Erin Kelly

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando could be the "call to conscience" that Congress needs to pass legislation to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, gay rights supporters said Monday.

"We would very much expect and hope to see a heightened sense of responsibility on the part of Congress as well as state legislatures to take action on these very basic non-discrimination measures," said Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights. "I hope this will be a call to conscience and a wake-up call."

Specifically, gay rights groups and their supporters in Congress are reigniting their push for passage of the Equality Act, a bill to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. The legislation is currently stuck in the House and Senate judiciary committees.

"Passing the Equality Act is the most important signal we can send as a country that we don't tolerate discrimination," said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., an openly gay congressman who is co-sponsoring the bill. "If we want to signal to LGBT Americans that discrimination is wrong, then that's the bill that does it."

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Conservative groups, including the Family Research Council, oppose the bill.

"It would effectively require high schools to allow boys in the girls’ locker rooms, strip elementary schools of the authority to dismiss a kindergarten teacher for transitioning from a male to a female during the course of the school year, and could force religious hospitals to provide sex-change operations and family-owned businesses to affirm such behavior," the FRC said in a statement.

In addition to pushing for the Equality Act, Maloney said he will continue his efforts to pass legisaltion banning federal contractors from discriminating against gay and transgender workers. Democrats and about 40 Republicans voted last month to attach Maloney's measure to a big energy and water spending bill. However, a majority of Republicans voted against the bill the next day rather than allow it to move forward with the provision. Democrats also voted against the bill because of other language in it.

Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, criticized Republican leaders for blocking anti-discrimination bills and for hesitating to say that the Orlando shootings were a hate crime against the gay community.

"We’re seeing very few, if any, of our Republican colleagues call this the hate crime that it is,” he said at a breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. "We need to stand up to bigotry, even when it is found in the United States House of Representatives."

David Stacy, government affairs director at the Human Rights Campaign, said it is unlikely that the Equality Act will pass this year, especially when Congress has only about 40 legislative days left because of the political conventions and elections.

"Hopefully, the next Congress will be better," he said.

But Minter said he believes the Orlando shooting will be “a real turning point" in how Congress sees its responsibility to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

"After this attack, I think we're going to see a very serious shift in tone and, I hope, in substance," he said.

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