They don’t call it fly-over country for nothing. But there’s a little more reason to land in Indianapolis or Little Rock now.
The laws allowing businesses to not serve gays have gone from wrongheaded and unnecessary to just plain unnecessary. Both states have proposed changes that more closely parallel the federal law. So why bother?
Why? Because the genius governors of both states had to do something to take the heat off.
Look at the great forces of social liberalism which pounded them. The labor-friendly folks at Wal-mart. The collectivists at General Electric. The inclusion-mad people at NASCAR. The NCAA. Angie’s List.
In reality, these are outfits with enormous clout. And not one of them is known as a participant let alone pioneer in diversity. But all are economic powers in either one or both states.
Money talks. The magic of the market!
But the state laws now are about the same as the federal statute that’s been on the books since the Clinton administration. That is to say it says “your religion, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation are your business and discrimination is naughty.”
Legislators in both states had knuckled under pressure from the religious right that wants every gay to be scared straight. Now, they paint themselves as paragons and leaders in diversity, tolerance and good will.
Useless and evil originally. Now, just useless.
But they’re going to have to scrap those checklists. You know, the ones that helped you certify that you were white and straight, spoke English like a native.
Goody. You no longer have to earn the right to buy pizza for your wedding reception from The Guardians of The Straight and Narrow.
(Who would make pizza the main course at a wedding reception? Oh, wait. It’s Indiana.)
Scholars at Little Rock University were already developing the customer qualification list. And word was spreading fast. Roses at the wedding? Yes. Pansies at the wedding? No. Also no: lavender tuxedos for the groomsmen.
So we can all breathe a sigh of relief. Once again the wise leaders in two states of dubious consequence have learned to keep their bigotry to themselves.
Shrapnel:
--This post is living dangerously. First, it disses the kind of people who show their disagreement by putting snakes in one’s mailbox. Second because people who read this blog generally don’t like followups… although the latter keep their snakes to themselves.
Grapeshot:
-The New York Times plans to publish one-sentence news stories and might be wise to find and hire some old hands from the Associated Press broadcast desk which used to pump those out at a rate of four an hour for radio and TV stations that wanted a quick read for its listeners and viewers, an art that’s not often practiced these days.
-The sentence above runs 63 words and could easily be broken into several sentences which would be easier to understand.
--The target audience for the singlesentence stories is wearers of the Apple Watch and will be hardtoread no matter the sentence structure.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2015
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