Mike Pence is a happy man this morning. He can stop backing and filling in the hopes of placating the militant homosexual lobby and their pathetic fanbois in the media and let Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson take some heat.

Arkansas passed a religious freedom bill on Tuesday that is similar to an Indiana law that has faced national backlash for legalizing discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

The bill cleared the Arkansas Legislature and now heads to the governor’s desk, where it is expected to be signed. Like the Indiana law, the Arkansas legislation allows a person who feels his or her exercise of religion has been “substantially burdened” to cite that argument as a claim or defense in a private lawsuit. The legislation also grants corporations the right to religious freedom. This language is not in the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and critics say it could be used to override existing anti-discrimination protections.

“The Arkansas and Indiana bills are virtually identical in terms of language and intent,” said Sarah Warbelow, legal director at the Human Rights Campaign. “They place LGBT people, people of color, religious minorities, women and many more people at risk of discrimination.”

These bills are an “own goal” for the homosexual lobby and their dishonest and vicious smears about these laws and the people connected with them will come back to haunt them. What the protests do is give away the game. The homosexual lobby is not interested in tolerance. They are not even interested in acceptance. They have had both for decades. What they are after is celebration and the eradication of Christian (or any other religion’s) moral theology from public discussion. They are focused on driving religion into as space confined to a single building for a hour or so each week.

The sudden passage of RFRA bills is driven by militant homosexuals deliberately bullying businesses into participating in their sham “marriages.” As Ben Howe noted yesterday, they don’t really want you to take their pictures or bake their cake. What they want to do is forbid you from not acknowledging their shabby simulacrum of matrimony as being the equal of a real marriage.

Rather than stating their true purpose, these people have constructed a bogus narrative where homosexuals are refused service. This argument is so silly and so dishonest that you have to check your intellect at the door in order to believe it. As the man says, you don’t need a bumper sticker to know someone is black. Even assuming all homosexuals were easily recognizable, the only person arguably “punished’ by refusing them service is the merchant who declined to take their money. It isn’t like New Mexico only had one photographer in the entire state or Colorado a single baker of wedding cakes.

The objection is not about discrimination because no sane person could think that is even a potential issue. The objection is that Christians can’t be sued and bullied into celebrating homosexuality.