Griffin: Indiana fight opens door to wider LGBT rights A coalition for equality is mobilized and will bring LGBT Americans federal protections.

Chad Griffin | USATODAY

Headlines last week captured the genuine shock of the moment. "The political war over gay culture is over, and the gays won," read one The Washington Post blog post. "How Gay Rights Won in Indiana," screamed another piece in TIME. For reporters and pundits, it was a great story. The civil rights equivalent of Howard Cosell shouting, "Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!," when George Foreman knocked him to the mat.

Of course, there are important facts missing from those declarations of victory. The "fix" legislation tackling the horrific and massively controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana — like the similar attempt that advanced in Arkansas — did not explicitly protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people from discrimination at the state level, though it limited some of the damage of the original legislation. Across the state of Indiana, LGBT Hoosiers are still at risk of at-will discrimination unless they live in one of the few cities with protections at the local level.

What's more, right now, in dozens of states from North Carolina to Texas, virulently anti-LGBT legislation still has a real and dangerous chance of passage — including heinous legislation that seeks to prevent transgender people from using the bathroom that conforms to their gender identity and bills that would strip the salaries of clerks who issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

But this historic week made one thing clear: There is a new American coalition for equality emerging. It crosses party lines. It touches all sectors of society — from businesses, to faith leaders, to elected officials. It is fundamentally reshaping our national politics. And no state legislator peddling a two-bit piece of bigoted legislation is going to fly in this country anymore, regardless of who your state voted for in the last presidential election.

Not when more than 100 tech executives and CEOs have signed an open letter demanding truly comprehensive laws that protect LGBT people from discrimination. Certainly not when a conservative Midwest governor finds himself on the wrong side of NASCAR and the NCAA. In Little Rock, a state legislator told me he hadn't seen this many everyday folks turning out day after day to fight a bill in almost three decades. Last week that new coalition woke up and realized that, together, we have moved the ground beneath our own feet.

Most of all, the message was clear to every politician who will soon be jetting from Iowa to New Hampshire and claiming the moral authority to lead this country: Throw out the old playbook, because you are talking to a new America.

In the coming months, members of Congress will introduce a historic federal LGBT non-discrimination bill — a piece of legislation that will finally guarantee that LGBT people are treated equally within the full sweep of federal non-discrimination protections. The name of the legislation has not yet been announced, but this week it earned its nickname — the Pence Act.

After all, before Governor Mike Pence signed his name to the bill that kicked off this explosive moment, one of the LGBT community's biggest challenges was that most Americans didn't realize that you could be fired, evicted or denied service because of who you are or whom you love. Today, thanks in part to Governor Pence, America isn't just aware, we are outraged.

Before this week, I got asked almost every day, "with marriage equality about to go before the Supreme Court, what's next?" Now the American people know that this work is not done until every LGBT person is guaranteed full, federal equality. The new American coalition for equality — and the judgment of history — will accept nothing less.

Chad Griffin is the president of the Human Rights Campaign.

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