March 5, 2014
Bachmann Condemns Veto of Arizona's Anti-Gay Bill
Jason St. Amand READ TIME: 2 MIN.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is the latest ultra-conservative to take issue with Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's decision last week to veto the state's SB 1062, a measure that would allow business owners to refuse service to LGBT customers if they cite their religious beliefs.
In an interview with Yahoo's The Fine Print, Bachmann said she was "sorry" that Brewer decided to veto the bill.
"I believe that tolerance is a two-way street, and we need to respect everyone's rights, including the rights of people who have sincerely held religious beliefs," Bachmann said. "Religious liberties and the protection of our religious liberties is right," she said. "Right now, there's a terrible intolerance afoot in the United States, and it's against people who hold sincerely held religious beliefs."
A number of leading Republicans, including Mitt Romney and Arizona Sen. John McCain, urged Brewer to veto the measure. Additionally, several companies, like Apple Inc., said the bill would be bad for business and pressured her to nix SB 1062. Officials from the National Football League also suggested that they would not hold the next Super Bowl in Arizona if Brewer signed the bill into law. Bachmann also had something to say about that:
"Constitutional rights shouldn't be traded away, no matter if the NFL decides to have an economic boycott or not, there is no price that you can put on constitutional liberty," she said.
Bachmann's comments come after Fox News pundit George Will and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) both slammed Brewer's decision this week.
"It's a funny kind of sore winner in the gay rights movement that would say, 'A photographer doesn't want to photograph my wedding -- I've got lots of other photographers I could go to, but I'm going to use the hammer of government to force them to do this.'... It's not neighborly and it's not nice," Will said Sunday. "The gay rights movement is winning. They should be, as I say, not sore winners."
King said that the bill would have been good for Arizona businesses and that homosexuality is "self-professed behavior" that can't be "independently verified" on Des Moines TV station WHO Sunday.
