A Republican lawmaker says anti-LGBT discrimination shouldn’t be added to the state’s civil rights code because homosexuals are different from human beings.

On Monday night the Missouri House voted 98-30 to approve a bill that would require workers filing discrimination charges to prove that bias was the explicit reason they were fired. Currently, plaintiffs only have to prove its a contributing factor.

SB 43 has sparked controversy as its sponsor, Republican Senator Gary Romine, owns a business that’s currently being sued for discrimination. It passed with a Republican majority, but Democratic opponents claim it would make it virtually impossible to win a discrimination case.

“The message this will send is we want to make it easier to discriminate in Missouri,” said Rep. Shamed Dogan (R-St. Louis). “No two ways about it.”

If SB 43 becomes law, plaintiffs could only sue employers, not individual employees or supervisors. It would also remove protections for whistleblowers at state agencies and cap punitive damages for victims of discrimination or harassment.

Numerous amendments were proposed, but all were scuttled by House leaders, who didn’t want to risk having to return the bill to the Senate. “They’re trying to hang an amendment on here to kill the bill,” said Rep. Kevin Corlew (R-Kansas City).

One amendment would have added sexual orientation and gender identity to Missouri’s discrimination laws. “You can fire somebody for just cause if you find out they’re gay,” said Rep. Kevin Engler. “I think that’s sick.” (Efforts to add LGBT protections to the law have stalled for nearly 20 years.)

But Republican Rick Brattin of Harrisonville said adding LGBT protections infringed on religious freedom. “When you look at the tenets of religion, of the Bible, of the Qu’ran, of other religions. There is a distinction between homosexuality and just being a human being.”

Good thing our legal code isn’t based on the Bible, then. Right? (Engler withdrew the amendment, claiming he didn’t want to jeopardize the chances of SB 43 passing.)

But Rep. Brandon Ellington claims LGBT rights are distraction from the fact that SB 43 would “roll back a half-century of civil rights progress and re-institute Jim Crow in Missouri.” In a suit against Romine, an employee claimed she was told by a supervisor to “quit acting like a [racial slur]” and that “black people are the worst to work with.”

Race is covered by Missouri’s current anti-discrimination laws, but proving there were no other factors involved would put a huge onus on plaintiffs.