Gen Con Threatens To Leave Indianapolis Over Religious Freedom Bill

Grymalkin writes A controversial religious freedom bill has passed the Indianapolis Senate and is now awaiting Governor Mike Pence's signature to become law. Supporters claim that this bill will protect business owners from excessive government control while opponents argue it is just a veiled attempt to allow those same business owners to deny services to individuals because of their sexual orientation. Now, Gen Con has released a statement saying this bill will influence their decision to keep the convention in Indiana. This announcement has tourism officials worried as Gen Con brings in roughly 50,000 visitors each year, contributing $50 million to the local economy. So far Gen Con's announcement has not swayed the Governor who says he is looking forward to signing the bill into law. Gen Con currently has a contract with the Indy Convention Center through 2020. No word yet as to exactly when the convention would be moved should the bill become law.

Comments

Re:Hmmm ....

[gstoddart]

I think your stance is one primarily of laziness

Bullshit. I think your stance is one primarily of stupid.

If religions, who are legally protected from discrimination, want to use their religion to discriminate against other people an bear no consequences, then I believe religion should lose the legal protection from discrimination.

If you think your religion should allow you to discriminate against someone else ... then you are a coward and fucking hypocrite if you wish to hide behind your religion and act like that is protected speech.

I will loudly say "fuck religion" if religion wants to enjoy a special class of protection while denying it to someone else.

So, either these religious people would support repealing religion as a protected status (thereby allowing people to say "sorry, we don't serve YOUR kind") ... or they should shut the fuck up and stop pretending that their own fairy tales affords them a unique position in law.

That is a completely fucking irrational argument which claims special treatment -- fuck that.

Either you make it so it's illegal to discriminate against anybody, or you make it so it's legal to discriminate against anybody. We have already decided on this issue for pretty much everything else.

What religious people are asking for is a double-extra special standard, whereby the people they seek to be able to legally discriminate against are not legally allowed to respond in kind. Effectively, religious people get more fucking rights than the rest of us.

Again, fuck that.

That particular bit of bullshit is purely in the domain of people who think that logic and the law should bend over backwards to accommodate their moronic beliefs.

So, put up or shut up ... either religions support themselves being discriminated against, or accept that they don't get some magic fucking exemption to do it to someone else.

There is no scenario in which it makes any sense to give them a right they would deny another.

Your god doesn't define MY rights.

I don't need to convince anybody of a thing, other than it is a foundation of law that we ALL are subject to the SAME laws.

But not this bullshit notion that what you believe gives you a special place in law the rest of us don't have.

Re:Do It, it worked in AZ

[aardvarkjoe]

No.

Gen Con should be (and are) permitted to take their business elsewhere, for whatever the hell reason they want.

But the narrative that is being pushed that they are standing up to racists or homophobes by taking this action is inaccurate. They're primarily trying to make life painful for people that largely agree with them in order to get them to curtail the freedom of people that don't agree with them.