Heck: Indy Star editorial campaign is a terrible idea

The Editorial Board of The Indianapolis Star is preparing an aggressive editorial campaign designed to push state lawmakers into enacting dangerous anti-First Amendment legislation in their coming session.

Karen Ferguson Fuson, The Star’s president and publisher, recently sent an invitation to community leaders from Central Indiana asking those leaders to visit The Star’s offices for a briefing about the newspaper’s plans.

Now, no one should be shocked to find out that The Star’s opinion team has chosen a side in this looming battle that will pit the rights of conscience against the unconstitutional demands of the rainbow mafia. Just remember that when honest Hoosiers were being fileted by the national media as angry bigots, The Star didn’t take up ink to defend our honor.

Instead, the paper fueled the absurd misrepresentation of Indiana by embarrassingly using an entire front page to demand our lawmakers “fix” a law that was nothing more than a reaffirmation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Rather than thoughtfully counter the anti-Indiana hatred, The Star unwisely provided that hatred unwarranted justification and validation, thereby hurting the state and its people.

It’s important to note that The Star is a corporately owned entity and there is nothing inappropriate about a company and its leaders expressing their views. The Star’s editors are completely entitled to articulate opinions that are consistent with their deeply held moral convictions, even if they are ironically preparing a campaign to deny that same right to business owners and citizens who hold different moral convictions.

But I would caution the leadership of a newspaper I have always loved that becoming the mouthpiece for a movement that cheers the financial ruin of Christian families trying to faithfully obey God before men, might not be a great business decision.

Since the Supreme Court issued its marriage edict, three separate national polls show support for this gay revolution crumbling dramatically. And why wouldn’t it? Any movement that harasses everyone who disagrees with their totalitarian schemes as bigots and haters, and offensively degrades the legacy of Bible-preaching civil rights marchers by equating them to drag queens, isn’t going to win over the hearts and minds of good people. And any newspaper that ties itself to such a crowd willfully destroys its own credibility among the people it serves.

If you don’t think that’s happening, consider that since Gannett Corporation obtained The Indy Star in 1999, the paper has taken a hard left turn in its opinion writing. How far left? In the midst of the recent Religious Freedom Restoration Act debate, liberal columnist Matthew Tully actually wrote that Angie’s List CEO Bill Oesterle might “save” the Indiana Republican Party given his strident opposition to protecting religious freedom in the state.

Contemplate Tully’s ludicrous premise: The CEO of a company that has never turned an annual profit needed to save a political party that’s been so successful it holds supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature, the governor’s mansion, and every statewide elected office except two.

So rather than reading the demands of The Star’s editors in the coming session, state lawmakers would be better advised to look at what is happening in communities from Goshen to Carmel when cities attempt to enact local versions of this dangerous legislation. In Carmel, constituents who pummeled councilmen with overwhelming opposition to the ordinance far outnumbered those who voiced their support. Extrapolate that outward to the entire state to get a sense for how unpopular The Star’s coming campaign will be outside the echo chamber of socially liberal corporate and media boardrooms.

Regardless of the media’s ignorant portrayal, Hoosiers aren’t haters. They are good people tired of being maligned for their faith in God’s Word as a more reliable foundation for our culture’s moral compass than what trends on Twitter. And let’s hope that their elected representatives will recognize that despite the coming headlines on The Star’s opinion content, these so-called anti-discrimination statutes are nothing but thinly veiled assaults on the constitutionally protected rights of conscience, and should be thoroughly rejected.

Heck is a speaker, author and teacher. Follow him on Twitter: @peterheck. Visit his website at www.peterheck.com.