FEBRUARY 23, 2014

     I've written before about social change in this country--same-sex marriage, for instance.  Approved by one state or another, it's still illegal in most of them.  Now the Arizona legislature has jumped in with a bill which, as the Washington Post described it, "allows business owners wtth strongly held religious beliefs to refuse service to gays." 

     The next step is up to conservative Governor Jan Brewer (R) as she decides whether to sign or veto the bill, which she's expected to do this coming week.

      You'd think this would be a constitutional no-brainer, but hold on.  Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence said, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...."  But he left out women, presumably on purpose;  they didn't get the vote for more than a century.  And when he said "all men," Jefferson, a Southerner and a slave owner, certainly didn't mean he thought his black slaves were equal to him.  It took a bloody civil war and then the civil rights movement to get them them the vote just a few years ago.

     So we'll see.  Discrimination based on sexual preference seem bizarre to me.  But bizarre bad stuff hasn't always stopped us in the past.