The Hypocrisy Behind RFRA Outrage

So now nine CEOs from companies like Eli Lilly, Cummins, Anthem and Angie's List have sent a letter to Gov. Mike Pence and Indiana's legislative leaders repeating the lie made up out of whole cloth by the opponents of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act ("RFRA") that the newly-enacted law gives businesses and individuals a license to discriminate against gays. This so-called "corporate social advocacy" of tying a state's social policies to a willingness of these companies to do business in some places is a growing and disturbing trend, particularly because of the selective and hypocritical outrage of the out-of-touch elitists who run these companies.

Imagine our state officials being lectured by corporate executives who not only ship jobs overseas to some of the countries with the worst human rights abuses like China where organized religion is virtually non-existent, but actually pay bribes to their government officials for the right to do business there as Eli Lilly has been called out by our own government for doing. They aren't just shipping jobs to lower paid workers overseas. Some of these companies actually lobby Congress to ease work visa rules to flood the country with even more foreign workers, dashing hopes of many American workers of finding a decent paying job when they graduate from college to help pay down the mountain of debt they incur getting a higher education in this country.

When Cummins was asking Indianapolis taxpayers last year to shell out millions in public subsidies to build new corporate offices in downtown Indianapolis, I don't recall the leaders of the company conditioning the generosity of Indianapolis taxpayers on its state leaders agreeing to enact or not enact a law that until it was proposed in Indiana this year-- after being passed unanimously by the House of Representatives and approved by the Senate with only three dissenting votes before being signed into law by President Bill Clinton, an action which was followed by at least 18 other states and countless number of court decisions in more than a dozen other states establishing essentially the same standard of review in cases involving religious freedom claims. Likewise, Eli Lilly expressed no concern about the state's social policies when it sought and obtained hundreds of millions in tax abatements from the city. And the NCAA, convention industry, NBA and NFL, et al. didn't give a hoot about how Indiana treated anyone other than themselves when they sought and obtained billions of dollars in subsidies from state and local taxpayers over the past three decades for their new sports and convention facilities.

The hypocrisy meter breaks when it comes to the reaction of Mayor Greg Ballard and Angie's List's CEO Bill Oesterle to the passage of Indiana's RFRA. Mayor Ballard just a few short years ago had to be reminded by this blog that Indianapolis enacted an ordinance in 2005 that prohibited a business owner in the city-owned City Market from refusing to provide service to gay customers because the business' owner disagreed with their lifestyle, and then only reluctantly agreed to enforce the law after much hand-wringing, claims by some of the city's largest law firms that the law didn't really mean what it said and, incredibly, even public claims by the council members and some gay rights advocates that the law they sponsored and backed didn't say what it really said. It's too bad these folks are incapable of reading Indiana's RFRA law. If they had bothered, they would know there is nothing in it that gives anyone a license to discriminate.

So Mayor Ballard has issued a new executive order restating what the 2005 ordinance already states, demanded that state lawmakers change state law, and the City-County Council has passed a resolution denouncing the newly-enacted RFRA law while holding hands with Angie's List's CEO Bill Oesterle, whose company stands accused in a class action civil lawsuit of defrauding its consumer members by providing positive ratings for businesses which pay hefty fees to advertise with his company, while downgrading businesses which refuse to pay protection money to rate favorable treatment on Angie's List. Mayor Ballard and a bunch of our city council members want to reward Angie's List's unacceptable business practices with $18.5 million in public subsidies to expand its operations, a move Oesterle now says is on hold because of the new state law. I'm sure the fact that his company has never earned a profit in its two decades of existence despite no shortage of fools willing to invest in it had anything to do with it, but let's jump on the bandwagon of mislabeling RFRA supporters as bigots because it makes me look good. It's all about appearances, after all, not actual substance.

Who said Hoosier Hysteria was all about basketball? Well move over basketball. There's a new game in town being played. Let's call it Hoosier Hypocrites.