SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Arizona Governor Jan Brewer courted controversy once again last Thursday after the state legislature approved Senate Bill 1062, which allows businesses with strongly held religious beliefs to refuse service to gays and lesbians. The polarizing legislation passed by a vote of 33 to 27, leading critics to denounce the bill as state-sponsored discrimination. Brewer’s administration had previously come under fire in 2010 after the passage of SB1070, an anti-immigration bill that Democrats chided as draconian. Gov. Brewer, however, vehemently defended the bills as tools for promoting equal protections, not for fostering prejudice or bigotry. On Monday, to illustrate the altruistic goals of her administration, Brewer unveiled plans to create special communities for the disparate religious, ethnic, racial and LGBT groups in Arizona. She also introduced a radical new state constitution based on “an established set of laws practiced around the world before the United States existed.”

Republican lawmakers in support of SB1062 argued its merits by citing a case in New Mexico where a photographer was sued for refusing to take wedding pictures of a gay couple. Gov. Brewer said the bill was written to safeguard the mutual welfare of business owners of faith as well as godless homosexuals.

“SB1062 protects God-fearing Christians from consorting with sinners, just as it protects sodomites from the accidental injuries they sometimes sustain when stirring up trouble around decent neighborhoods,” Gov. Brewer said. “Just as the immigration reforms in SB1070 protect Americans who want to live in America, not Mexico.”

Brewer accused Democrats of misrepresenting her state’s legislation in the press for political gain.

“Arizona is taking an aggressive and unprecedented stance toward progress and equality,” she said. “Liberals in government are insidiously twisting our words to push their socialist agendas. They just did the same thing to Scott Walker. In his email, he said he could handle being a black, disabled, one armed, drug-addicted, Jewish homosexual on a pacemaker who is HIV positive, bald, orphaned, unemployed, lives in a slum, and has a Mexican boyfriend. How many Democrats would feel the same?”

As part of Arizona’s new “uber-equality” initiative, Brewer has coordinated closely with redevelopment and census experts to create a series of special communities for every class of tax-paying citizen in the state.

“We all know the Democrats’ mythical idea of some utopian society where everybody gets along with each other --it’s a bunch of hogwash and lip-service,” Brewer said. “But our state has found a way to allow every group to express its beliefs, in dedicated environments, where they will be free from ideological or even physical attacks by those who disagree.”

Beginning in 2015, Arizona will launch a series of planned communities, or camps, based on specific concentrations of races, ethnicities, sexual orientations and religions. The state’s Department of Transportation will offer free train service to each camp. Members within a concentration will receive unique identity badges that grant them secure access to their camps.

“This way, people who don’t belong to a specific camp can’t just stroll in and cause trouble,” Brewer said. “State security teams will be put in place, like they are now more or less, to authorize access, verify papers and provide safe escort after curfew.”

Gov. Brewer also presented the first draft of a complete overhaul to the state’s constitution.

“There were laws in place long before the Founding Fathers scribbled out the Constitution,” Brewer said. “It’s a cute document, but it’s also very contemporary and conventional by conservative standards. You know, 1787 is recent history, really. Conservatives are all about the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ philosophy, so we’re rolling out an entirely revised set of laws based on the time-honored legislation practiced around the ancient world -- and even in many parts of the United States today, particularly the South. These rules are grounded in moral and spiritual truths that apply to every person equally, not just specific subsets of the population as in the Bill of Rights.”

A complete list of newly outlawed actions can be accessed at this link. Following are highlights of legal violations contained in the reformed state constitution. All of these offenses are punishable by imprisonment and/or fine. In some cases, as noted, the death penalty applies.

1. Consuming blood
2. Touching an unclean animal
3. Carelessly making an oath
4. Lying to a neighbor
5. Failing to report found items to authorities
6. Allowing one's hair to become unkempt
7. Tearing one's clothes
8. Eating or touching the carcass of any shellfish
9. Going to church within 33 days of giving birth to a boy
10. Going to church within 66 days of giving birth to a girl
11. Marrying one’s wife’s sister while the wife still lives
12. Having sex with a woman during her period
13. Having sex with a neighbor’s wife
14. Sacrificing one's children to Molek
15. Male homosexual intercourse (although no law has been determined regarding women having sex with women)
16. Manufacturing representations of God or related religious icons
17. Mowing or harvesting crops to the very edge of a field
18. Picking up grapes that have fallen in the vineyard
19. Mixing fabrics in clothing
20. Cross-breeding animals
21. Planting different seeds in the same field
22. Sleeping with another man’s slave
23. Eating fruit from a tree within four years of planting it
24. Practicing divination, astrology, psychic readings, etc.
25. Trimming one's beard
26. Cutting one's hair at the sides
27. Getting tattoos
28. Making one's daughter prostitute herself
29. Employing the services of mediums or spiritualists
30. Cursing one's father or mother (carries the death penalty)
31. Judges or clergymen marrying prostitutes, divorcees or widows
32. Slaughtering a cow or sheep and its young on the same day
33. Working on Sundays
34. Blasphemy (carries the death penalty)
35. Killing someone else’s animal (carries the death penalty)
36. Selling land permanently
37. Selling a native Arizonan as a slave; selling foreigners, however, is permissible

2014. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. See disclaimers.