Republican North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory is really in a class by himself now in terms of spearheading 2016’s southern anti-LGBT effort. His neighboring governors in Virginia and Georgia—one a Democrat and one a Republican—have both vetoed laws that would have explicitly protected the right to discriminate against LGBT Americans.
Virginia's Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, vetoed a "religious freedom" bill Wednesday, reports Brad Kutner.
“Although couched as a 'religious freedom' bill, this legislation is nothing more than an attempt to stigmatize,” said McAuliffe in a statement sent out following a live veto on the DC News radio station WTOP. [...]
“Any legitimate protections afforded by Senate Bill 41 are duplicative of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States;” wrote McAuliffe, who also pointed to Virginia’s long-held Religious Freedoms Act [...] “Any additional protections are styled in a manner that prefers one religious viewpoint—that marriage can only validly exist between a man and a woman—over all other viewpoints,” he said.
McAuliffe joined Georgia's GOP governor, Nathan Deal, who vetoed that state's "religious liberty" bill Monday after getting a whiff of the backlash North Carolina is now facing.
That truly puts North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory in a class by himself as a "pioneer in bigotry.”