Longtime Fox News contributor rejects network’s anti-gay rhetoric, gets cut off during segment

After Jan Brewer’s veto of Arizona’s anti-gay “religious liberty” bill, conservative voices are struggling to justify why they supported what many saw as another morally repugnant chapter in the state’s legislative history.

But not longtime Fox News contributor Bernie Goldberg, who pushed back against the network’s support of ideologues behind the bill during an appearance on The Kelly File this Thursday.

Clearly disgusted the bill’s apologists, Goldberg asserted that it was another example religious ideology targeting gays while hiding under the guise of “freedom.”

“And my take was that I understand the concern of social conservatives, religious people. I understand that,” Goldberg said.

“But if you open a shop on Main Street, open to the general public, then you have to really serve the general public. And you can’t say, ‘Well, I’m not going to serve these people, but I will serve those people.’ And a lot of the people commenting on this…”

“Why not? Why not? I mean, this is America,” fill-in host Shannon Bream interrupted. “We all have freedoms. I mean, why would you want to do business with somebody, no matter what your personal issue was that they had with you, why would you want to force them to do business with you? Why not just go down the street and say, “I’m going to spend my money to somebody who supports me and is kind to me and wants to help me and provide these services for me.”

“Okay. Let’s take that argument to its logical conclusion,” Goldberg shot back. “Let’s say it’s not a social conservative Christian who opens the shop but a devout Muslim who opens up a restaurant in your town, wherever your town is. And the woman goes in for lunch, and he says, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. You can’t come into this restaurant. You need to be here with a man. Those are my deeply-held religious beliefs. Okay?’”

“I probably wouldn’t want to eat there,” Bream said.

“Well, that’s up to you to not want to eat there. But you know, would you have made this argument in 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina, when four black college students went to Woolworth and sat at the lunch counter where they were not wanted and said, ‘I want lunch.’ They are American heroes, because they didn’t get up and say, ‘I’m not wanted here. I’ll go someplace else.’”

Watch the exchange in the video below:

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