On Backlash and Tipping Points (Update, Update II)

The backlash on Indiana's RFRA keeps growing -- I've lost count of how many cities and states have banned official travel to Indiana, of how many corporations have threatened to cancel programs, expansions, and new business in the state (you can check out Joe.My.God., Towleroad, and/or The New Civil Rights Movement to get the latest reports -- Update: WaPo has published a handy list) -- hell, even NASCAR has condemned the bill -- and how many other high-profile condemnations have come out -- to the extent that Indiana legislators are scrambling to find a fix that will take off some of the heat.

And Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas has sent their version of the RFRA back for amendments.

OK, I've discussed the backlash and some of the possible reasons for it, but one thing jumped out at me in reading through the news that makes me think the tipping point is stronger than we thought: it's even working its way into major league baseball:

Oakland A's star pitcher Sean Doolittle and his girlfriend have offered buy the tickets from fans that object to attending the team's upcoming first-ever LGBT Pride Night at the Oakland Coliseum. Doolittle's girlfriend has two moms and she writes:

If attending a baseball game on LGBT Pride Night makes you at all uncomfortable, it is probably a good idea to sell your tickets. And I have the perfect buyer. ME! If you'd like to sell your tickets to June 17th's LGBT Pride Night game, I will buy them from you at face value. As many as I can. No judgments. No questions asked. From there, I will donate any tickets I purchase to the Bay Area Youth Center's Our Space community for LGBTQ youth.

And, in what I can only take as a "SuhNAP!" to the bigots, the city of Madison, WI, has amended its human rights ordinance to include atheists as a protected class.

This starts to be about more than a rejection of anti-gay bigotry: it's starting to look like a wholesale rejection of the "Christian" right's entire agenda. After all, when you've got such lucid, rational spokesmen as Rafael Cruz, Sr., on your side. . . .

It looks more and more as though Anti-Gay, Inc., had better start looking for a new business model.

Sidebar: David Neiwert points out that some segments of the "religious community" are looking at these bills very carefully -- and drooling.

The furor over recent "religious freedom" bills being passed in various states -- particularly Indiana, with similar viruses festering in North Carolina, Arkansas, and Texas -- has caught the attention, I'm sure, of a certain class of religious believers.

Namely, the people whose own religious faith, such as it is, dictates a belief in the supremacy of the white race and the diminution and demonization of all non-white races. They are real, they do exist, and they go by such names as the Christian Identity movement or its Church of Jesus Christ-Christian, or the Creativity Movement, aka the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC).

I suspect that the only reason the backers of these bills in places like Indiana, North Carolina, Arkansas, Texas, Georgia will be bothered by this is that it's going to make them look worse than they already do. That is, if they think that far ahead, which is questionable.

Update II: See this post at Mahablog on how the reaction just isn't sinking in: It's all the fault of "the secular left" -- like NASCAR, Disciples of Christ, and the Episcopal Church.