FIGHTING THE LAST WAR.

Jan Brewer said no to Butch Crow and Rich Lowry is sad. After many paragraphs of "Gay? What gay? No mention of gay in this bill," Lowry finally gives it up and gets to the money shot:

The market has a ready solution for these couples: There are other bakers, photographers and florists. The wedding business is not exactly bristling with hostility to gay people. If one baker won’t make a cake for gay weddings, the baker across town can hang a shingle welcoming all couples for all types of weddings.

Which is how it works for other kinds of people, too: If someone says "we don't serve your kind here," you can always go somewhere else. What's the big deal? Look. it's their lunch counter; who are you to say you have a right to be served there?

These guys are often accused of not seeing the connection, but make no mistake, they see it, alright. That's why they're working so hard to convince people that the folks forced to offer equal service to homosexuals are the wronged parties here. This is the best chance they've had since 1964, and they hate to see it slipping away.

UPDATE. In comments -- which are as usual way better than the post -- chuckling points out the relevant statute, in which the U.S. proscribed on the ground of "race, color, religion, or national origin" what conservatives are hell-bent on sticking to gay people.

"It's unfortunate, I think," says chuckling, "that that argument is not front and center in the professional liberal counterattack against this recent spate of 'religious freedom' bills." Then it's up to us amateurs -- just like in the Bowery Boys movies! Actually there's a pretty pro effort at Think Progress by Ian Millhiser, reminding us that in addition to states' rights and freedom of association, the brethren have often cited God in favor of separate-but-oh-who-cares-if-it's-equal. That's why religious-liberties bills are suddenly all the rage throughout the neo-Confederate diaspora.

And in a brief cheeky post I can't get to all the tropes conservatives are using to disguise their efforts here -- that may be work for the weekend. One that comes up in comments is the whole "'but it won't make much practical difference!' card," as Daniel Björkman describes it. It's a common tactic -- just give us this little piece of your rights and we'll go away! -- and Kia is very eloquent on how it works:

It looks stupid until you realize that if you concede the point you have in effect let him decide the value, to you, of what he wants to take from you. He wants to deprive you of the protection of a principle, so he pretends there is no principle at issue. So while you and he are in the living room discussing hypotheticals like two seekers of truth who happen to disagree, his lawyers are throwing your possessions into the street.