It did not matter that Indiana was one of a minority of states not to enact a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages or that Indianapolis had enacted a human rights ordinance a decade earlier extending protections to persons based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. When Indiana lawmakers earlier this year passed a religious freedom law already enacted by a majority of the states and the federal government and radical LGBT extremists and their allies in the media began falsely claiming the law discriminated against gays and transgenders, the NCAA threatened to pull all future NCAA events in Indianapolis.
It was a different story when Houston voters went to the polls and voted overwhelmingly to repeal an LGBT rights ordinance earlier approved by that city's council and signed into law by that city's lesbian mayor. The NCAA didn't hesitate in quickly announcing the day following the election that it would not pull the plug on Houston hosting the NCAA's Final Four. Likewise, the NFL said Houston was in no jeopardy of losing out on hosting the Super Bowl in 2017. Yet Indianapolis was threatened with losing out on all sorts of hosting opportunities, in addition to NCAA events, over a law that only discriminated in the imagination of its radical opponents and had already been the law in other states hosting NCAA events for years.
Now with a debate focused on the passage of a state civil rights law extending protection to persons based on sexual orientation and gender identity, the NCAA is renewing its threats against hosting future events in Indianapolis if the state doesn't pass a law that satisfies the demands of LGBT rights organizations according to the Indianapolis Star. "Among the Indianapolis events that could be in jeopardy is the NCAA’s richest showcase — the men’s basketball Final Four — slated to return to the city in 2021," The Star reports. "The same event held here this year pumped an estimated $71 million into the local economy, according to Visit Indy. Indianapolis also is scheduled to host first- and second-round games in the 2017 men’s basketball tournament."
NCAA officials claim it couldn't consider pulling the plug on Houston hosting the Final Four because it was too late to change cities, which is simply not true. Cities like Indianapolis would have lined up to pull out all of the stops to host next year's Final Four, including massive public investments like the tens of millions of dollars Indianapolis has already pumped into the NCAA to entice it to locate its headquarters here and host events. NCAA officials could care less what Indianapolis' own non-discrimination ordinance says. Its staff, which has an unusually high percentage of gay and lesbian employees, has become radicalized and is using the NCAA's nonprofit status to further their own political agenda. It's particularly galling when one considers how the NCAA contributes nothing to the local tax base because of the generous tax exemptions it has been awarded by Indiana lawmakers. Maybe it's time state lawmakers revisited those generous tax exemptions if the organization doesn't cease and desist from blackmailing state lawmakers. If the NCAA is so concerned about discrimination, why doesn't it focus its efforts on lobbying Congress to change the federal Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes?
21 comments:
"NCAA officials could care less what Indianapolis' own non-discrimination ordinance says. Its staff, which has an unusually high percentage of gay and lesbian employees, has become radicalized and is using the NCAA's nonprofit status to further their own political agenda" How is this all that much different from the Star having secret meetings and not covering up, or putting on phony debates with Tiny Tim Swarens as "moderator" when he was actually a participant with a known point of view? As to the NCAA, if your charge is true, and, you be a lawyer, how is it different than the US Supreme Court once having Eight Masons of the Nine Judges? One lesson would be that birds of a feather flock together.
Aren't you really on the wrong side of this argument?. Are you actually going to attack the NCAA for supporting fairness toward gays? Are you going to adopt similar opposition when Lilly and Cummins and Rolls Royce and Indiana University and Purdue, to name a few, begin to exert their pressure on state lawmakers? Do you really not have a personal stake in being on the right side?
I take the NCAA explanation that they were too late to withdraw from Houston at face value. Corporate America is probably not "lying" to Indiana. We have some evidence that "Indiana" is lying to corporate America, reference the Organization Day misinformation campaign.
Your lockstep with Republicans over rfra and nondiscrimination seems odd, it does, just odd. Are you so wrapped up in small battles that you care not about the ultimate prize? Do you really not support a meaningful nondiscrimination statute in Indiana?
I don't care whether it's the NCAA's desire for different public policy or the NFL/NBA desire for corporate welfare, the implicit threats to legislative bodies are really getting old.
The simple answer, Gary, is that they know it works here. Houston is a global city. The convention people want it, but most Houstonians couldn't care less if they pulled it. Night and day different than Inferianapolis.
And all of those companies you mention, anon. 8:40, have convinced state lawmakers to change state laws to award them such large tax breaks they no longer pay any corporate income taxes to the state, on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks they've been awarded by the City of Indianapolis for doing business here. Powerful corporations should not be dictating the state's social policies whether I personally agree with their positions or not. They had no problem with the state's cultural environment when they chose to invest here and demand billions in public handouts. Why do those companies you mention make such large contributions year after year to politicians who don't share their social agenda?
