Nebraska Republican Senator Suggests LGBT Citizens Wanting Equality Should Move Out of State (Video)

GOP Lawmaker Says ‘Everyone Should Be Free to Live and Work According to Their Faith’

Nebraska lawmakers debated legislation that would provide LGBT people with basic workplace protections on Wednesday, but the nondiscrimination bill, LB 586, was voted down, 26-18.

Republican Sen. Bill Kintner was especially opposed to the legislation. He “said the measure could interfere with employers’ right to free expression of their religious beliefs and would force them to act against their own conscience,” the Omaha World-Herald reports. “Everyone should be free to live and work according to their faith,” Kintner added.

Sen. Kintner didn’t stop there, suggesting that LGBT people should move outside the Cornhusker State, so they could be more “comfortable.”

RELATED: Nebraska GOP Governor: Bill Protecting LGBT Citizens ‘Unnecessary’ (Video)

“When I go to San Francisco, sometimes I’ve seen some pretty weird things there,” Kintner told his colleagues. “And I’m not that comfortable in San Francisco. But you know the difference between conservatives and my friends on the left? When I’m not comfortable someplace I leave. I go somewhere I am comfortable, I move to the state I am comfortable, I like it.” 

He later told KMTV, “there’s nothing to make you feel uncomfortable” in Nebraska. “There’s no one discriminating against you. There’s no laws to discriminate against you. There’s nothing to make you feel uncomfortable. It’s a state of mind. We have a live and let live state. It’s just not an issue for most people.”

Nebraska’s state motto is, “Equality before the law.”

 

Image by Chris Finney via Flickr and a CC license