We Gratefully Request To Be Allowed To Discriminate

Welcome to the "post-Hobby Lobby FREEDOM for all the kids" era, where thanks to SCOTUS, religiously affiliated companies that hire federal contractors are happily asking the President to allow them to discriminate against those awful, awful gay people because MURICA.

After a setback in the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby case, President Obama is facing mounting pressure from religious groups demanding to be excluded from his long-promised executive order that would bar discrimination against gay men and lesbians by companies that do government work. 

The president has yet to sign the executive order, but last week a group of major faith organizations, including some of Mr. Obama’s allies, said he should consider adding an exemption for groups whose religious beliefs oppose homosexuality. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the court ruled that family-run corporations with religious objections could be exempted from providing employees with insurance coverage for contraception.

I talked about this some last week, but this is precisely what Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor warned about in their dissents on this ruling.

To give an example, faith leaders said a Catholic charity group that believes sex outside heterosexual marriage is a sin should not be denied government funding because it refused to employ a leader who was openly gay. Gay-rights groups countered that it would be unacceptable to allow religious organizations receiving taxpayer money to refuse to hire employees simply because they were gay, and said they did not expect the White House to provide such an exclusion. On Tuesday they stepped up their calls for Mr. Obama to quickly complete and sign the order.

I do hope the President remembers who voted for him in the first place, and what the right thing to do is both morally and legally.  I know he will, because I trust him.  That's why I voted for him in two elections.