Jan Brewer: A Profile in Courage

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

27 February 14

o, it appears that Governor Jan Brewer boldly stepped up last night and declined to let the bigotry of her state's legislature demolish her state's image and its tourist economy simultaneously.

"To the supporters of the legislation, I want you to know that I understand that long-held norms about marriage and family are being challenged as never before. Our society is undergoing many dramatic changes," she said. "However, I sincerely believe that Senate Bill 1062 has the potential to create more problems than it purports to solve. It could divide Arizona in ways we cannot even imagine and no one would ever want. "Religious liberty is a core American and Arizona value. So is non-discrimination."

Not everyone agrees with the decision, of course. Over at Tiger Beat On The Potomac, Rich (Sparkle Pants) Lowry would like you to know that there was absolutely nothing anti-gay about the bill, and he cites among the misinformed, "influential liberal pundit Kirsten Powers," whereupon the gods on Olympus laughed so loud and long that there were 40 days of rain in Sparta.

The question isn't whether businesses run by people opposed to gay marriage on religious grounds should provide their services for gay weddings; it is whether they should be compelled to by government. The critics of the much-maligned Arizona bill pride themselves on their live-and-let-live open-mindedness, but they are highly moralistic in their support of gay marriage, judgmental of those who oppose it and tolerant of only one point of view on the issue - their own. For them, someone else's conscience is only a speed bump on the road to progress. It's get with the program, your religious beliefs be damned.

And this in a column that calls other people hysterical.

(By the way, here's a passage from the longtime white-supremacist journal that Lowry edits: "There are those who sincerely believe progress is not fashioned out of that kind of clay. There actually are true and wise friends of the Negro race who believe that a federal law, artificially deduced from the Commerce Clause of the Constitution or from the 14th Amendment, whose marginal effect will be to instruct small merchants in the Deep South on how they may conduct their business, is no way at all of promoting the kind of understanding which is the basis of progressive and charitable relationships between the races." This was occasioned by the March on Washington in 1963.)

Brewer's decision was reached democratically, using the legitimate powers of her office. If she bowed to economic and corporate pressure to make it, well, welcome to the United States of America in 2014. Have I introduced you to Messrs. Glass and Steagall over here? This law was no more about religious freedom than Brewer's veto was about her devotion to gay rights, but, if the right thing gets done for the wrong reason, well, that's the way things work in a democratic republic. As to the rest, I once again associate myself with the remarks of Mr. Rock of Brooklyn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkxB15nXRvM