Ann Coulter wants you to think Indiana’s widely-hated new “religious freedom” law “goes back to” George Washington and James Madison. Sean Hannity suggested if liberals really care about gays, they should just hate Muslims more.
Hannity did his part to pick up the ball last night from Megyn Kelly’s vehement defense of Indiana’s new law that many experts believe is a license to discriminate against gays.
Hannity began his discussion by framing Indiana’s Republican governor, Mike Pence, as a conservative warrior bravely battling evil liberalism: “Indiana governor Mike Pence is under attack by the left for standing by his decision to sign the Religious Freedom Restoration Act… but the governor is fighting back against these attacks”
Hannity played a clip of Pence arguing to This Week’s George Stephanopoulos, “Is tolerance a two-way street or not?” and accusing the left of intolerance toward “religious liberty rights… of every faith.”
And who better to take a stand for tolerance than Ann Coulter?
COULTER: This goes back more than just to the federal religious anti-discrimination law. It goes back hundreds of years in our history. You have to explain to Americans, a country that was founded on religious freedom, the idea that individual conscience trumps – often will trump – civil authority. This has been part - this goes back to James Madison and George Washington. We’ve been dealing with it with priests not having to turn over their confessions to, in criminal court, with Jews being able to wear yarmulkes, with Muslims having special dietary requirements.
Hannity broke in to add “conscientious objectors” to the list.
COULTER (continuing): Right. George Washington and the Quakers. And when the law was introduced by, among others, Chuck Schumer, supported by the ACLU, and the American Jewish Congress .
Hannity broke in again, this time to add Bill Clinton and “Barack Obama as a state senator.”
As I’ve previously explained, Indiana's bill is not just like the federal bill or the other state bills that mimicked it, but is broader and opens a path to discrimination that the other bills don’t.
But Coulter continued suggesting that our founding fathers would have loved the Indiana law.
COULTER: The idea that because liberals can posit a case of two gay guys getting married and a florist, a Christian florist not wanting to provide the flowers, we’re all supposed to give way and call it a discrimination law - it’s never been applied in such a case.
…It’s a shield. We know what the cases are for and it’s as if we’ve changed who the American voters are, that people don’t understand this idea that Americans have religious freedom.
The real problem, Coulter seemed to think, was Pence’s decision to appear on This Week. “This is a real failing of the Republican National Committee, that they allow Republican presidential candidates to have debates with people who are so directly opposed to them,” Coulter groused. She argued that “all presidential debates” should be “moderated exclusively” by conservatives such as, “for example, you and me.”
Hannity got back on topic, sort of.
HANNITY: We watch women’s groups get all upset about Sandra Fluke or Mitt Romney resumé for women and binders, upset about this on gay rights. Gays are being slaughtered and people like us are out there saying, “Look what’s happening, sharia law, people are being killed and women are being mistreated.” Why don’t they join us on the left on a really important issue where lives are at stake? Where slavery is happening?
For Hannity, it seems, being pro-gay rights is merely a matter of hating Muslims as much as he does.
UPDATE: Today, Pence announced, "I’ve come to the conclusion that it would be helpful to move legislation this week that makes it clear that this law does not give businesses the right to discriminate against anyone.”
Watch it below, from last night's Hannity.
Hypocrites.
And, as proof, tomorrow Fox will be hosting a Thomas Jefferson impersonator (again) . . .
http://www.newshounds.us/20130310_fox_friends_does_interview_with_teabagging_thomas_jefferson
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