WASHINGTON — Amid a national debate over religious liberty bills being considered in several states, nearly 40 top tech leaders have joined together in urging states to provide protections for LGBT people in state civil rights laws and explicitly ban denial of services to people.

"Religious freedom, inclusion, and diversity can co-exist and everyone including LGBT people and people of faith should be protected under their states' civil rights laws," the statement issued by the tech group reads.

Max Levchin, the CEO of Affirm, was the organizer of the effort, working with the Human Rights Campaign on the statement and gathering the 39 signatories, who range from Dick Costolo of Twitter to the heads of eBay and PayPal.

"To ensure no one faces discrimination and ensure everyone preserves their right to live out their faith," the group urges, "we call on all legislatures to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes to their civil rights laws and to explicitly forbid discrimination or denial of services to anyone."

The statement comes as Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Wednesday morning that he was urging his state's legislature to revise recently passed religious liberty legislation in order to ensure that it more closely tracked the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who signed his state's RFRA into law last week, and state legislative leaders are in discussions about amending or repealing that law.

"If anything can be learned from the battle for fairness and equality in Indiana, Arkansas, and other states, it's that LGBT people deserve to be protected from unjust discrimination," Levchin said. "We are proud to stand on the side of liberty and justice and call on all legislatures to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes in non-discrimination protections. This will ensure that no one faces discrimination while everyone preserves their right to live out their faith."

Chad Griffin, the president of HRC, said of the statement, "This unprecedented and historic effort by the giants of the tech industry should be a clarion call to policymakers that discriminating against LGBT people is not acceptable in today's marketplace of ideas. These leaders have made it clear: if states want high tech jobs, they must put fully inclusive nondiscrimination protections in place immediately."