WASHINGTON – Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake joined an overwhelming majority of senators Thursday to pass a bill banning workplace discrimination based on an employee’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

Kelvin Long, a Navajo who will serve as cultural adviser for a Native American religious program at the Coconino County Jail, inspects a circular rebar frame that will be covered with blankets to form a sweat lodge.

Gov. Jan Brewer forcefully declared that her proposal to expand the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System to hundreds of thousands of new patients is a pro-life plan. As a pro-life governor, she said, she will not sit idly by while people suffer. Since then, opponents of her plan have taken up the pro-life mantle in the Legislature.

Our presidential election campaign is picking up steam, and money is being raised as never before, mostly to convince voters that the other party’s guy is a very poor choice to be president. Most voters have already dug in and need little convincing that their views are a kind of political light that must prevail over the opposing darkness. It’s as if we have brought religious sectarianism into our politics as they have been doing in Iraq and now in Egypt.

While a bill allowing religiously motivated employers to deny contraception coverage to workers spurred heated debate on its path to becoming law this session, one of its provisions was largely overlooked.

Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill Friday that relaxes Arizona's requirement for health plans to cover contraception, legislation that supporters called a protection for religious freedom and that critics called an attack on women.

Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a bill that ensures Arizona workers won't lose their professional licenses for denying services on religious grounds.

Already steeped in the battle over abortion and contraception in health plans, social conservatives have also ramped up their efforts to advance religious expression in the public square, taking advantage of the dominance of policymakers at the state Capitol with similar impulses.

State representatives today passed a scaled-back bill that would allow religious-based employers to deny contraception coverage to their workers.

The amended bill, HB2625, passed the Arizona House by a vote of 36-21, and will need to go back to the Senate for final approval there. If approved there, it will be delivered to Gov. Jan Brewer for either a signature or a veto.

Persuaded by a promise to substantially narrow the legislation, the Senate today passed a measure to allow employers with religious objections to not pay for their workers’ contraception coverage.