Last night, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer did the right thing and vetoed SB 1062, a bill that would’ve allowed businesses to refuse service to LGBT consumers. It was a ridiculous law for many reasons including the fact that there aren’t any laws banning discrimination against LGBTs in Arizona in the first place. Then again, there aren’t any laws permitted it either, but this law would’ve codified Jim Crow style bigotry in a state that already has a spotty record on civil rights.
So Brewer’s veto didn’t necessarily stop the legalization of LGBT discrimination in Arizona. She merely prevented it from being the law of the land.
Heroic.
Indeed, this was merely another kneejerk GOP reaction to a case in a different state and a nifty excuse to build cred with paleoconservative, tea party voters.
Nationally, it’s not over yet. Twelve other states have introduced some form of the Arizona law, most recently in Missouri. Several of the bills are dead, but others are being rushed through the various state legislatures. All of them lean heavily upon the religious liberty pretense for condoning a new form of segregation — or, rather, the same form of pre-Civil Rights Act segregation, only with a different minority group.
Yesterday on Fox News Channel’s American Newsroom, Tucker Carlson told us that preventing this kind of segregation was, yes, “fascism.” That’s right, the idea that it is or should be illegal for a business that’s open to the public to refuse service to a customer because of who they are is like Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy.
CARLSON: Well it’s pretty simple. I mean, if you want to have a gay wedding, fine, go ahead. If I don’t want to bake you a cake for your gay wedding, that’s okay too. Or should be. That’s called tolerance. But when you try and force me to bake a cake for your gay wedding and threaten me with prison if I don’t, that’s called fascism.
The unapologetic steamrolling of Godwin’s Law aside, reaching this nonsensical fascism observation regarding civil rights protections requires some seriously twisted logic, a skill for which Tucker has shown an aptitude.
First of all, contra-Tucker, no one’s gone to prison for refusing service to gay, lesbian, bi or trans people… [CONTINUE READING HERE]