The governor of Arizona has vetoed SB1062, which supposedly allows businesses to refuse to serve gays. The bill is actually an amendment to an existing law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1999. It has to do with claiming religion as a defense in discrimination lawsuits and proving that one’s religious practice is genuine. Here is everything you wanted to know about the bill, but didn’t bother to ask.

But let’s just suppose for a minute that the bill actually states something like: “Any business owner can refuse to provide a good or service to gays.” As you can see in all my writings on discrimination, I believe that anyone should be able to discriminate against anyone else for any reason and on any basis. If you want to discriminate against me because I am “a pro-life, Christian, culturally conservative libertarian,” then go right ahead. But do Christians have to refuse service to gays? No they don’t. As I said in my most recent article on discrimination: “A Christian’s acceptance of the Bible’s negative assessment of homosexuality does not necessarily preclude him from providing certain ‘services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges; provide counseling, adoption, foster care and other social services” or providing “employment or employment benefits’ to gays or ‘other perverts.'” For example, a Christian landlord might refuse to rent an apartment to a gay couple (just like he might refuse to rent to an unmarried straight couple) and at the same time sell a broom to a gay couple at the hardware store he owns.

Discrimination means freedom. Without it there could be no Heinz 57 varieties. Try picking a spouse without being able to discriminate against every other woman in the world.

The Best of Laurence M. Vance