House Republicans Are Truly, Madly, Deeply Obsessed With Queer People; Huffington Post, 7/6/16

Jennifer Bendery, Huffington Post; House Republicans Are Truly, Madly, Deeply Obsessed With Queer People:

"If anything is clear about House Republicans, it’s that they spend a lot of time thinking about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

For the past two months, GOP lawmakers in the House haven’t missed an opportunity to slip anti-LGBT provisions into bills. They passed a National Defense Authorization Act with language to let government contractors fire people for being gay or trans. They tried to pass a 2017 water and energy spending bill with a provision barring the Obama administration from blocking funds to North Carolina over its transgender bathroom law. When Democrats tried twice to strip the anti-LGBT provision from NDAA, Republicans overruled them...

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform plans to meet July 12 to take up the so-called First Amendment Defense Act. It’s a sweeping bill that would let the people in charge of any taxpayer-funded entity — whether a business, a school or a nonprofit organization — ignore laws that conflict with their religious beliefs about marriage. That means a government contractor, for example, could fire an employee for being in a same-sex marriage. A drug treatment facility could turn away people for being LGBT. A federal employee could refuse to provide services, including veterans’ or Social Security benefits, to a surviving member of a same-sex married couple.

In effect, the bill would nullify President Barack Obama’s 2014 executive order prohibiting federal contractors from firing or harassing employees based on their sexual orientation."