Congress Sticks It to Gays on Anniversary of Pulse Massacre

Tuesday marks one month since 49 people were murdered inside an LGBT nightclub in Orlando. That's the same day Congress will debate a bill legalizing religion-based discrimination.

The timing is either intentional or ironic: Tuesday, July 12, a month after the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history and the worst attack directed at LGBT Americans, a House committee will hold a hearing on the homophobic so-called First Amendment Defense Act.

The bill would create a national "religious discrimination" law, allowing businesses and government workers to refuse goods and services to customers who offend their religious sensibilities. Of course, LGBT people will be a natural target of the act, but the bill is explicit in singling out gay and bisexual people. It specifically allows people with a "religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage" to turn away same-sex spouses or those hoping to wed. The bill would make it impossible for aggrieved LGBT people to petition the federal government when they experience such discrimination.

(LIVE COVERAGE: Follow The Advocate's Coverage of the Hearing)

Testifying against the bill will be one of the nation's most famous same-sex spouses — Jim Obergefell, whose lawsuit for recognition of his marriage to the late John Arthur went all the way to the Supreme Court last year and resulted in the ruling for nationwide marriage equality.

“The Orlando tragedy on June 12 was a time of heartbreak for millions around the world and the worst attack on the LGBT community in our nation’s history,” Obergefell said in a press release from the American Civil Liberties Union. “Today, exactly one month after this horrifying event, this hearing is deeply hurtful to a still-grieving LGBT community. It is difficult for me to imagine why anyone would think such discrimination should be permitted in the year 2016. I believe that the United States Congress must be better than this and it is my sincere hope that Congress will move away from elevating proposals that only serve to harm vulnerable communities.”

Though the bill's authors — antigay Republican Rep. Raúl Labrador of Idaho and GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah — refer to the bill as a "defense" of the First Amendment, the name is misleading. As ThinkProgress points out, the First Amendment does not allow religious people to arbitrarily discriminate against those they don't like, at least according to the Supreme Court. When right-wing Christians attempted to turn away mixed-race couples from their businesses, the high court intervened by ruling that religious beliefs don't trump the rights of others.

“The abuse of religious exemptions as a tactic for undermining civil rights advances is a classic pattern of civil rights progress in America,” Evan Wolfson, the founder of Freedom to Marry and a key architect of the legal and cultural strategy that won marriage equality, told The Advocate. “In the '50s and the '60s and the '70s and the '80s, whether it was with racial minorities or women or other steps forward — including now gay and transgender people — when the opponents of civil rights progress fail to stop an advance, they then try to circumvent it.”

FADA is an endgame to the state strategy of "religious freedom" bills; one that will likely fail. Take Mississippi, for example. The Magnolia State passed a "religious freedom" bill in April that legalized discrimination, but a federal judge struck it down just before it went into effect.

This is how District Court Judge Carlton Reeves put it in his ruling: “The United States Supreme Court has spoken clearly on the constitutional principles at stake. Under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, a state ‘may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another.’”

Reeves said the Mississippi law “grants special rights to citizens who hold one of three ‘sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions’ reflecting disapproval of lesbian, gay, transgender, and unmarried persons. That violates both the guarantee of religious neutrality and the promise of equal protection of the laws.”

Thankfully, President Obama has made its disapproval of FADA clear. "We strongly oppose attempts to roll back non-discrimination protections for LGBT Americans," the White House said in a statement, "It's disturbing that Congressional Republicans plan to hold a hearing tomorrow on discriminatory, anti-LGBT legislation. President Obama remains firmly committed to promoting and defending the equal rights of all Americans, including the rights of LGBT Americans."

Regardless of whether FADA passes, the timing of the hearing is a clear expression of the animus that still exists toward LGBT people in the Republican-controlled Congress.

(RELATED: Why the Supreme Court Can’t Save Us From 'Religious Liberty')