Well, neither of these actually changes anything, but they're good news nonetheless.
First a federal judge in San Antonio struck down the Texas constitutional amendment barring gay marriage as unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. He stayed his ruling pending appeal, so no marriages in Texas until the U.S. Supreme Court says so. But Texas now becomes at least the fourth state whose amendment has been invalidated since the Supremes' Windsor ruling.
Later in the day, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed the awful law that would have allowed blanket permission to refuse to serve gay people because of religion. This was expected but important, as broadly written bills like this essentially make it legal to discriminate against gay people as a class. Sorry, religious right, but your right to religious freedom does not override my right to be treated as an equal citizen.
http://news.yahoo.com/arizona-governor-vetoes-con … 21802.html
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/26/politics/texas-same … ?hpt=hp_t2
It amazes me that the GOP has allowed itself to be held captive by what amounts to a fanatical fringe group. I'm sure many Republicans rue the decision by Ronald Reagan's campaign folks to mine for votes in that group, which had previously not been a political factor. So, of course Republicans are going to argue against the Arizona bill on economic grounds because they dare not say that it is indeed morally repugnant.
My guess is that eventually (but probably not real soon), a prominent Republican politician will stand up to the religious right and find out that, hey, that wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. If Republicans don't, they are eventually going to find the religious right to be the political equivalent of cement shoes.
It was amazing to see the folks in Arizona back pedal, and Brewer, certainly not driven by a moral stance, had no other choice. Not sure if you caught Jon Stewart last night, he had an excellent piece on Arizona, and one of the better lines from last night's piece: "This is where you are now, Arizona: You’ve made yourself too homophobic and dickish for professional football, according to the NFL, our new watchdog of gay rights”. :) One of the aspects of the debate that irked Stewart was that no one in opposition of the bill flat out stated the bill is reprehensible, but spoke of it in dollars and cents as if the bottom line is more important than individual rights. Along that same line, Gail Collins in today's Times started of her opine with, "Arizona. Wow. How often do you find yourself saying, “Go, entrenched interests of the business community!” Yet here we are." Where Collins veers off is that the monied class in Arizona laments the fact that the new election financing laws that gives public funding to all candidates means that they can no longer influence the legislature and governor's office. It's the same outcome though, the monied class is upset of how the bill would have hurt their entrenched interests, not how the bill--besides being awful--would attempt to codify bigotry. It's a good piece, and as always with Gail, tongue-in-cheek.
Link to Stewart's clips: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/27/jon-stewart … zona-bill/
Link to Collin's opine: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/opinion/collins … ef=opinion