Thursday, October 23, 2014

Just When You Thought Crazyland Was Less Crazy: SB 1062 Part II?

Posted By on Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 4:30 PM

So on Friday, Oct. 17, we had a little party, right? People got married in the breezeway between the Pima County administration building and the courthouse, and we have posters being made of U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick and we're booking him now for next year's pride parades.

Put away the party hats folks, because crazyland has not left the building. It's time for another fight.

H/T to Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini, who wrote today about how the Alliance Defending Freedom is i Arizona chatting up our crazyland lawmakers to revive a new version of SB 1062, the bill Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed after huge public pressure from people who understood that legalizing description was just not a good idea. In this case, the bill would have allowed individuals and business could deny services to anyone LGBT, claiming "sincerely held religious belief." Yeah, that's always the problem with discrimination—it's always so damn sincere.

From Montini:

An outfit called Alliance Defending Freedom is backing the idea of legalized discrimination. And a legislator or two are talking like they'd be happy to see a new version of Senate Bill 1062, which would have legalized (or at least attempted to do so) discrimination by individuals and businesses who claim to be acting on what they called a "sincerely held religious belief."

Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed that bill, saying it wasn't necessary and hopefully understanding the negative impact such a proposal would have had on our businesses and our tourism.

Let alone our souls.

Now, apparently, it's back.

According to an article by The Republic's Mary Jo Pitzl discussions about this are going on at the State Capitol. She noted: "House Speaker Pro Tem J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, told the Arizona Capitol Times that the issue of how to protect businesses from being forced to work with groups with whom they have a moral objection will need to be addressed."

How about you address it by telling people that discrimination is illegal?

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