Indiana Wars instigated by “Selma Envy”

Phoney valor, liberals intolerance, and hypocrisy on display 

The title and substance of this article by a Lutheran Pastor, Hans Fiene appearing in The Federalist today is perceptive, encompassing and delineative.  The incredible amount of broadcast and print space devoted to news about passage of a state level Religious Freedom Restoration Act( RFRA ) in Indiana, one like many other states and modeled after the Federal government’s statute,  we would suggest is motivated by the desire to get Obama’s screw-ups out of the news.  It is something capable of being ginned up by allowing, indeed promulgating the false narrative that the statute would protect businesses if they wanted to deny “gay” people food and water  for “religious reasons.”   That is the sort of  rhetoric floating around.  The ever so perceptive title along with an excerpt:

Gay Marriage Isn’t About Justice, It’s About Selma Envy My generation willfully ignores the real debate about gay rights and religious freedom because we want halos without sacrifice.

Why do so many young adults paint absurd caricatures of Christians who request government protection of their religious freedoms, arguing their true goal is to ban gay men from sitting at the local lunch counter? Why do they spread falsehoods about legislation, insisting that bills like the one recently signed by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence will unleash a Republican-led Jim Crow revival aimed at the LGBT community? Why do so many people, Gen Xers and younger, invent a monster of anti-gay bigotry and keep screaming the monster is real despite a mountain of contrary facts standing before them?

The answer is “social studies.” My generation engages in straw men, misinformation, and lies because, in every year of social studies class, we studied the civil-rights movement not as history, but as hagiography. We didn’t just learn what events happened on American soil, we were encouraged to mimic the segregation-defeating holy ones and merit for ourselves a place alongside them in glory. Combining that admonition with our general aversion to hard work, we concluded that the only thing necessary to be as righteous as the saints who fought racial injustice was to decry an injustice that no one else was. And we became so desperate to find that injustice, we lost our minds in the process.

Charles C. W. Cooke writing in The Corner at National Review Online  hits a home run as well with this observation about the rhetoric behind the calls for boycotts of the state from the usual suspects and the various corporations that have fallen into line:

Corporations Can’t Have Consciences, Unless They Oppose Mike Pence 

In the Washington Post, meanwhile, Phillip Bump noted that:

since the the bill was signed last week, businesses like the NCAA and Apple have expressed similar concerns.

These corporate protests were noted and praised, on social media and beyond.

But hold one moment! Who exactly “has expressed similar concerns”? Who has been “among the loudest critics”? What has “signaled its intentions to boycott Indiana”? Who has “expressed strong opinions”? Who has “lined up to boycott the state in response”? We were told at the time of Hobby Lobby that companies can’t have consciences. We were told that they can’t have feelings. We were told that they can’t corporately opine on moral or legal questions as might an individual, and in consequence they can’t be worthy of praise or admonition. What, one wonders, has changed? It couldn’t be, could it, that progressives are opposed to the idea that corporations are entities that are capable of holding opinions and taking political stands . . . until they are needed in a fight that they care about?   (snip)

. . . why are we being told that “companies” are taking a stand against Governor Pence? If companies do not have hearts or opinions, they cannot take stands. Why the lazy language? Second, I can only presume that all of those who oppose longstanding legal precedent in this area would remain entirely happy if Pence and the Indiana legislature decided to use the power of the government to silence Cummins, Angie’s List, Apple, and any other business that has the temerity to oppose the state’s new law? After all, laws are for people, not for companies, right?

Read the entire article for its great analysis.

The Washington Examiner responds to the trumped up liberal outrage in this editorial:  All the lies told about an Indiana law:

Same-sex marriage is the law in many states. But a substantial minority of Americans does not personally accept it as an equivalent institution, and many people believe homosexuality to be morally illicit altogether, and they have the same right as anyone else to breathe the air and live in society. They cannot simply be excluded from professional life or relegated to a lower social caste as a result of their beliefs, as some would prefer.

Yet there is rage over this Indiana law because the need to respect the rights of others is irksome to many hypocritical self-styled champions of civil rights.

Glenn Garvin in an editorial  Indiana’s new law not anti-gay  in The Miami Herald points out what is absent in the so called news reports about  the demonstrations*  protesting the signing of the statute by Indiana Governor Pence:

. . .  guess what: Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act is already federal law. Indiana’s law is a virtual clone of one passed nearly unanimously by the U.S. Congress in 1993 and signed without complaint by Bill Clinton.

What’s more, 19 other states have already passed their own versions of the RFRA. That became necessary after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law in federal jurisdictions but said Washington could not enforce it against states.

Also called out is Senator Chuck Schumer of New York who as a congressman introduced the federal legislation the Indiana law is based on and that Bill Clinton signed into law enthusiastically.  That was back when liberals (joined by religious conservatives) wanted to do something about federal intrusions into matters of conscience which they felt threatened by then recent judicial rulings.  The various RFRA type statutes provide that  religious objections cannot merely be asserted trumping other civil rights statutes, but that they can be allowed as a defense in court, still requiring judge and jury to be convinced of the genuineness.  But then Schumer, the future leader of Democrats in the Senate, is of course generally insufferable.

Still more reading on the matter can be found in the following articles:

Guy Benson in TownHall writes about The Fact-Free Meltdown Over Indiana’s New Religious Freedom Law

Gabriel Malor, in The Federalist:  Your Questions On Indiana’s Religious Freedom Bill, Answered

R Mall

*The demonstrators are often referred to as being in the thousands when hundreds would appear more accurate.

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