With little Republican support, House Democrats passed a bill Thursday that would lock in long-sought legal safeguards for LGBTQ+ people — but the historic measure faces stiff opposition in the Senate.
The “Equality Act,” which tweaks existing civil rights law to spell out that sexual orientation and gender identification are protected characteristics that cannot form the basis for discrimination, passed the House in a 224-206 vote, with just three Republicans joining the chamber’s 221 Democrats in supporting the measure.
The 3 Republican House members who voted for the act are Reps. John Katko (R-N.Y.), Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.).
Supports of the bill say the protections will ensure that LGBTQ+ people can’t face discrimination based on their orientation or identity in employment, housing, loan applications, education and various other areas.
“In the absence of federal civil rights protection, there are members of the LGBTQ+ community who are fair game in the eyes of the law to be targeted, based on sexual orientation,” New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a member of Democratic leadership, said during a debate before the vote. “That is not America.”
But Republicans claim the bill will erode religious liberties.
For example, GOP lawmakers claim it could force faith-based adoption agencies to close down for requiring that a child be placed with a married mother and father, or pressure religious private schools to hire staff whose sexual orientation violates their faith.
“The Equality Act is not about stopping discrimination. It’s about causing discrimination against women and religious freedoms,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the controversial Georgia Republican who was stripped of all her committee assignments last month over her history of promoting political violence and far-right conspiracy theories.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has promised to put the Equality Act up for a vote, but it would need the support of at least 10 Republicans to pass the upper chamber.
Republicans in the Senate appear to largely agree with the gist of Greene’s argument, muddying the bill’s prospects.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), whose panel drafted the Equality Act, slammed the GOP argument that the bill would inhibit religious freedoms and said those protections are already enshrined in the law.
“I have listened to this debate in amazement,” Nadler said. “This bill enshrines equality, It enshrines equality for everyone — that’s its purpose. It does not contradict the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which I was the chief author of, but it does enshrine equality. And that’s what our friends on the other side of the aisle seem to be afraid of — equality.”
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we have laws of protection for us all, these freaks are no more special than any other american.
Follow the science, Homosexuality if wholly embraced will not produce enough people to repopulate the Country, therefore is a threat to the survival of the nation. Anything that promotes failure is doomed to cause their country to fail. Only an American hating self-hater would promote it on a national scale. To confuse acceptance with tolerance is to hasten America’s downfall. People should have the right to chose to tolerate it in others but the right to refuse to accept it in themselves and their children, without fear of job loss or social ostracization. Freedom of thought and speech in its most basic form.
WHAT science??? THE LEFT HAS NONE to support their claims that transgenderism is ANYTHING MORE THAN a mental illness.
If the Equality Act passes Congress, religiously affiliated schools and other faith-based organizations could face lawsuits over policies on gay, lesbian or transgender students, customers or employees.
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
Lev 20:13
13 “‘If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
Rom 1:24-27
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator-who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Thank you for your post. You beat me to it.
The “Equality Act”, or in other words, making people “unequal”, as people of faith, will be criminals under this bill. The police state, the Gestapo and Stasi, in America. Don’t worry , Biden will put us law abiding citizens in “cages”. The beauty of communism, the Stalin Constitution.
No Nadler this is enshrining perversion and is a slap in the face of God and you know it.
It Protects Perversion, and yes, I know they will gnash their teeth, call the Godly names, but it does not change what God has said about perversion.
Nadler, why don’t you speak to the higher Authority, God, about the very statements you made, for He is the ultimate Authority and you and the rest of your perverted friends will bend your knee to Him and give an account of all you have said and done. There will be two books opened at the Judgment. The Book of Life and the other Book. Which will you be in?
This act being signed into law most certainly will remove religious freedom from millions of Americans. It will be used mostly on Christians to force them to pay for abortions, to allow same sex couples to adopt against the faith of the agency, to force hospitals and doctors to perform abortions and gender ‘assignment’ surgeries, to force churches to stop preaching the Word of God due to passages and beliefs deemed ‘unacceptable’. It will do all that and more.
Perhaps in the Democrat’s eyes where ‘religious freedom’ has been redefined as ‘freedom to worship’ it might seem to be an acceptable law. However, our constitution doesn’t give us ‘freedom to worship’ which translates to ‘you can go to whatever church you want but don’t bring your faith outside the building’. Our constitution affords us the right to follow our faith in ALL aspects of our life without interference by the government. This act will do EXACTLY the opposite.
We are now ruled by the “Socialist Democrat Party State” and their demented corrupt puppet president.
The “Socialist Democrat Party State” political officers and Gestapo are just getting started.
You will obey, be loyal and support the “Socialist Democrat Party State” or you will be classified as
“Enemies of the State”.
Which indicates the need for an enema of the state’s body politic to remove them from office,,,or in their case ,,,oriface.
Actually, the Constitution doesn’t speak of “religious freedom.” It speaks of “free expression thereof [i.e., of religion],” and says that Congress shall make no law infringing on that free expression. But our politicians ran the Constitution through the shredder long ago, so they don’t care what it says.
NOTE all 3 of those so-called republicans are from HEAVILY BLUE STATES, NY and PA…
Where is this nation headed? Down the tubes for sure.
And this is just the beginning.
It’s been heading down the gutter for 2 decades.. The left’s wanting to ensure it STAYS DOWN THE GUTTER, never to come back up.
“This bill enshrines equality for everyone,” he says. Everyone except Christians, that is. The next step will be arresting priests and ministers, as well as anyone else who quotes from the Bible. In fact, the Bible will have to be banned as well. Just wait.
Don’t forget CONSERVATIVES are also left out…
G_d bless the F a g g o t s as they are the chillin of the earth. Absolutely ridiculous.
Stop with this nonsense already.
I have no doubt that Islam will be exempted from this.
What SHOULD be a part of civil rights laws, along with race, color, creed, religion, etc is political ideology.
IMO that should have been protected LONG BEFORE Race or sex ever were.