Are Republicans Becoming 'The American Taliban'?

Indiana Governor Mike Pence, the new face of discrimination

Okay it's only Tuesday but I've decided to  award this week's George Lincoln Rockwell Award to Republican Indiana Governor Mike Pence.

Not because he's necessarily a bad guy.

But because he totally misread the American zeitgeist and shirked his moral obligation as Governor by using the power of his political office to pass a law that actually removes legal barriers from individuals and businesses that chose to discriminate against people because of their sexual orientation. 

Of course Pence also gets the Rockwell because of his bumbling, almost incomprehensible verbal exchange with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC Sunday news show, 'This Week'.  

Not only did he completely implode on a live national broadcast when directly asked if he thought it was right to discriminate against members of the LGBT community, his strange indignant accusations about an "avalanche" of misunderstanding and bad reporting about the "religious freedom" act were so contrived that it made it painfully obvious that he KNEW the act was discriminatory. 

He ducked the question eight different times because like many members of today's Republican party, he'll gladly back concocted measures like 'Voter Identification Laws' or 'Religious Freedom' that mask discrimination against others - as long as he's not forced to actually call those measures what they are in public.

Now let's be honest, was there some kind of unprecedented wave of secret persecution against Indiana Christians that would prompt a Republican-dominated legislative body to create a law to "protect religious liberty"?

Of course not. It's a lame-ass fabricated means to a right-wing extremist end.

One of many Iraqi Christians crucified by ISIS

To me, Pence and his conservative ilk having the gall to claim that Christians in the state of Indiana are having their "religious liberty" threatened is an insult to Christians in other parts of the world who are actually being tortured and killed for their beliefs.

If Republicans want to get indignant about "religious liberty", maybe they should focus some of their fiery self-righteous rhetoric on places like Syria, or Egypt; where 21 Christian members of the Coptic Church in the village of al-Our were beheaded by members of ISIS back in February.

Remarkably, tone-deaf Republicans are proactively defending Pence's support of The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in a klutzy effort to try and convince people that it's something other than what it actually is: a license for businesses and individuals to discriminate.

Undeterred by growing criticism that Indiana's RFRA would sanction discrimination against LGBT Hoosiers, blight the reputation of the state and become a major downer for state tourism and business, today a variety of conservatives, from religious activists in Indiana to 2016 Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush used a completely bogus comparison to support Pence's effort to legalize discrimination.

Bush, Pence and others tried to claim that Indiana's RFRA is identical to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that was passed back in 1996 under then-President Bill Clinton with overwhelming Congressional support; and similar laws that have passed in 20 other states.

That's absolutely NOT true.

DOMA is a federal law that allows states to NOT recognize same-sex marriages performed in another state. 

Indiana's RFRA goes much further. As Lambda Legal attorney Jenny Pizer was quoted as saying in a DailyKos.com article by Kerry Eleveld:

"SB 101 (Indiana's RFRA passed by Gov Pence) is substantially broader than the federal law. It extends religious rights to all businesses, no matter how large and completely secular they are. In addition, the federal law can only be invoked against government action. SB 101 goes much further, inviting discrimination by allowing religious beliefs to be raised as a defense in lawsuits and administrative proceedings brought by workers, tenants and customers who have suffered discrimination in a business transaction based on someone else's religious beliefs." 

So what's the response from Republicans in other states?

The legislature of the great state of Arkansas went ahead and passed it's own version of the RFRA and sent it to Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson to sign.

North Carolina (shocker!) is preparing to act on their own version too.

So here we are in the season of Lent, approaching Good Friday when Christians around the world prepare to mark the Crucifixion of Jesus.

We're days from Easter, the holiest day on the Christian calendar and how is the extremist wing of the Republican party observing this somber and triumphant time?
  
By using political majorities in state legislatures to allow Christians who've warped the true message of Christ to discriminate against American citizens.

Funny how some of the same Republicans who ceaselessly criticize the President for government overreach for providing health care for citizens and for his handling of ISIS in the Mid-East, are simultaneously using their political advantage to create their own conservative theocracy in the heartland of America.  

Writer Aaron Sorkin was right when his lead character Will McAvoy (a disillusioned ex-Republican newscaster on HBO's 'The Newsroom' played by actor Jeff Daniels) said of today's Republican party:  "We should call them what they are: The American Taliban."

Arizona Gov Jan Brewer Weighs a Law Sanctioning Discrimination

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer -(Photo - AddictingInfo.org)

The state of Arizona is back in the headlines again and its reputation as a bastion of intolerance is once more making waves.

It was just over a month ago that Arizona State University faced media scrutiny after photos of the school's TKE fraternity chapter were posted online showing members mocking African-American culture at a "Martin Luther King Black Party" over the MLK holiday weekend.   

Last week, under the guise of protecting the religious sensibilities of Arizona business owners who might otherwise have to treat same sex customers equally, the extremist Republican lawmakers who represent the majority in the state capital passed House Bill 2153.

The bill, known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, (also called a "Christian Shield" law) would permit Christian business owners to refuse service to same sex couples or homosexuals if doing so violated the owner's religious beliefs.

It would set an extremely disturbing precedent, and if Governor Jan Brewer (pictured above) decides to pass it she may as well go ahead and just change the state motto to "The Discrimination State".

As a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor pointed out, that means a baker or a wedding photographer could legally refuse to serve a same-sex couple if they felt it violated their religious principles.

But what's next? Allowing business owners to refuse to serve someone who's Asian or African-American or Pakistani because doing so violated someone's religious beliefs? It's completely subjective and proactively permits someone to discriminate against another person to protect the abstract and amorphous Republican notion of "Religious Freedom".

The text of the law comes straight out of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) playbook which has developed a strange slew of arguments that use protecting an individual's "Religious Freedom" as an umbrella to oppose virtually any law that conservative ideology opposes.

So for example as we all know, Republican members of Congress oppose the Affordable Care Act (in part) because it mandates that certain reproductive health services for women must be covered by insurance providers - thereby violating the "Religious Freedom" of tax-paying Americans who oppose birth control or abortion procedures.  

In this age when unemployment is still at historic highs, the economic recovery is still fragile, wages for working Americans have been stagnant for decades, the Federal Government is rife with waste, the tax system needs to be overhauled, the nation's infrastructure needs massive investment and the US incarcerates people at the highest rate in the world - we can all thank God Republicans are putting their legislative efforts into protecting American's "Religious Freedoms".

The positive thing is most people in Arizona do not support the Religious Freedom bill. Coalitions of business owners who cater to homosexuals and same-sex couples have come out in opposition to the Arizona Republican efforts to introduce state-sanctioned discrimination observing that it will harm the state's economy by making Arizona hostile to homosexual tourists, employees, employers and visitors.

I think the former Arizona Tourism Advisory Council member Edwin Leslie summed it up best. He resigned back in 2012 to protest Governor Brewer revoking benefits for same-sex couples. In a letter to the governor he wrote, "Your efforts discriminate against one part of the state's residents to appease a small fraction of the state's population."

I think that quote equally applies to Arizona's 2014 efforts to allow business owners to discriminate.

It also describes the current insanity of the Tea Party and the extremists who now control the GOP.

As we saw with national calls for reasonable gun control legislation in the wake of Sandy Hook, or the government shutdown over the sequester last year, Republicans will act in violation of the best interests of the nation and the will of the majority of Americans in order to appease the extremist ideology of a numerical minority.

That's the real violation of freedom.