Back in 1987 then-Governor Evan Mecham of Arizona unilaterally canceled the state holiday meant to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. Three years later the state’s citizens voted down a referendum establishing an MLK Jr. holiday. As a result, the state faced an economic boycott, culminating in the National Football League removing its previously-scheduled Super Bowl from Phoenix in 1992.
In 2010 the state passed what became known as the “Show Me Your Papers” law, which instructed law enforcement personnel to demand citizenship documents from anyone they stopped for any reason. This was struck down by several courts and those decisions were upheld by the US Supreme Court, but the police retained the right to demand documents if they had reason to believe a person was in the country illegally. There were several boycotts and other actions taken to protest this law, and the state lost some hotel and convention business, but the results were not as effective as the ones which eventually forced the state’s voters to approve an MLK Jr. holiday in 1993.
And now we have a new law passed by both houses of the Arizona legislature which essentially allows businesses to discriminate against LBGT people by refusing service to them on the grounds of religious freedom. This means that the neighborhood pharmacist, grocer, or even retail clerk could look at a potential customer, decide he or she is gay and refuse to sell him or her the pills, steaks, or clothes desired. How does one determine that the individual in front of you is gay, pray tell? At least with the earlier discriminatory statutes there was little trouble determining who it was okay to put down: Is his skin Black? No service. Brown? No service. But gay? How’s the poor sales clerk supposed to know who he or she should insult?
When did all these bastards move into Arizona and elect these miserable bigots? I lived there for four years, my parents for a dozen, my grandmother for fifty; I don’t remember this kind of hateful behavior back then.
Yes.. again, let’s set aside religious notions, homophobia or whatever…
This time it seems to be gay COUPLES they are targeting with this.
Not gay individuals, but 2 people of the same gender, who are a couple, or are suspected to be a romantic couple, will be refused service legally.
True American homosexuals have had centuries of gay community experience in hiding their sexual orientation, not just in public, but within their own families, and indeed, even sometimes within their own straight marriages.
So let’s set aside the fact that it’s rather unfair to make them do that… and say that they CAN and HAVE done that successfully since homosexuality went out of style with the fall of the Roman Empire.
Do these people really think they’re going to be able to target the right people who have a heads up about their stupid law?
Who will it actually hurt?
Never kiss in public your brother or sister or mother or friend… because it may be mistaken for a gay relationship.
I mean unless they’re actually saying religious Christian hotel owners will be allowed to install cameras in the hotel rooms pointed at the beds, so they then can kick out hotel guests who engage in homosexual sex… Not sure how this would work at all.
There are lots of people who think it’s perfectly non-sexual and normal to hold hands with people of the same gender, kiss on the cheek, or kiss on the mouth, with relatives and friends.
This is commonplace in much of Eastern Europe, and I imagine other countries.
It’s not unusual for American family members of the same gender, to kiss, hug, and hold hands in public.
2 married (to men) women friends going out to dinner together, will be suspect.
4 single men meeting at the bar together for drinks & to meet women, will be suspect.
A mother & daughter going shopping together will be suspect.
A grandfather & grandson visiting the bait shop on a fishing trip may be suspect.
2 female nurses having coffee together on their lunch break in the hospital cafeteria could be suspect.
2 male doctors playing racquetball together at the gym could be suspect.
I don’t see how anyone, even strictly heterosexual homophobic people, can think this is anything but a recipe for disaster in mistaken suspicions leading to a curtailing people’s same gender public social activities by people in the community, leading people, heterosexual as well as homosexual, from fleeing the region to live somewhere else just so they can have a father/son day at the golf course without being subject to refusal of service.
Not to mention having tourism completely wiped out by huge warnings around the world and in the U.S. telling people they need to be careful about how they behave in public in Arizona, much like the warnings about travel in some of the Middle East.
In a way this could be worse than the Middle East.
In Saudi Arabia, a woman must be accompanied by a man in public…
In Arizona, each man will ALSO need to be accompanied by a woman in public.
Otherwise… you’re a suspect gay!
This morning there was a letter to the editor in the San Francisco Chronicle, reporting that the writer had just cancelled his hotel reservations in Arizona for Giants’ spring training. When Kansas tried to pass a bill like this the business community sat on it hard and early. The business community in Arizona will wise up to this very soon.
Of course it’s impractical, and it leaves the business community wide open to anti-discrimination lawsuits, but by Gawd the Republicans will leave no doubt in the minds of their constituents as to where they stand on the matter of “the gays!”
I’m beginning to think the Arizona chapter of the Chamber of Commerce is pretty ineffectual in its lobbying capability.
Yeah, well most business people are not that stupid of course, or they don’t stay in business long.
Businesses don’t usually want to turn down someone giving them money… they don’t care where the money comes from.