Faith Groups Express Betrayal At Religious Exemption Veto

“This is why people are angry with the politicians of our nation,” said Ditty. “They are elected to represent the will of the people. They are not elected to represent Hollywood values nor Wall Street values.”

Virginia Galloway, with the Georgia chapter of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, was another of many upset at the film industry and other businesses’ vocal opposition to the bill.

“We give them all kinds of tax breaks and then they use our tax dollars to fight against the will and religious rights of the people of Georgia. How dare they?” Galloway said.

Citing media reports that the CEO of the cloud computing company Salesforce, had celebrated Deal’s veto, Galloway said, “Those aren’t our values. Go back to San Francisco.”

Others were openly critical of the moment in Deal’s announcement when the governor said he does not respond well to threats, a reference to the wave of concerns about the bill’s potential for discrimination from the business community.

Timothy Head, the executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, called the governor’s veto a “thick irony,” in terms of international political perceptions. Head said Russian lawmakers had recently asked him, on a visit to Moscow for a national prayer breakfast, for examples of religious freedom legislation they could look to that might be helpful economically.

“I actually had to turn to the federal government and other states, rather than my home state [to find an example],” Head said.

Russia passed a law in 2013 banning homosexual “propaganda,” which the nonprofit Human Rights Watch, among others, has said led to violence with impunity against LGBT people there.

“I don’t really have a comment about the rest of their policy,” said Head, but pointed out “even countries that we have not necessarily thought of as religiously-free countries are moving in the direction of more freedom, and here we are in the state of Georgia having to fight tooth and nail.”

State Sen. Marty Harbin and other lawmakers called for a special legislative session to override the governor’s veto.

“That’s our only option to move immediately, either that or wait for next year. And I think we try to do it now, while things are on everybody’s mind. I think that’s just a better idea,” said Harbin.

Based on the bill’s margin of victory, it’s not clear whether lawmakers will have the support they need – three-fifths of both the House and the Senate – to call a special session.

“The community of faith needs to know that we are standing up for them and on their behalf and will continue to do so. This issue will not go away,” said State Rep. Wes Cantrell.

The group of supporters vowed to continue pushing for religious exemptions in the coming year if their efforts at forming a special session should fail.