Hobby Lobby Puts Obama Between God and Gays

President Barack Obama’s seminal gay rights legislation has become the latest casualty of the Supreme Court’s decision to allow Hobby Lobby to deny their employees contraception on religious grounds. 

The Employee Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, was passed by the Senate last year, but it has stalled in the House in part because Republicans wanted greater religious exemptions. But the exemptions already contained within the bill, gay rights activists fear, provide a blue print for employers to discriminate against gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender peoples in the context of the Hobby Lobby decision. 

“The Supreme Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby has made it all the more important that we not accept this inappropriate provision,” the American Civil Liberties Union and four LGBT groups wrote in withdrawing their support for ENDA. “Because opponents of LGBT equality are already misreading that decision as having broadly endorsed rights to discriminate against others, we cannot accept a bill that sanctions discrimination and declares that discrimination against LGBT people is more acceptable than other kinds of discrimination.” 

The decision also puts Obama in a bind over a promised executive order banning companies that do business with the federal government from discriminating against LGBT employees.

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