“At a time when LGBT people face staggering rates of discrimination, harassment and violence, Representative Allen’s comments spread hate that does real harm,” Human Rights Campaign Senior Vice President said in a statement.

Passages in the verses refer to homosexuality and the penalty for homosexual behavior. “And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet,” reads Romans 1:27, which Allen read, according to his office.

“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them,” read lines 28-32, which Allen also recited, according to his office.



Many objections





Democrats also helped sink the $37.4 billion Energy-Water bill, opposed to provisions that would have barred the purchase of heavy water from Iran and prohibited the federal government from reducing funding to the state of North Carolina for energy and water projects.

Republican objections to the bill, which was drafted by their members and approved in a Republican-controlled committee by a voice vote, included the level of spending, as well as the inclusion of the Maloney nondiscrimination amendment. A #StopMaloney campaign on Twitter by conservative groups urged the defeat of the bill.