Dear Mike:
You've been so good with your letters to us (they arrive with such stunning regularity, like someone is writing them for you!) and we feel guilty in taking so long in getting back with you.
Of course, your letters to us always end with you asking for money, so there's that deterrent.
Mike, we're concerned about all this “religious liberty” talk of yours; we're not sure much good can come of it, either for you or, more importantly, for our state.
Mike, we listened to your State of the State speech, and it seemed you were channeling another governor from 50-plus years ago who tried to hold back the expansion of civil liberties to another minority.
There you were, Mike, standing on the House floor, vowing in effect discrimination today, discrimination tomorrow, discrimination forever.
Mike, it seems to us that you're trying to carve out a special niche that would give government sanction to the practice of certain religious beliefs in specific situations, in this case to allow businesses to pick and choose whom they serve based on who those customers are — specifically, whether they are members of the LGBT community.
Mike, as you well know the state constitution is all this way and that-a-way when it comes to this issue, forbidding laws that encroach “in any case whatever” on the “enjoyment of religious opinions,” and then turning around and forbidding state preference “to any creed, religious society, or mode of worship.”
Mike, we were listening to one of those “radio preachers” the other night, from up around Terre Haute, who was lecturing on how, in his church, a woman was totally subservient to a man in any case whatever. His point was that no “real Christian” could vote for Hillary Clinton.
But then his co-host and the producer of his program was his wife, and it was obvious who was really in charge there in the studio and, we'd guess, at home as well.
Mike, if a member of this particular church should be brought up before our own Judge Sherry Gregg Gilmore, would you say he was free to ignore her rulings, because she's a woman and his church's reading of the Bible says men are always superior to women?
Mike, certainly you can see how complicated this can get if we start opening the door to exemptions — or, as you'd prefer to call them, “protections.”
Mike, we know you've not had much experience in the business world, but we can tell you that the best practice in our world is not to worry too much about the private lives of your customers; when you come in and turn on the lights, you should hang up your prejudices with your coat and get on with your day's work.
Stopping on your way home to pray for your customers' everlasting souls is always an option, and Mike we don't wouldn't see anything wrong with encouraging that.
Mike, I hope you got the chance to hear that program with James H. Madison, the dean of Indiana historians, who pointed out that, 200 years ago, the men who gathered in the substantial shade of that giant Elm tree down in Corydon to write the first state constitution were a pretty exclusive lot, and that, during the two centuries since, we've been trying to expand the rights and protections they sought mostly for themselves.
And Mike, you happen to be caught right in the middle of another round of this battle.
Mike, we know you have your supporters on this issue, especially that group you closeted with last year at the ceremony in that back room of the Statehouse when you signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
And we know you're running for re-election.
But Mike, there comes a time when what's best for Indiana has to take precedence over your own political fortunes.
We hope, Mike, you'll do what's right for Indiana.
Well Mike, we've gone on too long with this letter. We wish the best to you and your family, and to our state.