LGBT Community Braces to Fight Religious Anti Gay Legislation

Freshman Rep. Steve Russell (R-Okla.) (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki )

Adam Gonzalez: As we approached Y2K on the millennial the anti gay republicans used “Family Values” to try to keep gays unprotected from any laws and keeping gay marriage away from them. They fed all these lies of how bad homosexuals were but they just needed to change their “lifestyle’ 

This did not work. Some of the dirt fighters in this brawl in part of the GOP were the Leaders of the House, like Rep Gingrich. Gingrich who was cheating on his sick wife who had cancer. He decided to come clean and serve his wife with divorce papers while she was dying in the hospital while getting radiation treatments. {GOP~ Family Values} The next speaker Danny Hastert who continue the fight  against gays on the Family Values theme even though not with a lot of fervor still he was a facilitator to keep away laws protecting gays most times not even bringing them to a vote.   Danny Hastert is in Jail right now for molesting boys and then paying them over a million dollars in hush money when he was a wrestling teacher. Imagine what they showed the American voter about their family values. 

On the Senate we had Mitch McConnell who is still there fighting the gay community. The House GOP whip called the hammer by his peers, Tom de Lay. He quit politics to go and dance on TV for” Do you want to be star” Full of values!

The new fighting political plans are… since everything else failed is something almost most americans hold dear and that is religion. The Supreme Court recognizes the gay community as a community being discriminated and allows gay marriage making them a community like any other community. You would think they would give up..No! They want to neutralize gay civil rights by anybody using religion to deny any service, work, promotion, apartment and there is no end to it,  if it was approved. 

Imagine when the civil rights bills were passed under Lyndon B Johnson in 1965 would be neutralized by the KKK or anyone who feels offended by blacks to not serve them and do what they were doing before. Separate drinking fountains, “Separate bathrooms” Does it sounds familiar? Except is being done to gays. How would the nation have taken legislation that would refuse blacks all the rights they were given because of religion or distaste for them? Does it make sense?

Lisa Rein and Karoun Demirjian reported the following story Friday on the Washington Post:

The country’s largest LGBT rights group on Thursday went to battle against a religious-based amendment tacked onto the annual defense policy bill that advocates say would strip away gay rights in federal contracting.

The Human Rights Campaign called it the first legislation to pass a congressional committee that would roll back expanded rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people at the federal level since the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples must be allowed to marry.

“We see this as social conservatives in the House trying to push what they view as a religious liberty exemption and use it as a sword rather than a shield,” David Stacy, the HRC’s director of government affairs, said in an interview.

[Obama to sign order banning bias in federal contracting against LGBT employees]

The measure, introduced by freshman Rep. Steve Russell (R-Okla.) at 12:30 a.m. as the House Armed Services Committee prepared to pass the defense bill, would require the government to give religious organizations it signs contracts with exemptions in federal civil rights law and the Americans Disabilities Act.

Those laws do not ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. So the legislation would effectively override the executive order President Obama issued in 2014 prohibiting federal contractors from such discrimination.

The amendment provides an exemption for “any religious corporation, religious association, religious educational institution or religious society” contracting with the government. It quickly prompted heated exchanges between Russell and committee Democrats, who said it was purposefully unclear. 

The measure, approved 33-29 on a mostly party-line vote at 2 a.m., could signal that the backlash in numerous states against LGBT anti-discrimination laws is now moving to Congress.

Stacy said that defeating the amendment on the House floor and in the Senate is now one of Human Rights Campaign’s top priorities. By late Thursday, a coalition of 42 civil rights groups called the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination had sent the committee a letter opposing the amendment.

It “would authorize taxpayer-funded discrimination in each and every federal contract and grant,” the letter said of the measure. “The government should never fund discrimination and no taxpayer should be disqualified from a job under a federal contract or grant because he or she is the ‘wrong’ religion.”

Stacy said the language in the amendment also would apply to organizations that receive federal grants. “If the government says, we’re going to fund a homeless shelter, they can refuse to hire an LGBT person to staff it even if 40 percent of the people they’re serving are LGBT,” he said.

Russell said his aim was simply to clarify “ambiguous language” concerning the rights of religious groups that already exists in federal law.

[White House says Obama’s LGBT order will not provide religious exemption ]

“Unfortunately, guidance from the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, however well-intended, has caused confusion on the president’s executive order regarding religious contractors within the scope of their protections under law,” Russell told his colleagues. He said he wants to ensure that faith-based organizations — about 2,000 receive federal contracts every year — are on equal footing with secular ones.

But Democrats accused Russell of trying to mask what his amendment would really do: Allow federal contractors to discriminate against LGBT employees.

“The way this amendment is written, it doesn’t matter if you are a religious organization,” said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the committee’s ranking member.

“You can basically be a private contractor and this just gives you the right to discriminate if you decide you just don’t want to do business with gay people or with anybody else for that matter on a discriminatory basis within a protected class.”

The sweeping defense authorization bill is likely to go to the House floor in the next few weeks. The Senate Armed Services Committee has yet to mark up its version.