A polling company has found that 75 percent of 500 likely voters in Indiana think the recent debate over a religious freedom law has hurt their state economy.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s popularity has also sunk by 20 points, said the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which released the poll from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.
” ’Hoosier hospitality’ is on life support,” said Fred Sainz, vice president for communications for HRC, the nation’s largest gay rights organization.
According to the Indianapolis Star, the state will spend $2 million on public relations to rebuild the state’s positive image.
The damage could be easily fixed if Mr. Pence and Indiana lawmakers enact a nondiscrimination law for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, JoDee Winterhof, HRC vice president for policy and political affairs, said Tuesday on a media call about the new poll.
These “religious refusal” laws both offend people and put a state’s economy at risk, said Ms. Winterhof. Politicians “who experiment with these anti-LGBT bills … do so at their own peril.”
In late March, Indiana lawmakers passed and Mr. Pence signed a law called Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The law was modeled after RFRAs in the federal government and 19 other states, which all seek to curtail government intrusion into people’s religious activities.
However, because Indiana’s law did not exclude sexual minorities as a protected class, it was promptly attacked as a potential license for religious people to discriminate against LGBT people.
When business, sports and tourism leaders threatened to take their economic interests elsewhere, Indiana lawmakers went back and clarified that the law can’t be used to undermine local laws that prohibit discrimination against individuals based on sexual orientation.
Mr. Pence, a Republican, signed that clarifying law April 2, saying “Hoosier hospitality is not a slogan; it is our way of life.”
The law, which says state and local government cannot burden a person’s right to practice their religion unless it has a compelling interest and is taking the least restrictive way of doing so, takes effect July 1.
Outcry over the RFRA — and Mr. Pence’s handling of it — prompted HRC to commission a poll on the issue.
The Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll, taken of 500 likely Indiana voters on April 7-9, found that 62 percent said businesses should not be allowed to “refuse service to someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Some 59 percent said the same thing, even in circumstances in which the business owner’s religious beliefs about homosexuality would be violated.
When asked about Mr. Pence, 53 percent of the likely voters told Greenberg Quinlan Rosner they had an unfavorable impression of him, and only 43 percent said his job performance was “excellent” or “good.”
Prior to the controversy, Mr. Pence “was very popular,” with a 62 percent approval score, the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner analysis noted.
On Tuesday, Mr. Pence said he thought “the difficult time” that Indiana endured “is behind us.”
“I really do believe that we are through the storm, that now’s the time to heal,” Mr. Pence said, according to the Indianapolis Star. The comments were in response to news that the state’s tourism and economic development agencies were hiring global public relations firm Porter Novelli for at least $2 million.
Separately, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, said Monday in his State of the State address that passing a religious freedom law was a legislative priority, in addition to budget and education reforms.
Mr. Jindal said he was confident that religious freedoms could be protected while also opposing discrimination.
• Cheryl Wetzstein can be reached at cwetzstein@washingtontimes.com.
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