There are likely more comfortable places to be this week than in the governor’s office in Indiana.

Who would have thought? With the internationally watched NCAA men’s basketball tournament Final Four games beginning on Saturday in Indianapolis, this should have been a festive week, with the eyes of the nation on Hoosier hospitality and lots of media coverage of the state’s Midwestern appeal.

Instead, Gov. Mike Pence and the Indiana Legislature have set the state image ablaze with their incendiary “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” which makes it possible for individuals and businesses citing sincerely held religious beliefs to deny goods and services to gays and lesbians. Pence continues to argue, ineffectively, that this isn’t the brand-new law’s intention — a point neatly undercut by the handful of professional anti-gay activists who flanked Pence, at his invitation, at a private signing ceremony for the bill.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence on ABC’s This Week With George Stephanapoulos. Pence repeatedly refused to say whether his state’s new law would allow discrimination against gays and lesbians.

ABC News

Pence did himself no favors in a disastrous appearance Sunday on ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopolous, in which he refused to answer whether the law would permit anti-gay discrimination or whether such discrimination should be legal in Indiana. There is no denying, however, that the law was conceived and passed as a reaction to a court ruling last October that allowed same-sex marriages to begin in Indiana.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act has become a national flashpoint, earning condemnation from major corporations and business leaders with interests in Indiana, city and state leaders (from Connecticut, Seattle and San Francisco, for starters) who promise not to spend public funds to travel to the state, celebrities, sports stars — even the NCAA.

The NCAA is headquartered in Indianapolis, by the way.

Hawaii Bill Was Mirror Image of Indiana Law

If some in Hawaii had their way, our state might be looking at exactly the same sort of image meltdown as Indiana: State House Reps. Bob McDermott, Gene Ward, Sharon Har, Marcus Oshiro and Sam Kong introduced House Bill 1160 earlier this year — a measure strikingly similar to Indiana’s law.

Care to imagine what effect its passage might have had on a tourism industry expected to welcome about 8.2 million visitors to our state this year?

This isn’t the first time such a gambit has been tried here, either. “Religious freedom” bills were introduced in 2014 and 2013, but legislators wisely turned those away and allowed this year’s version to die quietly without a hearing from the House Judiciary Committee. With good reason: Hawaii’s marriage equality law already exempts church facilities and church-owned businesses from serving same-sex couples if that conflicts with their faith. Further exemptions are unnecessary and would rightly be seen as potentially discriminatory.

Arkansas may be the next state facing an Indiana-style implosion of its own making. Its Legislature is in the final throes of passing a similar bill, which Gov. Asa Hutchinson has said he’ll sign, despite strong concern expressed by its leading corporate enterprise, Wal-Mart, as well as such prominent business leaders as Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Georgia legislators, meanwhile, are tiptoeing away from their own religious freedom act; they cancelled a Monday meeting that would have paved the way for a House vote on the measure today. It’s unclear whether the meeting or bill will be rescheduled.

Back in Indiana, Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard on Monday called a press conference to urge the state to add sexual orientation to the list of categories and characteristics upon which discrimination is outlawed. State Senate and House leaders held their own hastily arranged news event announcing their desire to “update” a law they claim is “misunderstood” — a claim not supported by legal experts or even the law’s community supporters, we might add.

The CEOs of nine of the state’s largest employers, including pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and service review website Angie’s List, sent a joint letter to Pence and legislative leaders late in the day demanding new legislation making it clear that RFRA can’t be used to discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

And the state’s largest newspaper, the Indianapolis Star, put an exclamation point on the day’s remarkable series of events by releasing its Tuesday front page a few hours early: It features a giant, capital-letter headline reading simply, “FIX THIS NOW,” below which runs a front-page editorial calling for enactment of a state law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The paper’s call for unity against discrimination drew immediate praise and had the hashtag #WeAreIndiana rapidly trending on Twitter.

We look forward to watching the Final Four later this week, but from the considerably calmer environs of the Aloha State, where the winds of freedom and equality make this a comfortable, hospitable place to call home. Let’s keep it that way.