If the coverage I've heard and read is correct, the law allowed anyone to refuse service to anyone if they claim "religious reasons" for doing so, without any kind of legal liability. (I.e., they can't be sued.) Period.
Edit: The law was fed to a pet legislator by a conservative Christian PAC specifically in response to a gay couple who sued a wedding photographer for refusing them service explicitly because they were gay, so it's reasonably been interpreted as primarily anti-gay in motivation. But (again) if what I've seen and read is accurate, it is so broadly written -- apparently to keep it from being incredibly obvious that it's an anti-gay measure -- that any discrimatory behavior can be covered by an appropriate claim of "religious reasons". This may be what the legislators overlooked in their haste to pander to the PAC -- and realized the first time an "unapproved" bigot used it against Jews or Blacks or someone else it's no longer okay to treat like dirt, they were going to end up looking like monsters for legalizing it.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Edit: The law was fed to a pet legislator by a conservative Christian PAC specifically in response to a gay couple who sued a wedding photographer for refusing them service explicitly because they were gay, so it's reasonably been interpreted as primarily anti-gay in motivation. But (again) if what I've seen and read is accurate, it is so broadly written -- apparently to keep it from being incredibly obvious that it's an anti-gay measure -- that any discrimatory behavior can be covered by an appropriate claim of "religious reasons". This may be what the legislators overlooked in their haste to pander to the PAC -- and realized the first time an "unapproved" bigot used it against Jews or Blacks or someone else it's no longer okay to treat like dirt, they were going to end up looking like monsters for legalizing it.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.