SB 1062 has passed the Arizona legislature.  It has not been signed into law yet.  What will Jan Brewer do?

SB1062 basically says that business owners, as long as they state their religious beliefs, can deny services and products to gays and lesbians. Why don’t they just throw in Blacks, Jews, Muslims, Mexicans, Asians, and anyone else they want to discriminate against and call it a day?

Is Arizona seriously this redneck?

If this bill becomes  law I won’t travel to Arizona and it will break my heart. I love the region. No more Sedona, no more Grand Canyon. No more Flagstaff or Painted Desert.  No more Tucson Gem Show.  Is the discrimination against gays and lesbians the last bastion of prejudice?  Hopefully Gov. Jan Brewer will do the right thing and veto the bill.

33 Thoughts to “Arizona disgraces itself again”

  1. Rick Bentley

    The argument here I think boils down to : does the Constitution protect one’s ability to be a complete jerk, who engages in actions with no socially redeeming value.

    I continue to see an analogy to child pornography. Theoretically why should it be against the law to view it? Should our right to life liberty and happiness not enable us to look at it or collect it, even disperse it, if we are not the individual directly harming the children? We made laws against it because it is bad for our society. Same deal with laws that prohibit discrimination. I can’t imagine why we should enable discrimination.

    But, it’s funny to me how quickly society spun on this issue. We can all castigate Arizona here and say they look bad because some lawmaker finds this valid. But Presidents as recently as Obama supported the Defense of Marriage Act, which was more institutionalized and bigoted than this Arizona bill is.

  2. Censored bybvbl

    What happens when the drug store, bakery, bar, or car repair shop decides to discriminate against gays and then its suppliers decide that the bigots don’t exhibit a Christian attitude and withhold their supplies in retaliation. This has the potential to become comical and litigious quickly. But what else do you expect from Arizona at this point. It’s becoming the new Mississippi or Alabama and needs to be brought kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. Another last howl of the mediocre white guys who can’t move forward after their crutch of male/white privilege has been knocked out from under them.

  3. Lyssa

    In the name of religion. Religious leaders need to step up. And McCain is out of step with the Arizona republicans? Will they next require various groups to wear color coded stars on their clothing like in Germany.

  4. Scout

    If they’re legalizing discrimination in the provision of goods and services, Lyssa, I think you are quite correct that they need to have some visible system of identifying the people to be discriminated against. Otherwise, there might be uncomfortable mistakes. Of course, once down that road, one also needs a government agency to categorize people correctly, an agency with the necessary staffing and resources to do all the investigations. And, of course, one needs to probe into the background of every Arizonan, to be sure that each is fitted into an accurate category.

    This is where the new “conservatism” (which, of course, is nothing at all resembling any real philosophical political conservatism) leaves me not just cold, but absolutely revolted.

  5. @Rick Bentley
    DOMA is just a lot cleaner form of discrimination than the AZ bill.

  6. What great comments! All of you.

    Sometimes I feel like we have talked about it all. Then I read these great comments and I am somehow revitalized.

    Sorry, I’ll stop being schmaltzy…but you guys rule!

  7. George S. Harris

    Any bets on how quickly this is overturned if signed into law? Surely this can’t stand. Or should the federal government apply sanctions against Arizona? That’s what we do to foreign countries that don’t fall in line.

  8. Rick Bentley

    “Another last howl of the mediocre white guys who can’t move forward after their crutch of male/white privilege has been knocked out from under them”

    I would call it a knee-jerk reflex by a group of people, conservative religious Republicans, who feel uinder attack because the world is changing around them in ways that they can’t assimilate into their faith. They have used that faith as an anchor, a bedrock to base their identity and values around – which is fair enough, that’s what religion has been celebrated for doing and for providing people through the centuries. But it’s peeling away quickly. And when you strip away the facade of religion and try to figure out what to choose to believe in or orient yourself towards, all that’s left are two paths to go in – cynicism, or humanism.

    1. I think its about more than religion. I know men who feel like this who have no faith.

  9. Peterson

    “Another last howl of the mediocre white guys who can’t move forward after their crutch of male/white privilege has been knocked out from under them.”

    Where is all of this “male/white privilege” I keep hearing about? As a white male I have yet to see it but apparently it’s all the rage.

    1. Peterson, I think you might be just a little too young to appreciate the glory days of white male privilege. In other words, you might have missed it. Ever watch Mad Men? You can see it.

      The Civil Rights era and the Women’s movement pretty much eroded the role white males had in society. Many men resent that they are no longer the king pins they once were.

