>>FWIW, neither hospital closed in this case. (And part of the issue was that the non-Catholic hospital was the stronger partner in this case and the community was furious that they were acceding to this demand.) What has actually happened here is that the non-Catholic hospital instead became part of an academic hospital system. I think the Catholic hospital is still solo.

Was the Catholic Hospital damaged by not being able to merge to mutual advantage? Who cares because their position was naughty, I guess, while the good hospital was OK and merged elsewhere. Perhaps Catholic morality is fair game in 2016 while transsexual mores are not (aka all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.)

>>I think passing laws you know are unconstitutional is frivolous and a waste of the taxpayers' money. There's no evidence that this law was an effort to eliminate complication; it was passed to give people permission to discriminate.

... according to the narrative that blames Pence for signing a bill that passed 40-10 in Indiana. What was he supposed to do? In addition, I'm not willing uncritically to accept that the good Indiana people or representatives would inflict the bad bill you describe. So, reverting to the actual verbiage of Indiana SB 101:

"A governmental entity may not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion... [unless it] (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest."

Which part of that do you find so repugnant, please? Which part "give[s] people permission to discriminate" as you allege? Feel free to use the Muslim bakery as an example since the act defines "person" to include businesses, organizations and individuals who can cite violation of SB 101 as defense in legal proceedings. While SB 101 says government does not need to be party to such litigation, the act grants government an "unconditional right to intervene in order to respond to the person's invocation of this chapter." IOW if somebody discriminates vilely and invokes SB 101 as defense, the government has explicit privilege to respond without having to join the litigation.

So I have to ask: doesn't government have a compelling interest in discrimination against gays? For your version to be reasonable, the government has no such interest. I doubt anybody seriously believes that though, so is this just another in the barrage of false narratives that eventually have to be ignored because they are so numerous and unreasonable?