Arizona’s Jan Brewer vetoes anti-LGBT bill in landmark defeat for fundamentalist right wing

Ari­zona Gov­er­nor Jan Brew­er has vetoed a bill that would have legal­ized dis­crim­i­na­tion in the 48th State on the basis of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, after pro­gres­sives and busi­ness groups mobi­lized against the bill fol­low­ing its pas­sage out of the Grand Canyon State’s Leg­is­la­ture, which is con­trolled by Republicans.

The Ari­zona Repub­lic reports that Brew­er revealed her deci­sion at a short news con­fer­ence in which she took no ques­tions. Brew­er said the leg­is­la­tion, Sen­ate Bill 1062, would have cre­at­ed more prob­lems than it would have solved.

The Repub­li­can gov­er­nor announced the bill was unnec­es­sary leg­is­la­tion that threat­ened the state’s recov­er­ing econ­o­my by dri­ving away high-pro­file events such as next year’s Super Bowl and cor­po­ra­tions look­ing to relo­cate to Arizona.

Her veto – com­ing two days after state law­mak­ers sent SB 1062 to her desk – capped a week of esca­lat­ing furor over the bill that once again cat­a­pult­ed Arizona’s polit­i­cal into the nation­al spotlight.

The state’s Repub­li­can U.S. sen­a­tors, John McCain and Jeff Flake, the Ari­zona Cham­ber of Com­merce and Indus­try, hun­dreds of pro­test­ers and the Ari­zona Super Bowl Host Com­mit­tee, which is prepar­ing for the 2015 NFL cham­pi­onship game, all urged the gov­er­nor to veto the bill, say­ing it could wreck the state’s post-reces­sion recov­ery. Nation­al polit­i­cal fig­ures such as U.S. Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry and 2012 GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney also weighed in this week to urge Brew­er to nix the measure.

Brew­er was also asked to veto SB 1062 by sev­er­al Repub­li­can state sen­a­tors who orig­i­nal­ly vot­ed for it, but changed their minds after its pas­sage cre­at­ed a nation­wide furor. Had they vot­ed no when it was in their hands, it would nev­er have made it to Brew­er’s desk, as all of the Democ­rats were opposed.

Civ­il rights advo­cates praised the veto.

“We thank Gov­er­nor Brew­er for her deci­sion to veto this out­ra­geous mea­sure — a law that if enact­ed would be bad for Ari­zona peo­ple and the Ari­zona econ­o­my. In doing so, she has stopped a bill that both cyn­i­cal­ly uses reli­gion as a smoke­screen to jus­ti­fy dis­crim­i­na­tion and insults peo­ple of faith who feel that dis­crim­i­na­tion is moral­ly wrong. This deci­sion sends a clear mes­sage that extrem­ism is total­ly unac­cept­able to peo­ple of all polit­i­cal per­sua­sions,” said Rea Carey, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Nation­al Gay and Les­bian Task Force Action Fund.

We too applaud the demise of SB 1062, which would have allowed Ari­zona busi­ness own­ers to refuse to serve gay, les­bian, bisex­u­al, and trans­gen­der indi­vid­u­als mere­ly due to their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. Dis­crim­i­na­tion goes against the val­ues of our coun­try, and our laws should for­bid it — not allow it or encour­age it.