Amendments to Arizona’s religious freedom law were demagogued to death this week by a mob of pundits and politicians who warned that the law would usher in a new era of Jim Crow for gay people. “You can believe anything you want,” said CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin. “You can’t turn away gay people from your store–unless this law becomes effective.”
Toobin’s claim, widely echoed in the media, was false. Arizona–like 28 other states–includes no provision in its public accommodation law for gay people. In other words, it was and still is legal in most of the country for restaurants to turn away gay people, but you never hear of that happening. On Thursday, I asked the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s leading gay rights organization, if they could provide any examples of gay people being discriminated. In the age of social media, you’d certainly hear about such cases if they occurred, but the Human Rights Campaign still hasn’t responded to a request for comment.
