Pat Buchanan: Arizona's Brewer Should, Will Sign Anti-Gay Bill

The controversy over a proposed Arizona law that would allow business owners, as long as they assert their religious beliefs, to deny service to gay and lesbian customers has taken the issue of discrimination from the "sublime to the ridiculous," Fox News contributor Pat Buchanan said Tuesday.

In an exclusive interview with "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV, the former presidential candidate predicted that Gov. Jan Brewer, who is weighing whether to sign the legislation into law or veto it, is "going to stand with those Christian folks," though in doing so she may "hurt herself very badly."

"The idea of forcing bakers and flower makers to contribute to things they believe are wrong, that goes against the grain of any traditional conservative," he said. "What I think is she should defend the rights of these religious folks and that's exactly right. That's what she will do."

He said the law itself is reasonable.

"To these individuals, the fellow that's the baker, he didn't want to bake a cake for . . . a same-sex union, because he said basically it violates my religious beliefs . . . it seems to me he's exercising his own personal and religious freedom," Buchanan said. "I find a hard time believing that a same-sex couple is persecuted because a baker won't bake them a cake."

"It's gone from a sublime to the ridiculous here," he added. "Some of these civil-rights laws, in my judgment, once the job they were passed to do has been done, the reason they are continuing is because of this gigantic bureaucratic empire that has been built up and erected to sit on top of all of us and oversee and police and monitor every decision we make in our corporate or personal lives."

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Buchanan asserted that "the other side has sort of got the bit in its teeth, this gay marriage thing."

"There's no doubt it's got . . . very widespread popular support among the young, and the media are behind it 1,000 percent," he said. "But what you have to do in these cases is stand tall for what you believe in."

Buchanan also said that Attorney General Eric Holder, in suggesting a way for state attorneys general to avoid defending bans on gay marriage in states where they exist, is opening the way to "anarchy."

"What would they say if conservative attorneys general declined to enforce the civil-rights law? " he asked. "They say, 'we just disagree with that'? Or Obamacare? They say, 'we're not going to move on this material, we don't like it, we think it's wrong, we think the country's now against it, so we're not going to enforce.' That way lies anarchy."

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