Obama Fights Back Against Hobby Lobby Fueled Discrimination With LGBT Executive Order

There has not been much good, or encouraging, news in America over the past months, and it is due to the perpetual assault on the people by a cabal of un-American groups led by repugicans and empowered by wingnutsson the Supreme Court. To their credit, Democrats have attempted to assuage the damage imposed by the wingnut court, particularly the Hobby Lobby ruling, but repugicans dutifully protected the religio-wingnuts and betrayed American women. There were plenty of Americans concerned the religio-wingnuts would use the court’s ruling as freedom to discriminate against the gay community, and within 24 hours of the Hobby Lobby decision a group of powerful religious leaders informed President Obama that he better “give deference to the christian prerogative” and legalize discrimination by federal contractors with a “robust religious exemption” in an executive order due on Monday.

Friday it was announced that President Obama is not intimidated by Hobby Lobby, or wimpy catholic and evangelical religious leaders, and will sign an executive order on Monday barring discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees doing federal government work. The religio-wingnuts will not get the religious exemption, or the President’s deference to the christian prerogative, they demanded and it is the most encouraging news coming out of Washington since the Hobby Lobby ruling was announced.

By not allowing the religious leaders to intimidate him, President Obama drew a demarcation line between religious freedom wingnut style and the United States Constitution’s guarantee of equal rights for all Americans. The President also sent a powerful message to the religio-wingnuts that regardless the High Court’s ruling, religious liberty is not a license to discriminate; even among so-called christian friends of the White House. The President had warned last month that because repugicans in Congress obstructed progress on the anti-bias law, Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), he would take action on his own to protect the LGBT community from religious discrimination in hiring.

The announcement the President is defending equality for all Americans elicited high praise from GetEqual, a gay rights group, and a threat from the religio-wingnutts of impending lawsuits to protect their religious liberty to discriminate. The director of Get Equal, Heather Cronk, said “We’re so proud today of the decision made by the Obama administration to resist the calls by a small number of lunatic fringe wingnuts to insert religious exemptions into civil rights protections.”

However, while gays were celebrating the White House announcement, the vice president of government relations for the national assholes of evangelicals said “It would be better if the President could provide leadership that promotes tolerance ‘all the way around,’ rather than use the force of the state.” He promised that the President’s order would lead to lengthy and expensive legal fights. The religious cabals wanted the exemption to ensure they would still get taxpayer funded federal contracts while they discriminated against the LGBT community and people who do not share their faith. The remark from evangelicals that the President should promote tolerance all the way around is insincere and a lie. The only tolerance evangelicals are concerned about is the population, and the federal government, tolerating their religious liberty to ignore the Constitution. The President disabused them of any idea they have a clear path to imposing anti-gay discrimination on the nation; particularly using taxpayer money.

The President’s order is certain to enrage repugicans who are already angry the White House is working while the repugican cabal Congress sits on its hands pandering to religious and corporate fascists. But the President’s new protections are built on longstanding executive orders dealing with discrimination in hiring that apply to federal contractors approved by Lyndon Johnson in 1965, Richard Nixon in 1969, and Bill Clinton in 1995 and 1998. All Presidents who, like Barack Obama, took their oath to defend Constitution’s guarantee of equal rights seriously, but they did not face angry and substantial opposition from the religious liberty crowd.

The demand for Presidential authority for religious groups to flout anti-discrimination in hiring laws was sent from religious leaders who thought that because they were “friends of the White House,” the President would ignore the document he swore to defend and uphold; the U.S. Constitution. The signatories demanding “deference to the christian prerogative” included baptist hack Rick Warren, former White House faith-based initiative operative Michael Wear, and representatives for catholic charities that believe sex outside of heterosexual marriage is a mortal sin and demanded to keep taxpayers’ funding their cabal while they refused to hire gays. However, not all christian groups supported the concept of using religious liberty as a weapon to discriminate against gays.

The president of the Interfaith Alliance, Reverend C. Welton Gaddy said, “Those of us who really care deeply about both the sanctity and the necessity of religious freedom have grieved to see people use that as a cover for overt discrimination, and the president is not going to allow that to happen.” Gaddy was responsible for organizing 100 real christian leaders to send their own letter to the President opposing giving evangelicals freedom to discriminate. Reverend Gaddy said the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision really “shined a bright light” on christian extremists’ efforts to use religious freedom as a convenient excuse to violate other Americans civil rights.

The president of the Human Rights Campaign, Chad Griffin, said that “With the strokes of a pen, the president will have a very real and immediate impact on the lives of millions of L.G.B.T. people across the country. These actions from the president have the potential to be a keystone in the arch of his administration’s progress, and they send a powerful message to future administrations and to Congress that anti-L.G.B.T. discrimination must not be tolerated.” The President sent an even more powerful message to the religious right that their plans to use the Hobby Lobby decision as a religious weapon to eviscerate anti-discrimination laws and 14th Amendment equal protection guarantees will not go unchallenged.

There is no doubt the threat of lengthy and expensive lawsuits against the government by the national assholes of evangelicals is empty. In fact, the impetus for the Hobby Lobby lawsuit was as much about fulfilling the Manhattan Declaration mission to abolish anti-discrimination laws as it was banning contraceptives and abortion. The religious leaders’ letter demanding the President’s deference to the christian prerogative was a a trial to determine how committed he was to protecting equal rights for the LGBT community, and the President’s message could not be clearer or more decisive; religious freedom is not freedom to discriminate.

The religio-wingnuts celebrated the Hobby Lobby decision as their ticket to use religious freedom to run roughshod over the rights of Americans unwilling to comply with their religious edicts. While they were waving the religious liberty flag, Hobby Lobby ruling, and the christian bible to intimidate the President of the United States into doing their bidding and authorizing legal discrimination, Barack Obama held up the United States Constitution and said this document, not the christian bible, is the law of the land.