Are Opponents of Arizona's Anti-Gay Law Eager to Deceive?

Kirsten Powers

Following the veto of SB 1062, supporters are backpedaling to save face any way they can—from linguistics to redefining the original meaning of the bill. Kirsten Powers calls their bluff.

Conservative backers of Arizona bill SB 1062 had two choices following Gov. Jan Brewer’s veto of the right-to-discriminate bill. They could defend the bill on its merits. Or, they could distort the contents of the bill and attack anyone who disagreed with them as a legal Luddite and hysteric. Sadly, they chose the latter.

Conservatives fanned out to claim that the bill was a big nothingburger. Anyone who was upset about it was exaggerating its potential impact. It’s already legal to discriminate against gays in Arizona, so they don’t even need the law, they claimed.

Wait. If there is no need for the law, then why are they lobbying for it in the first place? Perhaps it’s because the Arizona legal system isn’t quite the anti-gay free-for-all they describe. A third of the state’s population (Flagstaff, Tucson, and Phoenix) is covered by local nondiscrimination ordinances, which also apply in the public accommodations context. So SB 1062 actually does significantly alter the legal landscape for Arizonans who want to discriminate.

Not so, said Jonah Goldberg in The National Review. Echoing the line that SB 1062 was just an innocuous amendment that doesn’t even merit a second glance, he wrote, "Arizona’s proposed SB 1062 would have amended the state’s 15-year-old Religious Freedom Restoration Act in a minor way so as to cover businesses.”

How is adding the entire marketplace “minor”?

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/03/are-arizona-anti-gay-law-opponents-eager-to-deceive.html