What hath Indiana wrought?

There’s an old axiom in legislative drafting—any law with more than 50 words has at least one loophole.  Actually, laws with far less than 50 words can have loopholes too.  The recently adopted law in Indiana called “The Religious Freedom Restoration Act” has way more than 50 words but is nothing but one big loophole.

Generally speaking, the law states that the application of a generally applicable state law cannot abridge the exercise of anyone’s religious freedom. “A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened . . . by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation . . . as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding . . .” So if you follow your religious tenets and you get sued, the fact that God told you to do it is a defense.

Thus far the media focus on Indiana’s law has been on whether the law authorizes businesses to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation on religious grounds.  Indiana Governor Mike Pence has denied this was the purpose of the law, but if it wasn't then it is hard to see what purpose the law serves.  Reaction to the law, prop and con, has been entirely focused on the effect on gay rights.

But why stop there?  What’s to keep businesses from discriminating on other grounds?  A mixed race couple shows up at a hotel—sorry, the owner’s religion forbids racial mixing.  It may not be spelled out in the Bible, but he feels REALLY strongly about it, and he feels really strongly about God, so it’s the same thing.  The same reasoning could be applied to denying access Jews, Mormons, Scientologists, or any racial, ethnic, or religious group.

On This Week With George Stephanopoulos, Indiana Governor Mike Pence refused to answer a question about whether the law would allow discrimination, by stressing it was about a limit on governmental exercise of power, not individual rights.  But the two are linked—some people in this country, actually a majority of people in this country, only achieved civil rights through what their oppressors would call “government overreach.” Many people in the South (and elsewhere) justified slavery, lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination as “God’s will.”  To say the government cannot interfere with the exercise of such religious beliefs is to gut the Civil Rights Act and a host of other government protections of civil liberties.

But why stop there?  Maybe my religion forbids me from giving money to organizations that promote sin and decadence, so paying taxes is against my religion.  Maybe the Bible commands me to kill non-Christians (read Deuteronomy 13 verses 6-10 and 17 verses 12-13), so arresting me for murder is a violation of my religious freedom.  I can justify any action I take by saying it’s a requirement of my religion, and the government can’t touch me.  Welcome to anarchy.

Of course it is unclear exactly why religion needs to be restored in this country.  Despite the First Amendment, our money says “In God we trust.”  The last time I checked, not a single jurisdiction in America has replaced English Common Law (or the Napoleonic Code, if you are from Louisiana) with Sharia Law.  The number of non-Christian Presidents is exactly zero, despite what Fox News says about Barack Obama.  Yet once again White men insist that they are the victims here and everyone has it better than them, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

If this episode has demonstrated anything, it is how far this country has come on LGBT issues in a short period of time.  You know you are on shaky ground when NASCAR accuses you of being a bigot.  Maybe Michael Sam can’t get a spot on a pro football team, but it is just possible that him being an undersized linebacker has as much to do with that as him being openly gay.

There is another old saying—never attribute to malice what can be reasonably explained by stupidity.  I tend to believe Governor Pence when he says he thought the law wasn't intended to allow discrimination, even though the author says the exact opposite.  Judging from his bumbling demeanor on television, maybe he thought this was merely a symbolic act and not an attempt to expand the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision into a legal principle that the Bible trumps the US Constitution and the US Code. 

Indiana is taking a huge financial hit by supporting the rights of businesses to refuse to do business with gays.  Governor Pence says that the law will be “fixed,” but the people behind its passage say it isn’t broken. Anti-gay bigots will have to be willing to be boycotted, or find ways of being a little more subtle.  For people who say they are in favor of marriage, you’d think they’d want more weddings in Indiana, not fewer.