  10. Peterson

    Hi Moon, I’ve never watched Mad Men… is that show full of “white privilege”? And if I’m too young to appreciate it then why is the term still used so often in such a wide variety of issues?

    Just for the record I think SB 1062 is just dumb, I agree with Rick’s assessment of it. I’m just confused as to why someone would associate this law with “white privilege” which apparently went away quite some time ago yet I hear about ALL of the time.

    Me thinks the “white privilege” argument is a crutch that has long since been knocked out from under people who still use it to this day. Maybe they need a “male/white privilege” wheelchair now that the crutches are gone.

    I’ve certainly never experienced “male/white privilege” as a white male. I have experienced being passed over for jobs/promotions for less experienced and less qualified candidates because I’m a white male and they weren’t. I would hardly call that “male/white privilege”.

    1. It’s over. There are just men who haven’t adjusted to it being gone.

      Talk to Censored about it.

  11. Rick Bentley

    I see both sides of the white privilege argument. On the one hand, I remember that I didn’t get that many helping hands to get where I am. That I worked hard in, a way that a lot of people don’t. And that my father worked hard his whole life, didn’t have a lot of disposable income to show for it, and then died with little fanfare.

    But I also see a lot of angry white males engaging in massive infantile rage, which they rationalize as other things. They are angry that they do not run the country in and of themselves anymore. Can’t just “outlaw abortion”; can’t push gays back into the closet; can’t kill Health Care Reform even though many of them are scared that it’ll cost them money; can’t suppress debate or silence other people through shouting.

    1. I don’t necessarily think it is all about money. You could have been describing my father. It is about position in the world, in the town and in the family. Things were settled and there were expectations of males. You knew that you were the bread winner and your wife would bring up the kids and cook your meals. You knew you were the head of the household. All of society was programmed to reinforce this concept.

      Then it all changed. White males didn’t necessarily get the good jobs. Sometimes blacks and women got those coveted jobs. Males were suddenly expected to do a lot more around the house. Gone were the days of coming home from work, propping your feet up while wifey made you a drink or got you a beer.

  12. Peterson

    @Moon-howler
    In my house I cook ALL of the meals (cooking is actually a hobby of mine), I pick up our son from school, I’m the one who plays with him, takes him to events, puts band aids on scrapes, I help him with his homework (yes, at 4 he has homework), we split laundry, cleaning, and other household duties 50/50. While I’m the “bread winner” I’ve never experienced, or wanted to experience, just coming home from work and propping up my feet while wifey got me anything, let alone a drink or a beer.

    Luckily I’m in an interracial relationship so my son, a certified minority, will never have to experience the same “male/white privilege” I’ve had to experience.

    1. You are too young to have been indoctrinated into white male 101.

      Men your age are used to being partners in the family, rather than ‘da boss.’

  13. BSinVA

    I am a white male. My understanding of “white male privilege” is that is involves the privileges that my Great-Grandfathers enjoyed as much, if not more, than the privileges that today’s white males enjoy. My great-grandfathers were privileged to purchase land and borrow money to improve that land when non-widowed women, Asians, Jews, and Blacks were not. The sons of my Grand-Fathers were able to build upon the wealth of their fathers when, at the same time, the others folks had no wealth to build upon. My Father took that combined wealth and obtained an education and prospered while others did not have property or wealth to use for anything other than daily subsistence. I inherited a sense of entitlement and self-worth based upon the success of my family
    and their place in history. Every one of my family predecessors worked hard and were fairly rewarded for their ingenuity and perseverance. Non-widowed women, Jews, Asians, Hispanics, Blacks, not so much.

  14. Rick Bentley

    I think the real reason that many white males are angry and dissatisfied is not because they expect privilege, or necessarily benefited from it. It’s because the world is changing, and they are worried about staying afloat in it, moreso than on top of it.

    They/we were raised to think of the world as one on which we would be dominant figures – shouldering the load for our wives and children. That’s not the world we live in, we’re in the two-earner age now. It’s as if we are less men than our fathers were. It’s a lot to do with pride I think.

    Not about race. What racial animus exists is a different thing, that comes from other places I think.

  15. Rick Bentley

    “You are too young to have been indoctrinated into white male 101.”

    Perfect microcosm of this debate. Your point is well-taken and inarguable that younger men have less an issue with the world. But to even sarcastically joke about a “white male 101” is going to get guys’ backs up; what you see here as some type of indoctrination is, to them/us, the process of being taught to fulfill sacred responsibilities to family.

