Having been born and raised in Indiana I am obviously embarrassed by the level of bigotry and stupidity displayed by the governor of that state and some percentage of the population responsible for electing these idiots. I can't claim great harm as I left the Hoosier state forty-eight years ago and was very pleased to discover other parts of the world that were nothing like where I grew up. My remaining personal concern is that I still have family there and I feel embarrassed for them. The nature of this tragedy is that it isn't the end of the world as we know it but just a bloody great embarrassment to almost everyone resident in this country. The governor of Indiana and his crowd aren't smart enough to be truly evil. If you are going to get into the hate thing the least you can do is become a seriously evil asshole. But, no, they are just small time haters and more than normally confused religionists and then they didn't really think this thing through, and shit. The whole thing blew up! More below the doodle. . .
The real issue is the implications of the whole Religious Freedom thing not as it was understood and broadly supported in the '90s but as it has changed in response to human needs and objectives. There is growing and appropriate media coverage (if you call NPR and the more thoughtful new blogs media) of this with a certain amazement that, here again, things have really changed in just a few years. What was understood as a very reasonable human rights protection based on Native American issues at the time was very quickly usurped (it is now realized) by the forces of reaction. I think part of the problem is that we find ourselves feeling confused because we should be surprised but somehow we aren't. We're just embarrassed. How did they (who ever is in charge of this piece of shit place) manage to allow such low level idiots drive the bus? Oh yeah, we forgot to vote in the midterm . . . And there is nothing past the ellipsis. We stop.
I think the part we are missing is the future. I'm having trouble seeing how this works itself out even if Indiana, Arkansas, Kansas and who ever else is bound and determined to get a law supporting good old fashioned hatred and discrimination on the books, manages to repeal or gut the laws they fought to get. There are too many layers of contradiction making this look very much like some kind of cutural dead end on the national highway.
The only thing that I can see as a way around this is to continue to mount nationwide actions against this stuff as it appears and try to buy some time. But as we all know exhaustion takes over very quickly. This is already last week's news. A new idiocy of reaction is banging on the door for its time on stage. And there is always Ted Cruz and the Republican Clown Car to entertain us while we wait in silent fear for the next election.
The real solution, and I don't have a clue as to how to get there, is the end of government as we know it but not in the bumble headed Libertarian way. It may be that the answer is the full implementation of Religious Freedom. We all become citizens of our own religions of one and then club everyone else we can into submission. But wait, that is where we are going . . . Damn.