Republican Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal said he would veto a so-called "religious liberty" bill that would have explicitly protected discrimination by religious organizations against LGBT Americans. Deal's decision on Monday came in the wake of a wave of backlash against North Carolina's governor, Pat McCrory, after he signed an even more pernicious anti-equality bill last week. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
The measure “doesn’t reflect the character of our state or the character of its people,” the governor said Monday, urging state legislators should leave freedom of religion and freedom of speech to the U.S. Constitution.
“Their efforts to purge this bill of any possibility that it would allow or encourage discrimination illustrates how difficult it is to legislate something that is best left to the broad protections of the First Amendment,” he said.
The two-term Republican has been besieged by all sides over the controversial measure, and his office has received thousands of emails and hundreds of calls on the debate. The tension was amplified by a steady stream of corporate titans who urged him to veto the bill – and threatened to pull investments from Georgia if it became law.
Deal will surely get a lot of heat from social conservatives who think they deserve special rights to discriminate against people they don’t like, but he also surely saved Georgia a heck of a lot of money. Just ask Indiana, a state which has lost as much as $60 million in revenue since passage of its “religious freedom” bill last year.