How intense is opposition to Indiana’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), widely misdescribed as anti-gay? So intense that former NBA star Charles Barkley called on the NCAA to move the Final Four games of its annual March Madness tournament to a venue outside Indiana that doesn’t practice “discrimination in any form.” So intense that Angie’s List scrapped plans for a $40 million headquarters expansion in Indianapolis.
So intense that Barack Obama’s press point man, Josh Earnest, blasted the law Sunday. Earnest was a guest on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” where he proclaimed, “When you have a law like this one in Indiana that seems to legitimize discrimination, it’s important for everybody to stand up and speak out.”
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence was also on the show to defend the law. In his interview with Stephanopoulos, a video of which follows, he noted that after President Bill Clinton signed the federal RFRA in 1993, “some 19 states followed that, and after last year’s Hobby Lobby case, Indiana properly brought the same version that then-state Sen. Barack Obama voted for in Illinois.”
That highlighted phrase bears repeating: Barack Obama, while an Illinois state senator, voted in support of a statewide Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This from a man who voted “present” the vast majority of the time.
Obviously, this vote came before Obama “evolved” on the subject of gay marriage, which is to say that support for that movement became politically expedient.
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