Indiana's RFRA -- and the response -- are all about signaling

As we can see from the graph, many of these RFRAs passed when gay marriage recognition was an unpopular concept, polling below 40 percent. Now that gay marriage is increasingly popular, this RFRA has become a signals contest in the culture war. Obviously nobody is obligated to engage in any form of discrimination in Indiana, and I would wager that 99.9 percent of Indiana’s businesses will not turn away a single person for being gay. But it’s all about positioning yourself within this moment we’re having. Pence has to pretend the law doesn’t protect bigotry against gays because that doesn’t poll so well anymore, but can’t seem to argue that protecting civil liberties often requires defending bigots or it’s not really a civil liberty. The CEO of Apple has to write a big commentary about how discrimination is wrong and bad, and how you should also know that Apple, the company that he works for that sells many, many expensive things to customers, would never do such a thing. The band Wilco just tweeted they were canceling their show in Indianapolis…

Massive gaming convention Gen Con had initially made a big deal about possibly moving out of state in response to passage of the RFRA, to “deny” the state millions in revenue. But that’s confusing the government of the state with the citizens of the state. It’s businesses in Indianapolis who actually rake in money from the convention. Gen Con has backed off for now after actually talking to the businesses that they deal with, who of course have absolutely no interest in discriminating against any gay Gen Con attendees.

But they signaled loud and clear. It doesn’t actually matter that the RFRA won’t really lead to some sort of new dark ages against the gays because culture simply has no interest in going there. The important thing is that people position themselves properly to be seen as good people by their peers.