Governor is failing in leadership

A friend once told us it pays to keep a close eye on changes in the environment. If you don’t, you might step outside one day and find a glacier on your doorstep.
That was wise advice, and it’s advice that someone should have shared with Gov. Mike Pence.
The environment — in terms of national public opinion — has changed, and the glacier at his doorstep is a broadly held conviction in this country that it’s wrong to treat people as second-class citizens because of their sexual orientation.
For the governor, who has had a series of stumbles the past year or so, this must just seem like a matter of bad timing.
It wasn’t that long ago, he might argue, that Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act, banning gay couples the right to wed. And it was Democratic president Bill Clinton who signed that bit of legislation into law.
But that was then, and this is now.
Shifts in public opinion about gay marriage and about discrimination against the lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender community have been happening at anything but a glacial pace.
Last year, Republican leaders at the Statehouse sensed that.
Rather than endorse the idea of a ban on gay marriage in the state constitution, they shelved the issue.
Why? Because it was an election year, and they realized that setting up a referendum on the idea would have them out of step with the voters.
This session, apparently eager to mollify supporters who were unhappy that the ban was shelved, the strategy was to push for approval of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
So with a supermajority in the legislature and a conservative Republican in the governor’s office, the bill flew through and was signed into law.
Then the governor stepped outside and saw the glacier.
Not only do most Americans see the law as a transparent attempt to legitimize discrimination against gays, our guess is that most Hoosiers see it that way as well.
Certainly the business community sees it that way, and the economic consequences were almost immediate. How much this is going to cost Indiana is anybody’s guess.
So for the second time this year, Gov. Pence was tasked with damage control.
That’s what he was supposed to be doing Sunday morning on network television.
Instead, he blamed the media for misreporting the import of the law.
He insisted that the law didn’t really make much difference, even after he had championed its passage.
And when faced — repeatedly — with the simple question of whether it should be legal under Indiana law to discriminate against gays and lesbians, he choked.
The environment has changed, Gov. Pence. The glacier at your doorstep is real.
The American people don’t want to sanction this sort of discrimination, and Indiana is going to pay the price for your failure in leadership. — J.R.