ABC News reports that “Canadian rocker Bryan Adams is canceling a performance this week in Mississippi, citing the state’s new law that allows religious groups and some private businesses to refuse service to gay couples.”

Fox News & Commentary host Todd Starnes described the Mississippi law very differently last week:

The Religious Freedom Law will “protect sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions of individuals, organizations and private associations from discriminatory action by state government or its political subdivisions, which would include counties, cities, and institutions of higher learning.”

In other words, every Christian who owns a business in the state of Mississippi owes the governor a thank-you.

“This bill merely reinforces the rights which currently exist to the exercise of religious freedom as stated in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Gov. Bryant wrote in a message posted on Twitter.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins praised Gov. Bryant “for standing up to the fundamental freedoms of the people they represent.”

“No person should be punished by the government with crippling fines or face disqualification for simply believing what President Obama believed just a few years ago – that marriage is the union of a man and a woman,” Perkins said.

According to ABC News, Adams said he was canceling a Thursday show at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum in Biloxi because he could not “in good conscience” perform where “certain people are being denied their civil rights due to their sexual orientation.”

This follows Bruce Springsteen’s announcement late last week that he was canceling a show in North Carolina to protest a new North Carolina law that affirms a longstanding legal requirement that biological males use men’s restrooms even if they are transgender, and that biological women use women’s restrooms even if they are transgender.

E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt called the law the sort of legislation that’s like an “evil virus” spreading across the country. 

Conservative radio host and Stream columnist Michael Brown described it as a commonsense protection for women and girls, and addressed Springsteen in an open letter to Springsteen Sunday:

Let’s say that a 6’ 4” male who used to play professional football and who has secretly agonized over his gender identity for years finally determines that he must be true to himself and live as a woman.

Do you think it might be traumatic for a little girl using the library bathroom to see this big man walk into her room wearing a dress and a wig? Should we take her feelings into account, or is she not important? What if that was your granddaughter? Would you care if she was traumatized? And when you speak of “the human rights of all of our citizens” does that include little girls like this?

I understand that this gentleman will have difficulties should he decide to dress and live as a woman, but that is still a choice he is making, and it is not fair to impose his struggles on innocent little children, is it?

The Mississippi law that Adams is protesting takes effect July 1.