The Republican governor of Georgia recently vetoed a bill passed by the state legislature that would protect the right of clergy and houses of worship not to perform same-sex marriages, as well as the right of religious organizations to refrain from hiring individuals who openly disagree with their principles. Ryan T. Anderson comments:

[The veto] shows the lack of courage of many in the political class, and it also highlights the extreme nature of the left and the business community. . . . Executives from dozens of big-name companies, including Disney, Apple, Time Warner, Intel, and Salesforce, called on the governor to veto the bill. The NFL warned it could risk Atlanta’s bid for the Super Bowl and the NCAA hinted it could influence the state’s ability to host championship games. . . .

In explaining his veto, [Governor Nathan] Deal argued that the religious-liberty bill “doesn’t reflect the character of our state or the character of its people.” Leaving people free to act on their deepest religious convictions apparently isn’t one of those values. . . .

[P]rotecting minority rights after major social change is . . . a hallmark of American tolerance and pluralism. But Deal seems unwilling to do anything that might protect such people and their rights. . . . Good public policy is needed at the local, state, and federal levels to protect cherished American values. These policies would help achieve civil peace amid disagreement, maintain pluralism, and protect the rights of all Americans, regardless of what faith they may practice.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.