Indiana GOP Introduces Nondiscrimination Bill LGBT Group Calls ‘Road Map For Discrimination’

If the idea of Indiana Republicans wanting to protect LGBT civil rights sounds odd, there’s a reason.

Earlier this year Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed a bill into law that supporters claimed was necessary to ensure Hoosiers’ “religious freedom.” It was actually an effort to legalize discrimination against LGBT people. The state’s reputation was ruined as a result, and Pence was forced to demand a law stating the religious freedom law could not be used as a tool to discriminate, effectively negating its original purpose.

Now, Indiana’s LGBT citizens are facing round two.

Lawmakers today met with LGBT activists and religious right activists to address what Pence’s legislation first highlighted: the fact that Indiana’s LGBT community have no nondiscrimination protections.

By the day’s end, Republican lawmakers unveiled a comprehensive nondiscrimination bill that includes both sexual orientation and gender identity. But Lambda Legal, one of the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights law firms, is calling foul.

“This bill is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This doesn’t protect LGBT people—it is a road map for discrimination against LGBT people,” Jennifer Pizer, Law and Policy Project Director at Lambda Legal said in a press release.

Pizer says lawmakers have stated that “their goal is to resolve conflicts in favor of religious exemptions and against enforceability of the protections for LGBT people.”

The bill, she adds, “aims to guarantee the right of some medical, social services and other institutions to discriminate against married same-sex couples, and to do so with taxpayer dollars. It aims to write separate, lesser protections for LGBT people into state law. It aims to make LGBT people the vehicle for lessening damages for workplace discrimination for everyone except veterans—and it overrides local nondiscrimination policies that provide more  protection for LGBT people.”

This afternoon LGBT activists, including members of Indiana Equality, held a rally at the statehouse (video above).

The legislature will not officially begin its session until January, giving activists time to act.

Rally attendees had a two-pronged agenda: bring attention to the need for a fair LGBT nondiscrimination bill, and get rid of their Republican governor, Mike Pence.

 

 

Images and video by Mark Merritt via Facebook