Change We Can Believe In

++Jan Brewer's veto of the anti-gay law in Arizona has led Ohio to shelve their own "religious liberty" bill,Mississippi to strip out its anti-gay language, and other states to put the bills on hold. Basically, I would say that these states have stalled their anti-gay laws so as not to screw up the 2014 elections for Republicans. 

++Andrew Sullivan, writing as a Christian gay, at The Dish has a conciliatory message "The Morning After" and warns gays that they must be understanding of an older generation who can not absorb this amount of change so quickly. This is his Churchillian graciousness in victory mode. 

++The losers were not so gracious. Pat Buchanan tested "How Freedom Dies". Bryon York said that the Brewer Veto shows that poorly informed hysteria works.

++One Facebook entry says," The Obama Nazi Party has told all 50 states to ignore any laws on their books discriminating against homosexuals."

++Judson Phillips, President of TeaParty Nation, said this was "Tyranny on the march making businesses "slaves to the great liberal state"aided by "French Republicans " like Brewer. He warned that Christians would be forced to bake Penis Cakes for gay weddings.

++It should be pointed out that all Republicans in the Senate and the Assembly voted for the bill because it "would bring the caucus together". Jennifer Rubin, writing in the Amazon Post, said Jan Brewer saved the Republican Party but that still doesn't excuse the wave of anti-gay legislation, which is only being sought by state Republicans, no one else.

++The Public Religion Research Institute released its findings on attitudes toward same sex marriage among religiously affiliated. 

**73% of religiously unaffiliated are for same sex marriage.
**83% of Jewish-Americans are for
**62% of mainline Protestants are for
**58% of white Catholics are for
**56% of Hispanic Catholics are for

**69% of millenials are for
**53% of all Americans are for. You can see the differential is caused by fundamentalists.

++Remember the Pew Poll I mentioned the other day.20% of Americans now say they are unaffiliated. 18% say they are evangelicals,which is not exclusively fundamentalists.

++Anti-gay ballot initiatives were used by Republicans in 2000 and 2004 as wedge issues. It will be interesting to see whether Republicans still believe they will be. The disturbing part of these laws for the right to discriminate is that they represent a fusion of libertarians and fundamentalism--a combination no one thought logical or possible.