To the editor:
Your recent editorial (“State needs update to civil rights laws,” Jan. 23, A6) was spot-on. Our Legislature has other important issues to deal with, and while there is a need for an ordinance clearly prohibiting discrimination against the LGBT community, the bills proposed so far seem to be an effort to avoid the issue rather than deal with it.
As the editorial stated, there’s a simple way to do the right thing. Our governor and some of our legislators say that Hoosiers are nice people who can be trusted not to discriminate. But at the same time they insist that Christians need to be protected by law in case they choose to exercise their religious freedom by, well, discriminating against groups they don’t wish to do business with.
Why would people who don’t discriminate have any objection to laws banning discrimination?
We can hope that Gov. Pence and the legislators come to their senses and do the right thing to settle this issue quickly rather than drag it out for years while Indiana continues to be regarded as a backward state.
Civil rights are too important to play politics with. Surely, we cannot reasonably expect to be allowed to exercise our freedoms to an extent that violates the rights of others.
Rita McBride
Fortville
