After a setback in the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby case, President Barack Obama is facing mounting pressure from religious groups demanding to be excluded from his long-promised executive order that would bar discrimination against gay men and lesbians by companies that do government work.
The president has yet to sign the executive order, but last week a group of major faith organisations, including some of Mr Obama’s allies, said he should consider adding an exemption for groups whose religious beliefs oppose homosexuality. In Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores, the court ruled that family-run corporations with religious objections could be exempted from providing employees with insurance coverage for contraception.
Dilemma
The demands of the faith organisations pose a dilemma for Mr Obama, who has struggled to preserve freedom of expression among religious groups while supporting the rights of gay men and lesbians. The president could unleash a conservative uproar if he is seen as intruding on religious beliefs, but many of his strongest supporters would be bitterly disappointed if he appeared to grant any leeway to anti-gay discrimination.
The White House has given no reason for the executive order’s delay. In a July 1st letter to Mr Obama sent the day after the Hobby Lobby case was decided, leaders of religious groups wrote that “we are asking that an extension of protection for one group not come at the expense of faith communities whose religious identity and beliefs motivate them to serve those in need”.
The effort behind the letter was organised by Michael Wear, who worked in the White House faith-based initiative during Mr Obama’s first term and directed the president’s faith outreach in the 2012 campaign. Mr Wear, who calls himself an “ardent supporter” of the president and a backer of gay rights, said the rationale of the organisations was to maintain the rights they have. “We’re not trying to support crazy claims of religious privilege,’’ he said.
He described the letter as a request from “friends of the administration” to ensure that the executive order provides “robust” protection of religious service organisations that uphold religious-based moral standards for their staff members, whether Catholic, Jewish or Muslim.
To give an example, faith leaders said a Catholic charity group that believes sex outside heterosexual marriage is a sin should not be denied government funding because it refused to employ a leader who was openly gay. Gay-rights groups countered that it would be unacceptable to allow religious organisations receiving taxpayers’ money to refuse to hire employees simply because they were gay, and said they did not expect the White House to provide such an exclusion. On Tuesday they stepped up their calls for Mr Obama to quickly complete and sign the order.
Last month, Mr Obama promised he would soon sign the executive order, which would bar federal contractors from job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. He said he was acting on his own because a drive in Congress for a national anti-bias law to cover nearly all employers, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, had stalled.
The order would protect an additional 14 million workers, according to an analysis by the Williams Institute at the School of Law of the University of California, Los Angeles. It would apply to companies that do business with the federal government, including large US employers such as Exxon Mobil and Dell, as well as religious universities and charities with federal contracts.
– (New York Times)