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Employment protection extended

Transgender, gay citizens no longer ‘second class’
President Barack Obama signs executive orders to protect gay and transgender employees from federal workplace discrimination in the East Room of the White House Monday in Washington.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Monday ordered employment protection for gay and transgender employees who work for the federal government or for companies holding federal contracts, telling advocates he embraced the “irrefutable rightness of your cause.”

“America’s federal contracts should not subsidize discrimination against the American people,” he declared at a White House signing ceremony.

He said it was unacceptable that being gay is still a firing offense in many places in the United States, and he called on Congress to extend the ban to all employers. But legislation that would extend the ban has become embroiled in a dispute about whether religious groups should get exemptions.

The president had long resisted pressure to pursue an executive anti-discrimination order covering federal contractors in the hope that Congress would take more sweeping action. The Senate passed legislation last year with some Republican support, but it has not been considered by the GOP-controlled House. Now, said Obama, “It’s time to address this injustice for every American.”

Mia Macy of Portland, Oregon, watched his announcement in tears as an invited guest in the East Room. The military veteran and former Phoenix police detective applied to be a ballistics expert with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as a male, but was rejected after she changed her name and began identifying as a woman. She filed a successful complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and settled a discrimination lawsuit against the government last year.

“Having a president acknowledge us for the first time in history as citizens instead of second-class citizens is just monumental,” she said in a telephone interview. She said Obama personally thanked her for her pioneering role in a private meeting before the ceremony.

Obama had faced pressure from opposing flanks over whether he would include an exemption in the executive action for religious organizations. He decided to maintain a provision that allows religious groups with federal contracts to hire and fire based upon religious identity, but he did not grant any exception to consider sexual orientation or gender identity. Churches also are able to hire ministers as they see fit under the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom.

Objecting to his order, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called it unprecedented and said it lends the government’s economic power to a “deeply flawed understanding of human sexuality” that faithful Catholics won’t abide. The group said the executive order is an anomaly because it lacks even the exemption included in the Senate bill.

“In the name of forbidding discrimination, this order implements discrimination,” the group said in a statement.



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