Louisiana Lawmakers Continue Their War On Gays

Louisiana lawmakers are waging a quiet war of inaction against their own LGBT citizens. When faced with a bill that would help make the lives of LGBT people better, safer, easier, or close to approaching equal, they refuse to pass it. And not only are they refusing to pass basic, common-sense legislation that most Americans don’t find controversial — the public actually believes these bills are already the law — the legislature is doing it purely from a position of animus, “morality,” and religion, and in conjunction with what they have allowed to become a powerful anti-gay organization. 

You’ll remember last year a disgusting local Louisiana “sting” operation that netted the arrests of at least 12 men on charges of sodomy. These men had reportedly all agreed to consensual sex with another man — who turned out to be a sheriff’s deputy. The men were arrested despite the fact that the Supreme Court had declared a decade ago the laws under which they were arrested unconstitutional. The sheriff’s spokesperson first said that as long as the anti-sodomy laws were on the books they would continue to arrest men for merely agreeing to have sex with men.

Later the sheriff not only apologized, but petitioned the legislature to repeal Louisiana’s anti-gay laws. By a wide margin earlier this month, they refused to repeal their unconstitutional anti-sodomy laws, obeying the lobbyists at the Louisiana Family Forum. Technically, two men having sex is still illegal in Louisiana.

If that weren’t enough, a Louisiana House Democrat was forced to pull her LGBT employment protection bill — essentially a watered-down version of ENDA for Louisiana because there clearly weren’t enough votes to pass it. Lawmakers refused to consider the bill, again under the direction of their masters at the Christian Louisiana Family Forum, a state affiliate of the anti-gay Focus On The Family. Focus On The Family, you’ll remember, was created by James Dobson, the same anti-gay activist who created the Family Research Council. 

And that brings us to yesterday, when Louisiana state lawmakers again refused to pass what is one of the most basic protections any group could want: protection against discrimination in housing. Lawmakers refused to allow that bill to come out of committee for a vote, too.

“The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Pat Smith, D-Baton Rouge, said after the hearing though disappointed, she wasn’t surprised. ‘(The Legislature) is just not willing right now to move anything (LGBT-related) forward, and that’s unfortunate,'” the Times-Picayune reports.

Kathleen Benfield of the Louisiana Family Forum, speaking against the bill, said allowing discrimination against people for their sexual orientation is “rational” because some people have “closely held religious” reasons to judge whether or not they want LGBT people to rent their private property.

Those “closely held religious reasons to judge” are the reason we are a nation of laws, not a theocracy with the Bible as our Constitution. Except, perhaps, in Louisiana.

Perhaps none of this should be a surprise, since earlier this month a Louisiana House committee voted to make the Christian Holy Bible the official state book.