 52 percent of respondents believe that same-sex marriage should be legalized, versus 32 percent that oppose it. The results come in the wake of “religious freedom” bills in Indiana and Arkansas that is a thinly veiled attempt to legalize institutional homophobia.
By now, it’s clear that Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act was crafted to empower piously bigoted entrepreneurs and companies desirous of freelancing with their own “Jim Crow for gays” restrictions, and to let them cite as legal justification for doing so their precious religious sensibilities.
As Americans brace themselves for Rand Paul’s just-announced presidential campaign, it is appropriate to take a quick look at the increasing political irrelevancy of another likely candidate, one who less than four years ago nearly wrested the Republican nomination from Mitt Romney. I refer, of course, to former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), who made headlines earlier this week by coming out in support of Indiana’s “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” the controversial law that would allow business to discriminate against gay customers — this in spite of the fact that even a large number of Republicans have joined Democrats, independents, and the general business community in denouncing the bill.
