Jan Brewer Attacked From GOP Right For Anti-Gay Bill Veto

Jan Brewer, Arizona’s Republican governor, yesterday vetoed a controversial anti-gay bill that would have allowed businesses to refuse service to gay people under a broadly expanded definition of “religious freedom.” Before Wednesday was out and continuing into today, Brewer became a whipping post for right-wing members of her own party.

Though Brewer, 69, herself has previously been a hero to conservatives for her advocacy of an immigration law that allowed police to question anyone they suspected of being an illegal immigrant, and forcing legal immigrants to carry documentation on their person, this time she defied the hard-right elements of the GOP to shoot down the anti-gay bill, SB 1062.

The bill that Jan Brewer has now killed would allow businesses to discriminate against gays or for that matter, anyone, if a business owner feels that his “religious freedom” would be violated by providing goods or services to a particular person.

The response from conservatives in the media was swift and emotional.

Tucker Carlson, founder of The Daily Caller online news site said the veto promotes “fascism.”

“If you try to force me to bake a cake for your gay wedding, that’s fascism,” he said on Fox News.

Another Fox commentator, Todd Starnes, said that Jan Brewer “makes Christians in her state second-class citizens,” while Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro slammed Brewer as “gutless.”

On Twitter, various users threatened to boycott companies such as Apple Computer and the Marriott hotel chain, which pressed Brewer to veto the legislation. The NFL, which had said it could move the 2015 Super Bowl out of Arizona if the anti-gay law stood, also came under assault.

Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips deemed Jan Brewer a “French Republican,” and complained that her veto was “tyranny” that would now force bakeries to produce cakes bearing “a giant phallic symbol.”

Arizona GOP State Senator Al Melvin condemned the Brewer veto, saying, “it is a sad day when protecting liberty is considered controversial,” referring to the “liberty” to exclude gay people from a place of business. Longtime conservative pundit Pat Buchanan called the veto “how freedom dies.”

The new definition of “religious freedom” as a right to have one’s religious views provide exemption from existing laws or to have those views enshrined in public policy has not been accepted by the courts or Constitutional scholars.

In fact, in a 1990 case, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, intellectual leader of the court’s conservative wing, held that a “religious exemption” to valid laws would “would open the prospect of constitutionally required exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind.” Nor has “religious freedom” traditionally included the right to perform hostile acts against other individuals.

In giving he reasons for the veto, Jan Brewer said that the bill failed to “address a specific and present concern related to religious liberty.”