Arizona governor Jan Brewer (R) recently vetoed a controversial bill that would allow businesses in the state to deny service to gays and lesbians if the proprietor felt that serving them would violate their religious rights.

Gay rights advocates have denounced the legislation, calling it a form of legal discrimination.

Certain business owners responded to this saying that it violates their religious rights by being forced to serve homosexuals when their religion denies that.

The governor’s reason behind the veto of the bill was that there have been no business owners whose rights have been violated, and also that the bill is not specific enough and could lead to court cases that were not originally intended.

“I hav not heard of one example in Arizona where business owners’ religious liberty has been violated,” Brewer said.  “The bill is broadly worded and could result in unintended and negative consequences.”

We had differing views on the issue, but in the end we all agreed on some points.

Some of the staff feels like businesses should not be able to discriminate against homosexuals at all, and sexuality should be completely left out of the business process.

The members of the staff who are against the bill also believe that the business owner providing their service has nothing to do with a person’s sexuality.  Baking a cake for someone has nothing to do with his or her sexuality.

Although many of us feel this way, a lot of the staff thinks that the owner of the business should be allowed to deny service to gays.

This is for a couple of reasons; one of those is that the person owns the business and should be able to deny whomever they want, the other is because if it violates their religious beliefs then it is their right to deny homosexuals service.

Some members of the staff believe that the government should not be able to step in and tell business owners what to do.

It is the government stepping over their boundaries trying to have more control over the citizens of this nation.

Despite our differing views on whether or not the bill should have been passed, the Har-Ber Herald staff all agreed on one thing.

We all think that everyone is equal, and should be loved.  Everyone has things that make them different, and who they are.  Whether this is race, religion, sexuality, socioeconomic status, or anything else, they should not be thought of or treated as a lesser human being because of that.