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Senator On Governor Nathan Deal’s Religious Freedom Veto: ‘Roll Over For Anti-Christ,’ ‘Abandoned His Faith’

By Steph Bazzle

From the archive: published Mar 31, 2016, 10 years ago. Details may have changed since.

Arkansas Senator Jason Rapert is expressing some strong opinions on Governor Nathan Deal’s veto of a Religious Freedom bill that would reportedly have cost the state billions of dollars. Senator Rapert says that by vetoing the bill, Governor Deal has abandoned his faith, and rolled over for the anti-Christ.

Earlier this week, the governor of Georgia announced he would veto a bill that, while titled as a ruling on religious freedom, would have had far-reaching implications. According to Timothy Holbrook, a Professor of Law writing in a piece for CNN, the law would have allowed religious organizations to directly discriminate against those in the LGBT community — not just to refuse marriages (religious leaders, unlike government officials, always have this right, incidentally) but to refuse charitable services, even if those services are provided with tax dollars. It would also, he says, overturn nondiscrimination statutes that individual cities have chosen to put in place, even where those cities’ residents want the laws — taking the choice away from the voters themselves.

Some conservative politicians and religious leaders have spoken out since Governor Deal’s veto, saying that the bill was a necessary protection of religious freedom. Ted Cruz, for instance, accused Deal of “siding with leftist activists.”

Dr. Ben Carson, who suspended his presidential campaign earlier this month and endorsed Donald Trump instead, also spoke, saying that the veto went against the will of the citizens of Georgia.

However, Arkansas Senator took his criticism a step further, declaring that Nathan Deal had abandoned his faith, and referring to the veto as a failure to stand up for Christian values, and even alluding to a surrender to the anti-Christ. On his Facebook page, he declared the following.

He shared a blog post from the Institute on Religion and Democracy comparing political correctness and LGBT rights to persecution of Christians for their faith. The post describes individuals who refuse to renounce their faith even when confronted with death, and suggests that if Nathan Deal’s faith was stronger, he, too, would have stood up for it, rather than “sacrificing the protection of pastors and faith-based organizations for the sake of approval.”

Rapert isn’t only responding to Governor Deal’s veto, though — he has been expressing strong opposition to LGBT protections and rights in general, including a call for states to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage.

As for the governor, he has issued his own statement on the Religious Freedom bill, saying that it was unnecessary.

“I find it ironic that today some in the religious community feel it necessary to ask the government to confer upon them certain rights and protections. If indeed our religious liberty is conferred by God and not by man-made government, we should heed the ‘hands-off’ admonition of the First Amendment to our Constitution.”

Last week, while the bill was still being discussed and debated, Variety reported that Disney, Marvel, and other film and entertainment companies that film some of their material in Georgia (the photo above shows the governor at an Atlanta screening of Ant-Man, a Disney film partially shot in Georgia) had promised to boycott the state and take their business elsewhere, taking massive amounts of revenue from the state, if Governor Nathan Deal passed the Religious Freedom bill.

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