One Mormon's take on Arizona bill SB 1062 (the "anti-gay bill")

I finally read SB 1062, and I don't see what the fuss is about.

You may have heard of SB 1062.  It's been in the news lately.  It's usually characterized as a terrible piece of legislation that will allow for the reinstatement of "Jim Crow" laws under the guise of religious freedom.  In headline after headline it's described as Arizona's "anti-gay law."

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has taken no position on it.  A group of Latter-day Saints who support gay-marriage has publicly opposed it.

It's only about two pages long, and it clarifies the state's take on federal law that protects religious beliefs.  The most far reaching part of it, to me, seems to be the redefining of "person" to include some businesses.  It doesn't codify discrimination against homosexuals (it never mentions them), nor does it give businesses absolute freedom to do whatever they want.  It merely says that the government must have a compelling interest in removing a person's ability to practice his or her religion, and now the "person" may also be a business.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoed the legislation, saying that it was "too broad."  That may be so.  Legislation that is too broadly written has created problems throughout the world.  Read Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago for an example.  It was one Soviet law, written very broadly, that allowed for the arrests that filled the gulags.

I'm not a legal expert, and I don't know the ramifications of the wording of SB 1062. It may actually be so broad that it would invite businesses to open up whites-only lunch-counters because the owner's religious convictions forbade the mingling of whites and non-whites.  I don't think the market would stand for it; and I don't think such a business could withstand the onslaught of public disapproval and stay open.  (This is not 1914, after all.)  Still, if a law allowed such a thing, it would not be a desirable law.


As other states mull the same issue, I wonder if the law might have to be written very specifically.  In certain small businesses, where alternate services are readily available, and where participation in some specific activities would violate the business owner's deeply-held religious convictions, the business owner ought to be exempt from lawsuits or government intervention if he or she chooses to follow his conscience rather than take the cash.  The Arizona law lists such businesses (including, I noted, a theater).  Maybe it included too many businesses.

It seems reasonable to me, for example, that a bakery should be required to serve all people who come into it, but could be allowed to refuse to make a cake that endorses gay marriage, just as it would be reasonable for the business to refuse to make an obscene cake.

It would not be right for that business to refuse all service to some people because they are overtly, covertly, or apparently gay.  It would also not be right for anyone to force the bakery to inscribe messages that the bakery owner considered offensive.

Like Governor Brewer, though, I'm not exactly sure how the line can be drawn legislatively.  A photographer should be given the same exemptions, I think, and so should a church-owned building.  But what about a public theater or an apartment building?  Should only non-believers work as county clerks, or should county clerks be allowed a religious exemption to refuse to perform a wedding?

I don't think the crafters of the Fourteenth Amendment intended all of this.