DC Repeals Anti-LGBT Exemption That Allowed Religious Schools To Discriminate

Brace yourself for shrieks and spittle flecked rants about Christians being persecuted now that the District of Columbia has repealed an exemption that has been used to allow religious schools to engage in discrimination.  It is part of the move to ban so-called "reparative therapy" which has been used by the "godly folk" and charlatans to torment LGBT individuals and keep the myth alive that sexual orientation is a "choice" or something that is changeable.  The big issue now is whether Congress - read the Christofascists' political whores in the GOP - will act to void the legislation.  Here are highlights from The New Civil Rights Movement:

While many were heralding the Washington, D.C. City Council earlier this week for passing an ordinance that bans the practice of anti-LGBT "reparative therapy," also known as "ex-gay therapy," on minors, few noticed that the body also passed another important piece of legislation. The city council repealed a 1989 amendment forced on D.C. by Congress, to the city's Human Rights Act, known as the Armstrong Amendment. That law allowed religious educational institutions, which were loosely defined, to discriminate against LGBT people.

Congress has 30 days to void the repeal of the anti-LGBT provision.

“The time has come for us to get rid of that obnoxious provision,” Rick Rosendall, president of the D.C. Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, said, according to the Washington Blade.

The anti-gay legal group Liberty Counsel registered extreme opposition to the move.  "The Act's repeal of the religious exemption for religious schools and church schools from D.C. Code provisions regarding homosexual acts, lifestyle, orientation, or belief is of grave concern," Liberty Counsel wrote to the city council. "The First Amendment directly prohibits government from prohibiting the Free Exercise of religion," it reminded them.

“Sexual Orientation” and “Gender Identity or Expression" or "Transgender” are subjective, changeable, behavior-based categories subject to moral choice, and are not immutable characteristics such as race, sex, skin color or ethnicity, nor are they in the category of fundamental rights, such as religious belief.

Of course, that's an opinion being purveyed by Liberty Counsel, an anti-LGBT hate group.

Liberty Counsel did not detail how a religious educational institution would be penalized by the repeal of the ordinance, but claimed, "attempting to impose employment regulations on church schools and religious schools whose doctrines and sincere religious convictions forbid homosexual or cross-dressing affiliation and employment is flatly unconstitutional."  The letter also referred to transgender women as "a man claiming he is a woman on a given day," . . .

For the "godly folk," religious freedom means having a license to mistreat others and to disseminate hate and bigotry towards others.  Just like ISIS in the Middle East.