A bill prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT employees has passed the House. This is putting a 2014 executive order into law.
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) tried to add an amendment about this to a Veterans affairs bill last week, but it was shot down. Yesterday Maloney’s measure passed 223-195 for the amendment to an energy and water spending bill.
Equality wins! We have a long way to go, but achieved big victory. Will keep fighting until every #LGBT American is safe, can pursue dreams.
— Sean Patrick Maloney (@RepSeanMaloney) May 26, 2016
Republicans are screwing it up, though. The bill gained bipartisan approval when this measure was added to it:
“…except as required by the First Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, and Article I of the Constitution.”
This means that LGBT people could still be discriminated against based on someone’s religious beliefs.
Republicans also put in some measures to support North Carolina’s HB2 bathroom law. This will prevent the federal government from withholding funds because of the bathroom law. Just recently, the Justice Department declared HB2 to be unconstitutional.
Minority leader Nancy Pelosi had this to say about it:
“After Republicans worked so hard to defeat Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney’s anti-discrimination amendment last week, we are happy to see his amendment succeed in the Energy & Water bill. However, the success of the Maloney Amendment does not hide the reality that House Republicans have chosen to make enabling discrimination against LGBT Americans a top legislative priority.”
For some odd reason, Republicans seem to be obsessed with transgender people and bathrooms. Bill O’Reilly spewed this nonsense earlier in the week on his show:
“Conservative, traditional, taking it easy, not trying to social-engineer sexuality until the child is emotionally ready, all of those things. Not the progressive agenda to wipe out gender, which is what we’re trying to do.”
My favorite liberal redneck had this to say about the Target bathroom hysteria:
“These people ’bout lost their damn minds! ‘Cause they think that their rights and their beliefs are being threatened. They say, ‘Well, I’m just standing up for what I believe! Does that make me a bigot?’
“Well, if what you believe is a bunch of wacky, bigot-y shit, then… yeah! It totally does!”
This is a news video by Young Turks when HB2 was first passed:
Featured image by Mitch Barrie via Flickr, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
