New Executive Orders on LBGT Discrimination Won’t Exempt Religious Orgs

By: American Decency Staff

An executive order President Obama will sign Monday prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination in federal hiring will not exempt faith-based organizations, he announced Friday.

The order will accomplish part of what legislators attempted to accomplish in passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that passed the Senate earlier this session and now languishes in the House. While Obama will not include a new exemption for faith-based organizations, he will let stand a 2007 exemption memo from the federal attorney general's office. That memo says the Religious Freedom Restoration Act "is reasonably construed" to exempt World Vision (and other religious organizations that administer federal funds through social services programs) from religious nondiscrimination requirements on other federal grantees.

The World Vision memo will be helpful, though religious organizations would be better protected if the forthcoming executive order included a religious exemption, said Douglas Laycock, a professor of law and religious studies at the University of Virginia.

The ENDA currently before Congress would prohibit most employers in the country from sexual orientation-based discrimination but would exempt religious organizations and the military. Nearly every Congress for the past decade has dealt with a similar bill in some fashion, according to Human Rights Campaign, but so far none has passed into law. In 1998, President Bill Clinton signed a related and limited executive order prohibiting sexual orientation-based discrimination in some competitive services of the federal civilian workforce.

Read More:http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/july-web-only/obama-executive-orders-sexual-orientation-discrimination.html?start=1

---