South Dakota Lawmaker: Bring Back American Apartheid!

After all, what’s so bad about giving bigot business owners the right to deny service to blacks and gays?

South Dakota state Sen. Phil Jensen (R) believes that a recently-killed bill that would have let companies discriminate against LGBT people should have also let businesses owners in the Ku Klux Klan refuse service to African-Americans.

Last week, the State Senate Judiciary voted, five to two, to kill Jensen’s SB 128, which went even beyond Arizona’s failed discrimination bill by explicitly saying that businesses could discriminate based on “sexual orientation.”

“As a follower of Jesus Christ, I’m commanded to love, to love everyone. That doesn’t mean I must condone the lifestyle choices that someone chooses,” Jensen explained to South Dakota Public Radio. “The GLBT movement doesn’t just want societies approval. They want their lifestyle choices applauded; they want standing ovations.”

But I’m sure you’d feel tingly all over if we applauded you because you’re such a devout follower of Republican Jesus. But we digress…

And in an interview with Rapid City Journal that was published over the weekend, the Republican lawmaker took his support for discrimination to the extreme.

“If someone was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and they were running a little bakery for instance, the majority of us would find it detestable that they refuse to serve blacks, and guess what? In a matter of weeks or so that business would shut down because no one is going to patronize them,” he said.

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.