Justice

Indiana's Mike Pence Can't Keep His Story Straight on LGBT Rights

April 2nd 2015

This past Tuesday, Indiana Governor Mike Pence held a lengthy press conference to try to quell the backlash over his signing of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The bill, which is more expansive than both the federal version and those passed by other states, is widely theorized to grant individuals and privately held businesses a legal avenue to discriminate against LGBT customers.

During the press conference, Gov. Pence expressed his desire for the Indiana legislature to send a fix to his desk clarifying that the law could not be used to allow businesses to discriminate. But just a few hours later, Pence was a guest on the radio show of conservative media personality Sean Hannity, and he made a total about-face:

I stand by this law. The law doesn’t need to fixed, we need to fix the perception.

What could have prompted him to go from “send me a fix” to “the law doesn’t need to be fixed” in a matter of hours? Maybe Pence, who has presidential ambitions, wanted to give a specific message to Hannity’s conservative audience. Maybe he really thinks that the fix he asked the legislature for a few hours before is just a branding statement, rather than an actual legislative change.

Or maybe he likes the discriminatory law just the way it is and wanted to deflect responsibility onto the legislature if a change doesn’t happen. No matter what, though, the latest news out of Arkansas just made Pence’s position that much harder to maintain.

Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson announced Wednesday morning that he would send Arkansas’ version of RFRA back to the legislature for fixes. Hutchinson specifically called out a feature of the bill that Arkansas’ version has in common with Indiana’s, but not with the federal version or those of most other states with similar legislation: a clause that allows the law to be used as a defense in private lawsuits, rather than as a defense against potentially oppressive state laws.

Every development in this story is making Gov. Pence look worse. It’s time for him to stop spinning, admit he was wrong, and push for changes that would guarantee non-discrimination.

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