Jon Gilman, Zionsville, ended up at the Equality rally in Warsaw Tuesday unexpectedly. He was in town to meet with some investors, and after leaving the meeting happened to see the Equality rally across the street. It’s a cause that’s important to him. “I wanted to let Warsaw know that we’re working on this. We started a coalition that represents 5,000 different jobs in the State of Indiana and it’s now 40 different tech companies. And we want to push, essentially municipality by municipality, to pass these ordinances to expand civil rights protections to the LGBT community, and eventually the goal is to next year introduce into the State Senate and the State Legislature a bill to expand it statewide,” Gilman said. “So we’ve got all the best and the brightest down in Indy behind this. We need to make Indiana an appealing place to live. We lose a lot of our best and brightest because they consider this kind of a backwards state, and stuff like what’s going on across the street (at the pro-RFRA rally) doesn’t help.” He noted that in July, Zionsville passed an ordinance protecting the civil rights of the LGBT community without any opposition. Such an ordinance will be important for a city like Warsaw that bills itself as the orthopedic capitol of the world, he said. “In order to recruit the best and brightest, you need to bring in outside talent, and the companies here that deal in the orthopedic industry want to bring in the best and brightest, they want to retain some of the best and brightest that are leaving Notre Dame, Purdue and IU, and in order to do that you need to create a place where tolerance is accepted,” he said. “This also has a huge business impact. If you can’t recruit the best and brightest because they think the state is socially backwards, you’re not going to do very well in business.” Emails released recently by the Indiana Economic Development Corp. illustrate the effects the Religious Freedom Restoration Act had on existing and potential new businesses in the state. Among correspondence the IEDC shared with Indianapolis NBC affiliate WTHR, several companies said they were reconsidering a move to Indiana in the wake of RFRA’s passage in March, according to a report the station published Thursday. Other businesses owners already in Indiana expressed their dismay, and at least one showed reluctance to support other IEDC projects following the bill’s passage. “I am up to my ears over this Religious Freedom Act,” wrote Chuck Surack, founder of Fort Wayne instrument retailer Sweetwater, in an email responding to an IEDC request for support for the Regional Cities Initiative shortly after RFRA passed. “In every waking hour I have had it is all I have dealt with since last Thursday. It has cost me, my company and my employees tons of time, money and many long-term relationships.” In another email, according to the report, Wayne County Economic Development Corp. President Valerie Shaffer wrote to IEDC about a Canadian automotive supply company reconsidering locating its business in Indiana. “They feel like coming to Indiana in the near future would demonstrate their companies’ support of the bill. Not good,” Shaffer wrote, also recommending that “some sort of outreach from the IEDC or the governor’s office may be appropriate in an effort to repair our relationship.” Her email followed one from an official of the Canadian company, which said “the damage is done” and “hard to believe this would happen in this day and age, especially in Indiana ... how can anyone go to Indiana to start up now?” according to WTHR. The state had even signed a $750,000 contract with a New York public relations firm to repair its image, but canceled it in summer after the bill was amended to clarify that the law can’t be used to justify discrimination and the negative reactions died down. The Indiana Chamber of Commerce reported receiving about 600 emails, phone calls and letters in the weeks after the law passed, but those dwindled to nothing in the months after the amendment, according to WTHR. Still, chamber President Kevin Brinegar told the station, the state and its businesses "clearly suffered damage" from the controversy. The Human Rights Campaign, a Washington, D.C-based LGBT civil rights group, said in response to the report that the emails underscore the need for antidiscrimination legislation. “These emails are further proof of the deeply toxic impact Mike Pence's abhorrent anti-LGBT law had on Indiana's economic climate, and the immense opposition it stirred within the business community,” said Olivia Dalton, HRC senior vice president of communications and marketing. “Pence’s law hurt Indiana's image despite the fact that three out of four Hoosiers disagreed with it. Politicians considering similar bills across the nation should take note of the tremendous damage such laws bring to their business communities.”
