John Kasich said Sunday that people who favor laws allowing businesses not to serve gay couples need to “calm down” and “get over” their opposition to lifestyles that differ from their own.
“What I’d like to say is, just relax,” Kasich said on CNN. “If you don’t like what somebody’s doing, pray for them, and if you feel as though somebody is doing something wrong against you, can you just for a second get over it? You know?”
Kasich’s comments were a reply to a question about his harsh reaction to Mississippi’s new law that allows companies not to serve gay couples. Last week, Kasich asked “What the hell are we doing in this country?” in reaction to that law.
Kasich did say Sunday that his first reaction as president would not be to take specific steps to stop states from passing those sorts of laws. But he then advised people on both sides to “calm down” before looking for quick-fix legislative answers to this complex problem.
“There is a legitimate concern for people being able to have their deeply held religious beliefs, religious liberty,” he said. “But there’s also people who we shouldn’t be discriminating against. We need to have a balance.”
“And I just wish that everybody would just take a breath and calm down, because you see, trying to figure out how to legislate that balance is complicated and you keep doing do-overs, because nobody gets it right,” he said.
“So if we just kind of calm down here, I think things would settle down,” he added.
