Immediate Backlash From Indiana Bill

[stromboli]

http://www.advocate.com/indiana/2015/03/26/immediate-examples-backlash-indianas-religious-freedom

It didn't take long for the backlash to begin after Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed the state's Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law at a private ceremony today. The response was swift, forceful, and ongoing â€" as the statements below demonstrate.

Supporters of the new law â€" including the governor â€" claim that the RFRA strengthens and protects the free expression of religion, but opponents have consistently blasted the law as a thinly veiled effort to give businesses and individuals a "license to discriminate" against LGBT people, and anyone else who somehow offends a person's sincerely held religious belief.

"The Indiana General Assembly and Governor have sent a dangerous and discriminatory message with this new law," said the Human Rights Campaign's legal director Sarah Warbelow in a statement today. "They’ve basically said, as long as your religion tells you to, it’s OK to discriminate against people despite what the law says. This new law hurts the reputation of Indiana and will have unacceptable implications for LGBT people and other minorities throughout the state. Astoundingly, Indiana representatives ignored the warnings of businesses and fair-minded Hoosiers, and now business owners and corporations are forced to consider other options when looking at states to invest in."

1. Salesforce Cancels All Indiana Travel

That's exactly what Salesforce, a $4 billion tech company based in San Francisco which increased its presence in Indiana in 2013, is planning to do now that the RFRA has become law.

The CEO of the company, valued at $4 billion and listed on the prestigious Standard & Poor 500, authored an open letter to Indiana lawmakers urging them to reject the bill last week. Now that Gov. Pence has signed the bill into law, Mike Benioff, CEO of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Division, says his company has no choice but to "dramatically reduce" its investment in Indiana. In a series of tweets, Benioff, a 50-year-old man married to a woman, announced the company was canceling all of its programs that required employees to customers to travel to Indiana, and encouraged other tech companies to follow suit.

2. Cofounder of Paypal, Yelp Chairman Sees Through the Rhetoric

Tech entrepreneur Max Levchin, who co-founded PayPal, is currently the chairman of Yelp, sits on the Board of Directors for Yahoo!, and is the CEO of consumer finance company Affirm and chairman of reproductive health app Glow, sent a biting tweet this afternoon that flatly rejected supporters' claims that the RFRA won't result in legalized discrimination.


3. NCAA Is 'Concerned' About Final Four

The National College Athletic Association issued a statement on Indiana's new law, expressing concern about the fate of its LGBT athletes and employees during the men's basketball Final Four, slated to take place in Indianapolis next week.

"The NCAA national office and our members are deeply committed to providing an inclusive environment for all our events," said NCAA president Mark Emmert in a statement today. "We are especially concerned about how this legislation could affect our student-athletes and employees. We will work diligently to assure student-athletes competing in, and visitors attending, next week’s Men’s Final Four in Indianapolis are not impacted negatively by this bill. Moving forward, we intend to closely examine the implications of this bill and how it might affect future events as well as our workforce."

On Monday, out NBA veteran Jason Collins, the first openly gay man to play in the NBA, asked the Governor whether Collins and those like him would be welcomed in the state during the Final Four, for which Collins is providing commentary.

4. George Takei Calls for a Boycott

The out actor is "outraged that Gov. Pence would sign such a divisive measure into law," said Takei in a Facebook post today. "I will join many in demanding that socially responsible companies withdraw their business, conferences and support from his state and that LGBTs and our friends and supporters refuse to visit or do business with Indiana."

Takei first threatened a boycott earlier this week, when he joined organizers of the board game convention Gen Con in warning that the world's largest gaming conference would relocate its annual conference â€" and its estimated $50 million revenue â€" to a more hospitable state, should the RFRA become law.

Which points out just how narrow minded and short sighted the legislators are. Last time I checked, Indiana wasn't one of the states that was brimming with throwaway income.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Now let's see if the NFL yanks the college draft combine from Lucas Oil stadium.. I hope they do, but we'll see..

[Aletheia]

Hey, at least the state will now have predominately white god-fearing protestants with a population of extremely poor minorities they can blame all of the world's troubles on. It'll be just like the south.

[SGOS]

Christianity is such a vile religion.

[Aroura33]

I'm very happy to see so many people not only voice outrage but threaten to do something about it if it isn't undone.

