Arizona uses religion as a shield for bigotry - By Harold Meyerson
Arizona uses religion as a shield for bigotry
By Harold Meyerson
As patriotism can be the last refuge of scoundrels, so religion can be the last refuge of bigots.
The most recent attempts to besmirch religion have come from Arizona’s Republican state legislators, who last week, on a near- party-line vote, passed a bill allowing businesses to discriminate against same-sex couples on religious grounds. The bill is on the desk of Republican Gov. Jan Brewer; she has until week’s end to sign or veto it.
Arizona’s Republican U.S. senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, recognize that a bill permitting restaurants, hotels and other business to deny service to gays and lesbians on religious grounds might (and should) strike many Americans as an affront to our foundational creed “that all men are created equal.” They have called on Brewer to reject the bill. So has the state’s Chamber of Commerce, which fears that some businesses would decide not to set up shop in Arizona if they knew their homosexual employees could be subjected to that kind of discrimination. A host of other officials have called for a veto, including three Republican legislators who voted for the bill but have had second thoughts.
Recently in Kansas, Republican legislators in the lower house passed a kindred bill only to have it die in the state Senate when GOP legislative leaders realized that it went too far. But the fact that two absurd proposals swept through two states’ legislative bodies with nearly unanimous Republican support signals a kind of panic within the GOP base at the recent advances in gay and lesbian equality, in particular the right to marry. It signals that Republicans, and some religious leaders, are willing to invoke religion as a cloak for their bigotry.
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