A Tea Party state lawmaker in South Dakota says he’s a true “Reagan conservative” — unlike his fellow Republicans — and that’s why he believes bakeries should be allowed to refuse to serve Blacks and gays.
State senator Phil Jensen, 61 and an Evangelical Christian whose favorite author is Ann Coulter, offered this example to the Rapid City Journal:
“If someone was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and they were running a little bakery for instance, the majority of us would find it detestable that they refuse to serve blacks, and guess what? In a matter of weeks or so that business would shut down because no one is going to patronize them.”
Sure, and if that were true, America would never have needed civil rights laws to begin with.
The Rapid City Journal adds:
David Patton, president of the Black Hills Center for Equality, calls Jensen’s argument deeply flawed.
He said that the bakery used in Jensen’s example would have flourished a century ago, before the passage of civil rights legislation that helped protect African-Americans and other minority groups from discrimination.
“The free market didn’t do away with slavery,” Patton said.
The Journal notes that “it appears Jensen acts on his beliefs without considering the full impact of a proposed legislative measure.”
That’s an understatement.
Jensen supported another bill this session, killed last month, that would have required drug testing for welfare recipients. He said he believes that taxpayers have a right to know that their money is being spent appropriately.
But asked whether he thinks recipients of other forms of government assistance should be drug tested, like farmers who receive subsidies, Jensen wasn’t so sure.
“You got me there,” he said with a laugh.
Because inequality and discrimination are often a laughing matter on the GOP’s side of the fence.
Jensen’s Facebook page calls being gay “someone’s lifestyle choices.”
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The religious right has essentially lost this “religious freedom” framing battle. Jan Brewer‘s veto of Arizona’s especially hateful anti-gay “religious freedom” bill was likely the last straw for this legislation, that some say was created with true assistance of ALEC and/or Focus On The Family.
Ironically, his own campaign website proudly states, “Phil is a member of ALEC.” He also has “interesting” links to the certified anti-gay hate group American Family Association, faux and discredited “historian” David Barton’s WallBuilders, the Heritage Foundation — which, he says, “is big on the constitution” — the NRA, The Drudge Report, Tea Party Patriots, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck.
But don’t worry. Long term, lawmakers like Sen. Jensen have had their day, and soon they’ll be just a passing bad memory.
Image via Facebook
Hat tip: Little Green Footballs