Republican governors rush to appease 'gay' activists

Gay rights' activists are causing quite a shake-up in Republican Party policies.

Republican governors in at least two states – North Dakota and Michigan – watching the negative fallout from Indiana's recently passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act have now set their lawmakers on notice and told them: We need more protections for "gays."

Lawmakers in North Dakota, where the majority rule is Republican, recently voted against a bill to include protections for "gays" in housing and employment. But the move angered Gov. Jack Dalrymple, a fellow Republican, the New Zealand Herald reported.

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Meanwhile, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder issued Michigan lawmakers a stern warning against passing any type of religious freedom bill that doesn't include specific protections for homosexuals. Citing the furor in Indiana, Snyder said he will veto any such bill, the newspaper reported.

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Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has also said he may consider an executive order to guarantee "gays," along with transgenders and bisexuals, aren't discriminated against by state agencies.

State Rep. Warwick Sabin, a Democrat, supported the move, saying the issue isn't going away any time soon.

"Other states are moving ahead of us and Arkansas is being left in the dust," he said, the New Zealand Herald reported. "We need to make an affirmative statement about our values as a state and I know that the vast majority of Arkansans believe in fairness and opportunity for all of its citizens."

The wave of action started when Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed into law a Religious Freedom Restoration Act condemned by critics as a government stamp of approval to discriminate against the LGBT community.

Pence, facing widespread fire, then called for lawmakers to pen a clarification of the law to ensure businesses would not be sheltered from lawsuits if they discriminated against "gays." That clarification was then assailed by religious freedom advocates as a gutting of the law

Shortly after, Republicans in Arkansas softened their stances on a religious-freedom bill that was supposed to be a model of Indiana's law and instead presented a compromise measure that critics again condemned as a cave to "gay"-rights pressures.