As Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Pence struggled to find legislative language for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act he signed in March, he and the national LGBTQ community could learn from a televised call an enterprising TV reporter made to a small-town pizzeria in Walkerton, Indiana.
Pence, the state of Indiana, the national LGBTQ community, Silicon Valley tech giants, and conservative talk show hosts remain entangled over language of Indiana’s RFRA. The good governor would be wise to repeal the act, but he feels he would pay a heavy political price for caving to the LGBTQ community.
Pence needs to consider an alternative. If he repeals the act, he might become a national political hero for a brief while and to a constituency he probably never openly sought to serve. He might also gain the political mantle of moderate in an overwhelmingly conservative party. Would that end his career or would it catapult him to the leadership for his party’s 2016 presidential contest? It is something the governor should be considering.
Meanwhile in Walkerton, population 2,200, one of the owners of the now famous Memories Pizza spoke honestly when she told a TV reporter the restaurant would not cater a same-sex wedding. Perhaps if not asked a leading question by a TV reporter (probably anxious to get a job offer in a bigger media market), the young woman might have made a different, more human statement, to another non-publicity seeking human. We’ll never know.
When the restaurant proprietor’s statement went viral on the web, the pink mob went to work. Now, in my life I have seen mob mentality firsthand more than once. As a youth during the civil rights struggle in Alabama in the 1960s, and an AIDS activist in Washington in the 1980s, I saw the ugly face of mobs who wanted to kill African Americans and gay men and children with AIDS.
What happened in Walkerton was done via faceless social media. The results were no less ugly. As I learned as a youth, mobs attract the type of mentality capable of lynching, bombing, burning, shooting, and inflicting painful words. In the case of social media, hateful words are captured forever.
The owners of Memories Pizza were so shocked by the national social media language violence directed at them they reportedly decided to close the business. No LGBTQ leaders stepped forward to urge them to reconsider their position or to call off the pink mob. That might have been seen as caving into the religious right by the LGBTQ community. We couldn’t have that because we are rebels and, in the eyes of Christians, anti-Christian and anti-religion. We can’t use LGBTQ diplomacy to change people’s minds. No, instead we have to threaten them with pink violence, social media threats which do the same job as real violence.
Supporters of Memories Pizza began a crowdfunding campaign and raised nearly $1 million for the restaurant. I suspect that is just the beginning of what will be a record year for the small restaurant.
Aside from the publicity and money, evangelicals and Roman Catholics, losers in their fight against marriage equality, were happy to see the pink mob try to destroy a small heartland business. It shows the country, they say, how heartless the LGBTQ community is. It hurts our case that those who oppose marriage equality are heartless for discriminating against us “because of whom we love.”
Is the lesson of the marriage equality struggle who can be more heartless, those who approve versus those who disapprove – or who has more heart and love to share with those who are evolving on the issue? The answer is in our heartland.
Human Rights Advocate Jim Patterson is a writer, speaker, and lifelong diplomat for dignity for all people. In a remarkable life spanning the civil rights movement to today’s human rights struggles, he stands as a voice for the voiceless. A prolific writer, he documents history’s wrongs and the struggle for dignity to provide a roadmap to a morehumane future. Learn more at www.HumanRightsIssues.com.
