Yesterday, I appeared on “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV to debate the now vetoed bogus Arizona “religious liberty” bill:
Besen noted that the nation has “been through this” before.
“We don’t want to get into a situation where private businesses turn people away for who they are,” he said. “If you’re open to the public, you damn well better serve all of the public.”
Besen related that as a youngster his father owned a pizza restaurant in a conservative part of Florida and that “I’ve served neo-Nazis pizza before.”
“We had Klansmen come in every day that talked about it,” he said. “We knew that they liked our pizza, we served them . . . We didn’t believe what they stood for, we didn’t like them, but it showed them that we’re open to the public, we serve all the public, and that’s what it is.”
He added that if the family didn’t want to serve everybody, “we would’ve created a private club . . . There’s a difference between religious liberty and religious bigotry.”
“It’s a very slippery slope, and anybody can be affected once we go down the road of discrimination based on so-called religious beliefs that are really just a justification for bigotry,” he added. “Nobody’s safe with this law . . . That’s why there is so much opposition.”
