Stephanie Dolan

Are there more than bigots in Indiana? Published on Nuvo.net April 1, 2015 I grew up in the 80’s in Indiana. When you heard the words “gay” or “homosexual” they were spoken in hushed tones and out of the earshot of children, the elderly or anyone with any kind of emotional disorder. The stigma attached to the “choice” to be gay was overtly negative, and the family and friends who comprised my universe were well-informed on the so-called “consequences” of homosexuality. Disease was a likely result of intimacy with the same gender, and – let’s face it – anyone engaging in that kind of disgusting activity deserved whatever vile affliction with which God punished them. Because they all brought it upon themselves, didn’t they? For being different? For not conforming? For making us all have to consider that, perhaps, who another person loves has no bearing on an individual’s character or worthiness as a human on the planet? Decades have passed since those days when women stood staring, open-mouthed, at enormous boxy television sets with sneers of derision and righteous indignation on their faces. Rock Hudson was gay? AND he died of AIDS?! Well, then we could spare him no pity. He deserved it for deceiving us for so many years… for (AS AN ACTOR!) acting like a red-blooded American man who liked women. THAT was normal. THAT was acceptable. THAT was just how things were. We forget that Rock Hudson took his lumps perhaps so that Neil Patrick Harris can now appear on television as an out and proud, married gay man and still pull off a hilarious performance as a skirt-chasing lothario. How many televisions broadcast Harris’ comical womanizing in the living rooms of people who support this infamous bill that has infected Indiana? How many of those same people watched him host the Oscars? How many of them laughed at his jokes before going to work the following morning, clucking their tongues righteously at the news that the cute guy in the next cubicle is actually gay? Thankfully, the decades that have creaked by have slowly brought with them a reinvention of society’s outlook on homosexuality. Sure, there are still plenty of white men in big trucks waving Confederate flags in our faces, but there are always going to be assholes. And that’s what a bigot is. An asshole. Just like Indiana’s governor. I don’t know if he has a big truck with a Confederate flag on it, but I’d check his garage. A few days ago, Indiana’s governor signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law. Yes, it’s deplorable that this law made it through the Indiana House and Senate before reaching Mike Pence, but as our supreme state ruler, he should have known better. He is in office to work in the best interest of his people – to protect us. Yet, in a private ceremony, Pence signed the appalling document while surrounded by various religious leaders and supporters. In essence, this bill states that the government has no power to force any individual to do business with or provide a service for anyone said individual feels is a threat to their religion. Even though Pence has publicly stated that this bill is absolutely not a free pass to discriminate, it actually is. For instance… Did you know that the KKK is a religious organization? What if a member of Indiana’s inauspicious chapter decides that a lynching was necessary in the practice of his religion? He may not get away with murder (although stranger things have happened), but handing down a life sentence won’t – at that point – raise the dead. According to Indiana’s Center for History, there was a time in the early 20th century when about 30% of the native Caucasian men of Indiana were members of the Ku Klux Klan. By 1922, Indiana’s chapter of the KKK was the largest in the nation. I fear this was portent of things to come. Lately, I have seen a photo fly by a few times on my Facebook timeline – an early twentieth century panoramic black and white shot of Indiana’s legislators, standing on the steps of the statehouse… in their Klan hoods. Most of the state’s lawmakers were, in the 20’s and 30’s, out and proud members of the KKK. That was THEIR license to discriminate. The RFRA is an obvious reminder that Indiana’s political leaders haven’t evolved nearly as much as they should have in the last century. And, strangely, that photo I mentioned? It has mysteriously vanished from the internet. Something important that ultra-conservative RFRA supporters, I believe, fail to recognize is that this bill isn’t solely “protecting” Indiana Christians. It is a RELIGIOUS freedom bill, not a Christian freedom bill. There are many religions, and the RFRA protects them all – everything running the gamut from Christianity to Paganism. As ironically un-Christian as this bill is, we need to remember that Christians are not the only religious sect that regularly goes overboard in the practice of their religion. We all regularly see on the evening news what Muslim extremists are capable of every time a bomb is set off in another village or is aimed at an American soldier. No one will ever forget 9/11 or how many soldiers have died needlessly in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since then, Muslim extremists have ramped up their animosity, enacting an Inquisition upon those they deem “sinful” just as the Catholic Church did in the 13th century. I suppose if the Pope got that started up again now, Indiana Catholics would be free to drive some spikes into the sod of their front lawns to eminently display the heads of the filthy Protestants they were proud to have dispatched? Sure, unlikely, but where does this law end and reality come wheezing back to life? The U.S. Constitution’s separating of church and state makes things clear: one’s religious beliefs should stay far away from one’s political practices. Sharia Law is the governing force under which Muslims live in Islamic territories. Indiana is not an Islamic territory, but what if an ultra-conservative Muslim who wants to follow the tenants of Sharia Law lives in Indiana? Perhaps the signing of this bill would tell an Islamic man that he had the right to amputate the hands and feet of a thief. Or that he can deliver 100 lashes to a man or woman who has engaged in premarital sex… or 100 lashes to a man or woman who have committed adultery – before stoning them to death. Opponents to this bill have focused largely on discrimination against homosexuals, and I believe that any discrimination that occurs will be largely in that arena. I am disgusted by the idea that a gay person could enter a hospital seeking medical attention, draw the short straw and be assigned a physician who refuses to treat them based on their sexual orientation. As deplorable as that is, that kind of discrimination is only the potential tip of the iceberg. There are many scenarios that could play out as a result of RFRA implementation. Some of them are very very ugly. Many of them are terrifying. “Don’t ask; Don’t tell” was repealed three years ago. But guess who has the authority to dispatch the Indiana National Guard? What if Pence knew of a service member who was gay, and he decided to pull that soldier from duty? Allow your imaginations to stretch just a bit and consider what might happen if he decided to pull all gay soldiers from duty… and assign them to a special “camp”. It may sound outlandish. And it is. It really is. But, as ridiculous an idea as it may be, how many people might have scoffed at the idea of internment camps when the first rumblings of Hitler’s “weird thing” about the Jews first started whispering across Germany? “Hoosier Hospitality” has been a phrase that I’ve heard my whole life. It’s hokey and it’s corny, and – if you’re easily annoyed like me – it’s a bit off-putting in its sappiness. But there was never any mistaking its sincerity. Hoosiers (natives of the state of Indiana) are welcoming. Hoosiers are friendly. Hoosiers are the salt of the earth that season the Crossroads of America. Now? I can only think of that phrase ironically. There is an automatic snarky inflection in my head that immediately turns those two words into a glaring oxymoron – an oxymoron so big that we forget we’re living in an age in which it is now legal in many states (including Indiana!) for same-sex couples to marry. This is the kind of nonsense that is creating the growing list of companies and conventions that are vowing to boycott travel and business in our state until this obvious political faux pas is rectified. But we don’t just live in a state in which it is now legal to discriminate against those couples who might unknowingly seek out services from bigoted business owners. We now live in a state in which, essentially, we have handed down an open invitation to engage in terrorism. Pence has declared war against his own people. How long before his detractors are rounded up, given armbands and herded onto the trucks?