This is a sports city and a sports State. If big sports start pulling out because they don't like our politics, then we won't be a sports State any more. Corporations are watching us too. I personally believe the Generally Assembly is cavalier to start playing games with legislation that really has the possibility of damaging the State and throwing the governor's race. If Mitch Daniels is issuing press releases praising diversity and nondiscrimination there is a teachable moment available; or we can tell the country we want to go the Mississippi Alabama route. The General Assembly is drooling over the chance to squash the opposition. They're chomping at the bit to play their game, then win. But I think the clear direction of the United States and forthcoming Supreme court decisions that diversity and inclusion and nondiscrimination are coming soon to a State near you. Just like we got slapped down in mid fight on gay marriage, these issues may be taken from us. The better strategy would be to get out in front of it, give corporate Indiana and our Universities what they want, and be a leader on the issue. I want to support my gay family members and give them every advantage. I believe in the goals of a real nondiscrimination law. I'm appalled at the horrible one proposed by the General Assembly. And I dread the fight for what it will do to our State's reputation. Can no one see the benefit of simply not picking this fight. Because I believe what they have been saying. If you refuse to see the harms being done to these gay people in Indiana, then maybe you're one of the bullies. What's the harm in giving them the protection they ask for? Are you willing to lose the NCAA or Super Bowl or something in order to dig in? What happens when there is actual payback for acting like Alabama?
Gary, these companies and universities are our employers. We give them our assistance because we need their jobs. We support them because they support us. We know other states will happily steal them away, and we don't want to see them go. It isn't all about political campaign contributions. Our lives are wrapped up in our jobs. If Indiana lost all the employers who have signed on to support nondiscrimination, all of whom have it written into their corporate policies already, we would be a state utterly without jobs.
Big sports isn't going to pull out of the state that spends more money per capita subsidizing its endeavors than any other state in the union, anon. 9:26. When you say you are appalled by the civil rights law proposed by lawmakers, you expose yourself as not a thoughtful person on this issue but a radical extremist who wants to outlaw religious groups from exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights. I will not allow these radical extremists to lie about this proposed legislation the way they did RFRA. They will be called out for being the bigoted, intolerant people they accuse others of being.
Anon, 9:30, companies that are paid to do business here aren't going anywhere. Our special tax breaks and anti-labor laws are more important to them. Why do you think they chose to invest here?
The NCAA is in federal court in New Jersey, keeping New Jersey from getting sports betting, though the citizens of the state want it.
The NCAA is in Indiana keeping Indiana from enacting laws the citizens of the state want.
We need to recognize the NCAA as a governmental actor, or the mafia.
Either way, we need to cut the NCAA down to size, right now. Revoke their not-for-profit status; revoke their tax exemption; arrest them on RICO charges, etc.
As I have no ability to elect the NCAA, I sure don't want them governing me.
I am absolutely disgusted that my tax dollars fund the NCAA's anti-freedom message. The NCAA imposes dues on member schools. Among these member schools are Ball State, Purdue, Indiana, Indiana State, major taxpayer-funded public institutions.
The Indiana legislature should pass a law forbidding its public institutions to pay dues to the NCAA, or Governor Pence could order it.
If the NCAA is moving beyond officiating women's volleyball games, the Indiana legislature needs to put it back in line. I should not have to fund the lavish salaries of a private corporation with a legislative agenda I find repulsive.
The misinformation and outright disinformation of these left of center liberals advocating a reduction or loss of civil rights for some in order that they can get their way is nothing less than astounding and "un-American" (to quote Barak himself). These extremist haters are willing to do anything and say and write anything in their relentless drive to force their intolerant will and illogical conclusions upon others. I am one LGBT who is just not with that at all.
Everything that has been written about RFRA here on AI is the absolute truth... I note that proponents of the ironically named "Freedom" Indiana and the disciples of the single focused "Pence Must Go" group refuse to talk about the substance of the truth about RFRA here and in other states but instead deflect and change the topic and often outright try to deceive in the process.
There are none so stupid and blind as those who elect to be and remain so. No amount of logic and truth will every penetrate their willingness to remain outside the light of honest and intelligent discourse.
