The bill’s definition of “substantial burden” on religion also seems broader because it specifically singles out any action designed “to prevent, inhibit, or curtail religiously-motivated practice consistent with a sincerely held religious belief”—these are the oft-cited wedding-vendor scenarios. And “religious belief” itself is defined nebulously as “the ability to act or refuse to act . . . whether or not the exercise is compulsory or central to a larger system of religious belief.” It’s not hard to imagine the range of attitudes that fall into this definition—including a flat denial as “God told me it’s wrong for me to serve you.”

Arkansas is also an outlier with respect to equality in that earlier this year, Governor Asa Hutchinson let another bill become law—he neither signed it nor vetoed it—prohibiting local governments from enacting ordinances extending civil-rights protections to gays and lesbians in areas such as employment and housing. In the absence of broad-based statutes that do just that at the state level, municipalities are generally free to pursue heightened safeguards against discrimination. Hutchinson’s inaction effectively trumps those local efforts, and leaves LGBT folks wholly at the mercy of anyone wishing to discriminate.

As happened in Indiana, business interests have spoken out against Arkansas' proposed law. On Tuesday, retail giant Walmart took the extraordinary step to call on the governor to veto the legislation, and a tweet the company sent Tuesday night had CEO Doug McMillon’s name on it:

Our statement on Arkansas #HB1228 pic.twitter.com/KFPd91ejdo — walmartnewsroom

The pressure is working. On Wednesday, Hutchinson announced that he won’t sign the new religious-freedom bill as passed, and asked the legislature to recall the bill and modify it to “mirror” the federal version signed by Clinton. That’s a stunning reversal—Hutchinson had earlier promised to sign the law if it landed on his desk. But at Wednesday’s news conference, he acknowledged that there’s “clearly a generational gap” between lawmakers and opponents of the bill, one of whom turns out to be someone from his own family: The governor said his son Seth signed a petition calling on him to veto it.

Whatever the Arkansas legislature does next, Hutchinson’s move signals that the backlash against this wave of religious-freedom bills will at least bring some of them more in line with the one Clinton pushed more than 20 years ago. To be sure, the mother of all RFRAs isn’t perfect and has been vastly expanded by the Supreme Court. But as enacted, it was never destined to ignite the crazy culture war between religion and equality we’re seeing today.