Newsbusters.org:
The Arizona governor’s decision Wednesday to veto a bill widely seen as pitting religious protections against gay rights puts an end to two controversial amendments proposed by lawmakers.RELATED: Tea Party Leader: Arizona Veto Enslaves Christians into Baking Giant Penis Cakes
But it leaves standing the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which continues to empower individuals to sue when they believe state or local laws – including antidiscrimination laws – are violating their religious rights.
In announcing her decision to veto the amendments, known as SB 1062, Gov. Jan Brewer (R) said that religious liberty is valued in Arizona. She added that the state also values the principle of nondiscrimination.
How those two goals coexist in Arizona in the future remains unclear. But it is clear from the governor’s veto that the potential downside of following through with the amendments outweighed the advantages.
“I sincerely believe that SB 1062 has the potential to create more problems than it purports to solve,” she said in a brief statement.
While the Brewer veto ends the current dispute in a way that appears to deliver a clear victory to gay rights advocates and their supporters, the underlying causes of the conflict remain unresolved.
On one side are Arizona residents seeking to live their lives in accord with traditional moral positions embraced in the Bible’s Old Testament – positions that condemn homosexuality. On the other side are gay men, lesbians, bisexual, and transsexual individuals fighting for equal rights and equal dignity in communities they also call home.
The Arizona Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) seeks to protect religious faith from coercive laws. That protection continues to exist throughout Arizona.
What is changing is a growing recognition of civil rights for gay Americans that is clashing with traditional religious teachings. For example, Arizona law offers no protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation, but three Arizona cities – Phoenix, Tucson, and Flagstaff – have passed ordinances banning sexual orientation discrimination in their jurisdictions.
The two proposed amendments to the Arizona RFRA were an attempt to address the issue in a way that favored religious adherents. Brewer’s veto eliminates the attempt, but it does nothing to address the underlying clash.
The veto was issued amid a growing controversy in Arizona over what had been a little-noticed state law patterned on a 21-year-old federal statute designed to shield religious adherents from government measures that violate their beliefs.
The original Religious Freedom Restoration Act, far from a hate-inspired antigay measure, sailed through the US House of Representatives on a voice vote and passed the US Senate 97 to 3 before being signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton in 1993.
The law was written to fill a vacuum left after the US Supreme Court embraced a significantly narrower reading of the protections of religious liberty under the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion clause. Congress responded with RFRA.
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