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Governor Deal's veto is not entirely unexpected, but it is no less disappointing for it. Political pundits (at least on the right) will criticize his surrender to extortion by the "business community," which, in Georgia, as last year in Indiana, parades as a champion of LGBT civil rights even as it panders to communists and dictators overseas wherever there is a buck to be made. Perhaps the Governor's most abject surrender, however, was to the courts. He gave up on "legislating something that is better left to the broad protections of the First Amendment" and the judiciary. But these "protections" are neither "broad" nor deep, especially when they run up against the demands of the "LGBT community." Governor Deal has dealt a setback, not only to civil liberties in Georgia, but also to a sound understanding of the constitutional division of responsibility for protecting them.
