Why is Gen Com waiting for Indiana Governor Mike Pence to make his decision on SB 101?
The Indiana Senate voted 40 to 10 to pass the SB 101 and the House passed it 63 o 31 (not sure where the other 6 House members were). Isn't that enough to realize that Indiana may not be where educated people should be doing business? Yes, the buck stops at the Executive Office, in this case $50 million bucks, but 103 state representatives voted in favor of this bill while only 41 voted it down. One source seemed very polarized in its summary of the events …
Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act should be titled the Freedom to Discriminate Act. It would give bigoted religious business owners the right to refuse service on religious grounds. The LGBT community, atheists, divorcees, Muslims and others could be singled out and denied service.
The Republican-controlled House and Senate have passed the controversial act, and now Gov. Mike Pence says he’s looking forward to signing it. Gen Con to the rescue! – AddictingInfo.org
If this proposed law is as bad as they say, why are we waiting for it to become an actual law? Should we rely on our checks and balances system of government. It's why we have three different branches. But when the branch with the most members is adamant about allowing discrimination to exist, why do we need to wait for one person to agree or disagree?
Gen Con has decided to play a game of chicken with that one person while waiving $50 million in the air. It seems they are hoping their open letter to Indiana's governor will sway him to follow in the footsteps of another state governor.
Haven't we been through this before? Back in 2014 Arizona had basically the same bill with the same "religious freedom" focus, SB 1062. What did it come down to to have this proposed bill vetoed by its Governor Jan Brewer? She might have lost $500 million, ten times as much as we are talking about with Indiana. There was no epiphany that the bill was wrong. It was about the money. Here's a video from 2014.
But it's not always about LGBT rights with Arizona. The southwestern state ran into issues with the NFL and the acknowledgement of MLK Day.
In 1990, opponents to the national holiday succeeded and the ballot initiative was rejected by Arizona voters. Many NFL players took notice.
The NFL selection committee rescinded Super Bowl XXVII and awarded it to Pasadena, Calif., costing Arizona potentially $350 million in business revenue.
Finally, in 1993, Arizona became the first state to make MLK Day an official holiday by popular vote. After the holiday was passed, the NFL awarded Arizona with Super Bowl XXX, which took place in 1996. – Cronkitezine
It seems the withholding the almighty dollar overshadowed intellectually fighting bigotry and narrow mindedness. It's why we jumped onto Elton John's call for a boycott of Dolce & Gabbana. But that boycott is quite different than what we faced in Arizona and are now facing in Indiana. There are supposed educated individuals in our state governments that spent months in subcommittees in both houses to carefully construct discriminatory bills hoping they would become laws and not poorly spoken out of touch designers during a single interview where a difference in language may be part of the whole confusion. We are not considering lessening our wardrobe by one label, but we are watching state governments write laws that will give business the ability to discriminate against anyone that may breathe differently than they do.
Why is Gen Com waiting for the Indiana Governor Mike Pence to make his decision on SB 101? We should be tired of playing chicken. Money talks and the money should walk. The NFL should have pulled the Super Bowl out of Arizona when both Arizona Houses of Congress passed SB 1062 and before Brewer had the chance to vote. Gen Con mentioned they were thinking about pulling out of Indiana and they should do it. We should not have to wait for one man to say yes or no. What will he be basing his decision on? Political beliefs or monetary detriment? When 103 congressional members have given us the middle finger already, we should take note. Sorry to get sophomoric about this, but it's almost like being in a room of 5 bullies and you are their target. Three of them want to hurt you, one says no, but the ring leader says he'd like to hurt you, but let's just take his lunch money instead.
Recently, the U.S. Congress decided to play international politics by inviting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to speak directly to them. No punishment has come about from that or the political back stabbing letter sent to Netanyahu by the 47 congressional members. Remember that buck? Why should it always stop at the executive branch? We do have a checks and balances system of government, but why does the executive branch need to always take the blame for governmental action or lack of action? Indiana's Congress has done us a wrong by passing this bill in both of their houses. Why don't we decide to boycott their state because of their actions? If they have been elected to speak for their constituents, then let's acknowledge their statement with action.
Why should Gen Con pull out? Because the wrong ideals will still be there. If Pence does not make the bill a law with his signature, the politicians will still be hatin' and they'll have your money, too.
