This is huge,,,
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), Lambda Legal, National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), Transgender Law Center and Pride at Work are some of the biggest civil rights groups if not the biggest that help the LGBTI community. For them to discard ENDA, something big is up.
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After 40 years, the LGBT community in part has decided that not only is ENDA not good enough, it's potentially dangerous because the legislation contains strong carve outs for religious organizations. In the wake of the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling, ENDA could become a license to discriminate rather than the legal protection it was designed to be.
In a dramatic move today, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force announced it was dropping support for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Hours later, a coalition of five LGBT legal and civil rights groups -- the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), and the Transgender Law Center -- made a similar announcement. (Pride at Work announced they are dropping support after this article was published -- see below.)
The coalition of five groups calls their request "a simple one."
"Do not give religiously affiliated employers a license to discriminate against LGBT people when they have no such right to discriminate based on race, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetic information," the group say in a joint statement just released. "Religiously affiliated organizations are allowed to make hiring decisions based on their religion, but nothing in federal law authorizes discrimination by those organizations based on any other protected characteristic, and the rule should be the same for sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. Religious organizations are free to choose their ministers or faith leaders, and adding protections for sexual orientation and gender identity or expression will not change that."
UPDATED: After Hobby Lobby, Seven Top LGBT And Civil Rights Orgs Drop Support For ENDA - The New Civil Rights Movement
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