‘I’m The Proud Father Of A Gay Son': USC Athletic Director To Boycott NCAA Meeting Over ‘No Gays Allowed’ Law

Author: Kerry-Anne March 31, 2015 7:11 pm

The athletic director at University of Southern California has announced that due to Indiana’s ‘No Gays Allowed’ religious freedom law, he will not attend the NCAA’s College Football Playoff committee meeting in Indianapolis this week.

The list of companies, individuals, artists and organizations joining the boycott of Indiana in response to the egregious bill continues to grow, and is set to cost the state billions.



The NCAA however will not move this week’s Final Four games out of Indianapolis, and shows no signs of moving the league’s headquarters from the city either.


In a statement last week, NCAA President Mark Emmert said:

“We will work diligently to assure student-athletes competing in, and visitors attending, next week’s Men’s Final Four in Indianapolis are not impacted negatively by this bill,”
“Moving forward, we intend to closely examine the implications of this bill and how it might affect future events as well as our workforce.”

But ESPN host Keith Olbermann was dumbfounded by the organization’s failure to lead on such a critical matter.

“There are times in the history of this country where sports not only influences our destiny, but leads it, and this is such a time,” Olbermann said on Monday.

Former NBA star Charles Barkley also called for the NCAA to pull the Final Four games from Indiana over the bill.
Indiana Governor Mike Pence told a press conference on Tuesday that he plans to “fix” the law, saying:

“It would be helpful to move legislation this week that makes it clear that this law does not give businesses a right to deny services to anyone,”

The problem is: the sole purpose of the bill is to deny services to LGBT people. The reason it is being celebrated across conservative media is that it grants business owners the right to not serve LGBT customers if they feel that that doing so contradicts their religious views.
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of Indiana states:

“A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding, regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding.”

Neither the federal RFRA, nor the bulk of state statutes being cited by conservatives this week, say anything like this; only the Texas RFRA, passed in 1999, contains similar language.
The significance of this addition to the legislation is expertly explained by Garret Epps at The Atlantic:

What these words mean is, first, that the Indiana statute explicitly recognizes that a for-profit corporation has “free exercise” rights matching those of individuals or churches. A lot of legal thinkers thought that idea was outlandish until last year’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, in which the Court’s five conservatives interpreted the federal RFRA to give some corporate employers a religious veto over their employees’ statutory right to contraceptive coverage.

It is clear that Indiana’s RFRA can, and most likely will, be applied to discriminate against citizens on the basis of their actual or presumed sexual orientation and gender expression. Leaders like Pat Haden know this, and their consciences will not permit them to collude in such discrimination. Anyone who is against the establishment of a Jim Crow era targeting LGBT people, must stand with those opposing the RFRA.