This country really is in a bad way if we allow for all intents and purposes Indiana's ayatolla to in effect attack our citizens as if those citizens belonged to some foreign enemy state. With the stroke of his pen, that is what Mike Pence did to the LGBT community. That is also what happened to Jews and even Gays in 1930's Germany. Homophobia is not something that attacks just Gays alone though. It can and has attacked everyone.
In 1939, Heinz Heger, a pen name used by Josef Kohout who was a Gay man and university student, was sentenced to an Austrian concentration camp for homosexuality. His first person account, "The Men With The Pink Triangle", details his experiences there and one incident details the horrifying result of homophobia on heterosexuals.
A train arrived at the camp and one of the cattle cars held prisoners presumed to be heterosexual young men. The camp was overcrowded with heterosexuals though and the only place left to house them were in the barracks where Pink Triangles lived. (Homosexuals were noted as such with a pink triangle on their clothing.) The guards were so enraged at the idea of having these young heterosexual men housed with Pink Triangles that they did what good Nazis did best and killed them all. Once you let hate out of the box, don't be surprised if it comes back to smack you right in the face too and very hard at that.
Equality isn't something gained by half-measures either. Equality is stifled though when you aid and abet it by half measures. Neither do you relieve yourself of the taint of bigotry when you aid it by degrees. In short, saying, 'I disagree with Mike Pence and Indiana's hateful law but ...' makes you part and parcel of why that hateful law came into being. Mike Pence couldn't have thought he could get away with this miserable attack on the LGBT community if it hadn't been for those who also have helped to aid inequality by not fully supporting full equality e.g., 'Gays in the military sure. Gays treated fairly at work. Of course. Gay marriage? No way!'
What Pence has done is to align himself with a bunch of knee-'jerk' reactionary losers incensed that they have lost so much with regard to their war on the LGBT community, and lost badly at that. So, they play the victim, when their playing victim is no more than projection on their part because for too long they have done everything they can to victimize the LGBT community.
Although their scheme has come back to slap them hard in the financial pocket, Pence and his ilk continue to cry victim. Frightened of the financial loss facing Indiana though, Pence says he will clarify what his hand signed into law, but lipstick on a pig still doesn't change the fact that a pig is a pig, and in this case will not change the very bad smell coming from Mike Pence's sty. This law cannot be watered down but must be done away with entirely. There is no excuse for it but to belittle the LGBT community and to attack them.
This law was never about protecting people of faith; they already have that protection within our Constitution. It was a means to use a bible as a weapon against the LGBT community. The tyranny of these religious zealots must never be allowed to stand.
So which is it Indiana? Are you a part of these United States or a relic of a Germany long ago or of an Iran today where a Supreme Ayatolla has his say and way with you?