    1. Rick, I have always known how to piss off males. I started on my two brothers.

      There are sacred responsibilities to famiy. Women have them too. Today those traditions are still important–very important, just not as rigidly designed by gender.

  16. Censored bybvbl

    If you work just as harder or harder than your coworkers and don’t resent their advancement based on anything other than their job performance, maybe you aren’t an embracer of white, male privilege. If you recognize that you might be the beneficiary of an inheritance/education based on your father’s/ancestors’ past privilege, maybe you aren’t guilty. My father worked hard all his life – in a profession that barred women from participating until the 1970s. He went to a Catholic college which had no female students. He inherited some money from a relative who worked at a union job that paid well and had few, if any, women in the workplace. Those options were not available to his sister who worked all her life at jobs that paid nowhere near the salary of her male siblings. She was talented enough that she was recruited by NY department stores to do alterations on clothes that she could have sewn or designed merely by looking at them in a window. But equal salary to her brothers? Nah.

    Religion is used to justify discrimination today against gays just as it was used against African-Americans and women in the past. Those of us that aren’t white males recognize that old song and dance. If you think discrimination has disappeared, look at income disparity between the genders. And be truthful if you think the ERA would pass any more quickly today or fail as miserably. Ask why some Bible verse is used to justify discrimination against gays, when other verses that would impact white males are ignored. Talented white men can still succeed and will always do so. I think the ones howling loudest are marginally talented and resent not being automatically given a leg up based on their gender or race. Gays and Lesbians represent one more faction against which they will have to compete and maybe they won’t succeed. It’s easier to blame another group rather than do a self-examination. It’s easier to lash out and limit the competition rather than take the steps necessary to succeed.

  17. Rick Bentley

    I think the whole debate could be approached with more clarity if we separated the “white” and the “male” parts out from each other.

    Does anyone think that non-white men in America react better than white ones to the idea of empowered women, or the idea of female bosses, or the idea of their wife making more money than them? I don’t think so.

    1. Agreed, Rick. I have seen it worse actually with some non-white men.

      Maybe we should just say men?

      Disclaimer: I am convinced men wouldn’t even wear underwear if they didn’t have wives.

  18. Censored bybvbl

    I think it depends on which area of the country one considers. I believe it’s more of a male problem than a racial one. In the South, I think it’s more equally a problem of race and gender.

  19. Starryflights

    .
    .

    PHOENIX (AP) — Republican Gov. Jan Brewer faced intensifying pressure Monday from CEOs, politicians in Washington and state lawmakers in her own party to veto a bill that would allow business owners with strongly held religious beliefs to deny service to gays and lesbians.

    Senate Bill 1062 has set off a political firestorm since the Arizona Legislature passed it last week, with critics denouncing the measure as blatantly discriminatory and embarrassing to the state.

    http://news.yahoo.com/pressure-mounts-over-arizona-bill-opposed-gays-215113082.html

    Hope she vetoes this

    1. I hope she does also.

      I don’t trust her though after all the immigration stuff she encouraged. I also still remember her shaking her finger in the face of the president of the United States out on the tarmac.

  20. Scout

    Brewer signed equally (or almost equally) silly immigration measures when she figured it would yield votes. I guess it depends on how many loopy Arizonans she thinks there are. Again, can anyone explain how there would be a religious belief that would support denying a retail service to a homosexual? I’m certainly not aware of anything in Christian doctrine that would support that. What religion are these Arizonan legislators?

    1. I have never figured out Arizona politicians. AZ has some of the neatest places in the entire world. How come it has so many dumb asses?

  21. Lyssa

    This will end it

    “The Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee joined the vocal majority and opposed the religious-rights measure and the NFL said it is against discrimination and is closely watching the bill.

  22. Scout

    I don’t know of any religion that would require a merchant not to serve someone whose sexual orientation was either homosexual or heterosexual. So, perhaps, if I’m correct that this would affect no one, this is just one of those marketing ploys that enables bumptious politicians to garner the stupid vote (which may be considerable in certain jurisdictions), and will affect no one even if it goes into effect.

    Brewer will veto it, however. Not because it’s mean and stupid (which it is), but because of the negative economic effects of letting it go into effect.

    1. Brewer is no stranger to mean and stupid.

  23. Confused

    And after much longer than it should have taken … Jan Brewer vetoes Arizona’s hate bill: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/26/jan-brewer-vetoes_n_4854003.html

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