The Indiana religious liberty law and others like it were written with the intent "to protect religious minorities," not discriminate against gay people, Washington Examiner investigative reporter Sarah Westwood tells
Newsmax TV.
"When this law was first put in place at the federal level and in 19 other states, it was intended to protect religious minorities," Westwood told Ed Berliner on "MidPoint" on Wednesday.
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However, because "the Indiana law is being enacted against a backdrop of a larger national shift in favor of gay marriage rights . . . people are more sensitive to the implications that it might have for the LGBT community," she explained.
"While that's important to keep in mind, this law was in no way intended explicitly to discriminate against gay people, but that's how it's being interpreted," she said.
"It never once mentions the issue of gay rights within the language of this bill," Westwood contends.
"It was really originally intended to protect citizens from infringement on their religious beliefs from the government, and that was the spirit of the law in all of the other states that it was enacted in," she added.
Elias Isquith of Salon.com, who joined Westwood on "MidPoint," said that "the fact that the LGBT community isn't explicitly named in these bills doesn't mean that the bills weren't designed within the context of that broader movement and the phenomenon of same-sex marriage."
Indiana
Gov. Mike Pence, who signed the measure into law last week, has said that the bill was never supposed to establish a "license to discriminate," and that he will "clarify that" point in the law "in the days ahead."
"What he's likely to do in the coming days and weeks is to codify the anti-discrimination pledges that he's been making just to assure the LGBT community that this law does what he says it does, which is simply to protect religious freedom and nothing else," Westwood said.
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