RELIGIOUS FREEDOM FOR INDIANA?

Religious Freedom For Jim Nabors?

For all you hear about Oregon, from overpriced Portland, to overpriced craft beer, to almost the lowest high school graduation rate in the nation, we’ve got perks.

We might be raising tomorrow’s morons, but all is not lost.

At least we try to keep gay bashing low on the legislative agenda.

Okay, that’s an overreaction. Indiana isn’t bashing gays with a law, SB 101, that allows business’s to refuse service to gay people without penalty.

Instead it’s a law bashing the whole LGBT crowd, not just gay. A big umbrella of protection for people whose belief system is at risk when a gay man steps into their store for a slice of Indiana sugar cream pie, or a handful of Indiana pork.

In a slam against all lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender people, has Indiana gone to far?

Or is it a state on lip of a new paradigm?

Religious Freedom means “We don’t accept gay money?”

Imagine Jim Nabors walking into a pizza place and hearing he’s not welcome there.

Well gawwwllleeeee, that’s not right.

As an openly gay man is he the intended target for restoring religious freedom?

He married his longtime partner in Seattle after Washington passed marriage quality. Now he’s as happily married as Indiana Governor Mike Pense.

This is the same Jim Nabors who was born in Alabama, now living in Hawaii, who travels to Indiana every year to sing ‘the song’ before the start of the Indianpolis 500.

He’s not too gay to rip through the unofficial state song, but too gay for a local pizza company to cater his events?

Let’s take a closer look, first at the trophy in the top pic.

Borg-Warner Trophy via indianapublicmedia.org

Religious Freedom To Race?

This is what you win if you finish first in the greatest spectacle of sport.

Google Borg-Warner Trophy and you’ll see the same image from a different angle. For the most part.

This is the first time I’ve noticed the nude dude. The Stanley Cup doesn’t have a nude ref. Neither does the NFL’s Lombardi Trophy or NBA’s O’Brien Trophy.

If a macho race driver kisses a trophy topped by what looks like the Silver Surfer’s naked brother, then chugs a bottle of milk and doesn’t have a gay moment about it, why would Indiana give two hoots about doing business with the LGBT population?

Look at the checkered flag. It’s black and white, not a rainbow. Is someone trying too hard at some anti-gay game?

You hear this all the time around certain folks:

“I’m sick and tired of network television shoving their gay agenda in our faces. I don’t need the gay lifestyle rammed down my throat,” says one manly man. “You can’t have it both ways.”

“Yeah. Both ways,” grunts his manly buddy. “Would you care for another wine cooler?”

Governor Pense can stand proud over his moment of shame as he backtracks faster than an Indy Colts’ defender.

With hundreds of millions of dollars at risk from the NCAA, NBA, NFL, NASCAR, WNBA, Angies List, Gen Con, and a host of others following Portland’s public money travel ban to Indiana-stan, it still comes down to Jim Nabors for this baby boomer blogger.

Jim Nabors via dailymail.co.uk

Religious freedom or not, 2014 was his last time to sing ‘the song.’

Coming back this year would send the right message to the right people, singing or not.

Indiana is better than its legislation.

Could Governor Pense be recalled if his idea of a good law goes bad?

Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber didn’t get recalled. He quit and his job went to Kate Brown.

I like thinking how Kate Brown would govern Indiana.

Maybe she’d sing ‘the song?’ Let’s sing together.

“Back Home Again In Indiana”

Back home again in Indiana,
And it seems that I can see
The gleaming candlelight, still shining bright,
Through the sycamores for me.
The new-mown hay sends all its fragrance
From the fields I used to roam.
When I dream about the moonlight on the Wabash,
Then I long for my Indiana home.

— Composed by Ballard MacDonald and James Hanley, 1917.