What a lot of drivel by small thinking nitpickers who think protecting religious freedom is the issue. We have constitutional protection of religion, in all its facets. It requires nothing more, and it will receive nothing more. The issue is nondiscrimination protection for a small, hated minority that has no constitutional protection. Corporations and Universities are leading the charge, against huge opposition. From bullies who refuse to call Bruce Jenner Caitlyn to haters who don't care if gays are thrown out of jobs and housing without recourse. They cry about their religion under attack when in reality they wield it like a weapon. You can't hardly find a young person that buys into the lie. They supported gay marriage and they support vigorous nondiscrimination laws. Even young evangelical Christians supported gay marriage by huge margins. Demographically, the old white Republican guard is losing population as whites lose the majority. Diversity and nondiscrimination are coming, because its a winning argument. Freedom of religion is fully protected already. You just can't use it as a license to discriminate. They tried to use it against blacks marrying whites, and entering white schools, and it didn't work then and it isn't working now. Rfra bills are unnecessary, worthless pieces of paper. Indiana's rfra bill is a worthless piece of nothing. A footnote in a long story of gay oppression. A stain on a State with great potential. Sports, and corporations and Universities want nondiscrimination. Its unseemly to whine about your religion. You're not supposed to use it for evil.
In South Bend, which added sexual orientation and gender identity to its human rights ordinance in 2012, officials are still studying the proposal, but Mayor Pete Buttigieg said it seems “designed to weaken our local nondiscrimination rules.”
“I don’t know why the state would want to undermine a local law that has worked well in South Bend,” he told the South Bend Tribune. In recent months, Carmel, Columbus, Zionsville, Terre Haute, Hammond and Muncie have adopted ordinances protecting LGBT residents, joining Indianapolis, Bloomington and about a dozen other Indiana communities that already had LGBT protections.
As proposed, the statewide measure would allow businesses with fewer than four employees to deny wedding services to same-sex couples “based on a sincerely held religious belief.” That runs contrary to the state’s local human rights ordinances, which bar businesses from denying service to individuals based on sexual orientation or gender identity regardless of the circumstances.
Sarah Perfetti, the executive director of Bloomington PRIDE, said she worries that the bill “will undermine the protections we have in Bloomington which have helped make our city open and accepting to all people.”
“This bill sends a bad message to everyone, especially the youth in our community who already suffer a lot of discrimination. What the legislation needs to do is a
Buttigieg is lying. If he thinks his city is better equipped to handle discrimination claims than the state's civil rights commission, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I will sell you. These local ordinances are toothless and pretty much useless when it comes to enforcing these types of claims. Virtually none of those local ordinances would do more to protect a person from discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Survey those local ordinances and find out how many people actually obtained relief under them as a member of a protected class since they added sexual orientation or gender identity as a protected class.
Freedom of religion is fully protected already.
Your statement rings hollow when religious leaders in Houston can receive subpoenas from the mayor for their sermon notes.
Those pastors were preaching hate politics from the pulpit and trying to influence a vote. The mayor realized the subpoenas were overreaching and voluntarily withdrew them. But they came from a place of frustration. Are they church pastors or are they political operatives giving political speeches? Because the Christian hate was really flowing every Sunday morning, and those of you who believe Christians don't preach hate against homosexuals don't get out much. The Christians won in Houston. They can fire homosexuals and throw them out of housing and deny them service. Hurray. But are they placing their tax exempt status as churches in peril with such shenanigans? The separation between church and state is a very thin line in Texas, inviting Court review.
In other heterosexual news from Houston, Matt Drudge reports today: A man in Texas is accused of assaulting his girlfriend after she refused to smell his armpit.
CBS7 reports that Robinson Pinilla-Bolivar’s girlfriend said the argument started while she was washing dishes and he asked her to smell his armpit.
When she refused, an argument reportedly ensued where she was hit in the back of the head with a closed fist and held up against a knife. The victim says Pinilla-Bolivar then fled the scene and she called officials.
Just a normal, Texas Christian couple, heterosexual of course.
3:16, you idiot, what does that Jerry Springer crap have to do with anything?
1. Hate speech -- as distasteful as it may be -- should still be protected. Only by allowing a robust exchange of ideas can freedom flourish.
2. The mayor withdrew the subpoenas after a public outcry & threats from the state level.
3. The mayor was willing to infringe on the First Amendment. The vehicle for such infringement was the Houston ordinance.
Anon 2:59
Separation of church and state is a one-sided restriction. Government can't dictate people's beliefs and morals. However, a church has every right to free speech, even if some pols don't like it. Why should a church suffer more limitations than, say, Rainbow/PUSH? Both are projecting their espoused beliefs. Intolerant secularism is just like intolerant religion: intolerant.
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