Legislators Who Voted To Kill North Dakota LGBT Equality Bill Shamed

The same week that Indiana and Arkansas enacted new "religious freedom" bills with explicit provisions that they could not be used as defenses or sources of discrimination based upon sexual orientation or gender identity, despite the fact that neither state has statewide civil rights laws that include LGBT citizens, the North Dakota State Senate overwhelmingly rejected a bill that would have done just that.

What happened next was great. The largest newspaper in the largest city in the state printed the pictures of every single person who had voted to deny civil rights protections to LGBT people in the state, which lead the Republican Governor Jack Dalrymple to say:

"I’m concerned that we have missed an opportunity to affirm what North Dakotans already believe, which is that discrimination based on an individual’s sexual orientation is not acceptable.”

Gee, ya think?