I do hope that GenCon is canceled, as they said they would if this happened.  People need to hit them where it hurts to make them understand that most normal, decent human beings will not tolerate this kind of discrimination happening around us.

[Johan]

I'm very happy to see so many people not only voice outrage but threaten to do something about it if it isn't undone.

I do hope that GenCon is canceled, as they said they would if this happened.  People need to hit them where it hurts to make them understand that most normal, decent human beings will not tolerate this kind of discrimination happening around us.

Ah Christians are strong in number and they know how to vote with their wallets as well. For every business/celebrity/whatever you find expressing outrage and vowing to boycott, you're also sure to find a christian based business/celebrity/whatever vowing to increase their patronage because of this.

But as I alluded to in the other thread, this is great news. We NEED this sort of thing to happen and more of it. I can't imagine the issue of discrimination based on sexual preference getting before the supreme court any other way.

Also I secretly hope that at least a few business owners will have the balls to prove how idiotic this law is by using to discriminate against all kinds of people. 'Sorry, this is a whitepowerism owned business and we don't serve no nigers here.'

[hrdlr110]

Ah Christians are strong in number and they know how to vote with their wallets as well. For every business/celebrity/whatever you find expressing outrage and vowing to boycott, you're also sure to find a christian based business/celebrity/whatever vowing to increase their patronage because of this.

But as I alluded to in the other thread, this is great news. We NEED this sort of thing to happen and more of it. I can't imagine the issue of discrimination based on sexual preference getting before the supreme court any other way.

Also I secretly hope that at least a few business owners will have the balls to prove how idiotic this law is by using to discriminate against all kinds of people. 'Sorry, this is a whitepowerism owned business and we don't serve no nigers here.'

Businesses that are seen to be in affirmation of the new law may not be able to remain profitable if they cut out or ostricise that segment of the population. Social media can make that happen, so if they can't afford it, they will stay out of Indiana too.

[SGOS]

Yeah, it's harder to boycott the majority if your livelihood depends on it.  If you are in the majority, then it's easy to boycott the minority.  This's one reason the discrimination of minorities hangs on for generations.  There is no pain to learn from when one does it, so it feels right.  It's not until one either stops to think about his precious golden rule, or when he has his ass handed to him by the courts, that he begins to realize what he's even doing.

[Johan]

Businesses that are seen to be in affirmation of the new law may not be able to remain profitable if they cut out or ostricise that segment of the population. Social media can make that happen, so if they can't afford it, they will stay out of Indiana too.

I would love to be able to believe this. But...




...then there's that. Chic-Fil-A's CEO was pretty blunt about how he feels regarding the gays. But Chic-Fil-A is still in business and making profits last I heard.

[kilodelta]

Yeah. My boycott of Chic-Fil-A hasn't resulted in much...

[Munch]

Buy some taco bell, go to chic-fil-a, eat them and puke up over the food counter.

Start a trend.

[Desdinova]

It never fails to amaze what these idiots will do all because of their concern over who's fucking who.

[Munch]

It never fails to amaze what these idiots will do all because of their concern over who's fucking who.

And you know the most ironic thing about modern Christians? We have the technology and means to look halfway across the planet, at places that have not advanced hardly in any societal way for the past thousand years, we can see how a more primitive, violent culture works when it is governed by religious zealots. And yet this doesn't ring any realisation to modern Christians, they don't quite knit the pieces together.

[stromboli]

And you know the most ironic thing about modern Christians? We have the technology and means to look halfway across the planet, at places that have not advanced hardly in any societal way for the past thousand years, we can see how a more primitive, violent culture works when it is governed by religious zealots. And yet this doesn't ring any realisation to modern Christians, they don't quite knit the pieces together.

Well said. Called the big picture. Way over their heads, apparently.

[SGOS]

And you know the most ironic thing about modern Christians? We have the technology and means to look halfway across the planet, at places that have not advanced hardly in any societal way for the past thousand years, we can see how a more primitive, violent culture works when it is governed by religious zealots. And yet this doesn't ring any realisation to modern Christians, they don't quite knit the pieces together.

Yeah, but you can't compare Islam with Christianity, since Christianity is the real religion of peace.  It's so loving, accepting, and would never demand compliance to it's dogma from others.  It's just not the same.