Sunshine

I have always maintained that the current crop of Republicans in Congress rely on the American people's ignorance and apathy to get into office. If average citizens realized half of the crap that Republicans try to pull while in office, I don't think they would even be as popular as they are now - which is not saying much.

There is no better proof of that than this current flap in Arizona regarding a so-called "religious freedom" bill. The legislation in question would allow business owners to choose not to serve homosexuals based on "sincerely held religious belief".


To her credit, Governor Jan Brewer decided against sending her state back to pre-Civil Rights Act America and vetoed the bill. True religious freedom, a positive right that does not include the freedom to discriminate against others, has been protected.

My point is not to harp on the legislation in question, however. The arguments against such an execrable bill should be self-evident enough that there is no need for me to outline them. Instead, the focus of my attention is the phenomenon of similar bills proposed in Kansas, Missouri and Mississippi being tabled or deferred after the Arizona legislation was vetoed by Brewer.

I highly doubt that it's a coincidence that we're suddenly seeing such similar bills proposed by state Republican politicians. We've known for a while that the GOP has an impressive network through which talking points and the current legislative agenda is disseminated - it's called talk radio and ALEC. If Tucker Carlson says, as he did recently after Brewer's veto, that the effort to kill the anti-gay legislation is "fascism", that is the talking point that Republicans everywhere will soon be spewing on the news and in the halls of Congress.

What is striking, however, is the fact that a little "sunlight" - the American people discovering what Republicans were trying to do and working to stop it - is all it took to stop anti-gay discrimination from being codified into law.

Let that be a lesson to those who claim that their vote "doesn't count" or that staying home on election day won't have a real impact on this country.