With a growing sense of confidence that the ban on same-sex marriages will once and forever be felled by the U.S. Supreme Court this June, civil rights groups and lawyers fear that conservative forces in Texas will punish the LGBT community by enacting laws that undermine an already tenuous environment for equality.
According to DailyTexanOnline.com, “Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, Austin LGBT Bar Association and family law firms said a backlash from conservative political forces could adversely affect Texas’ lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, even if the Supreme Court rules that state same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional. Lawyers discussed the ways that the state legislature could still use loopholes in anti-discrimination laws and new laws to hurt the LGBT community in areas such as housing, employment and adoption.”
Currently, Texas is one of 29 states that do not provide civil protections for the LGBT community in housing, employment and public accommodation. (There are not restrictions on adoption.) But that does not mean the state’s conservative legislature cannot take additional measures. For example, Rebecca Robertson, legal and policy director of the ACLU of Texas points out that “an example of this practice is Rep. Cecil Bell’s (R-Magnolia) bill, HB 623, which entered the Texas Legislature Jan. 8. The bill says any employee of the state who acts against Texas’ ban will be deprived of salary and any other employment benefits.”
However, one silver lining may be the backlash against the backlash as it were. “When we hear about people who returned happy from their honeymoon, came to work the next morning, shared their story with their boss and got fired without recourse, it may create some momentum for an employment nondiscrimination act on the state level and federal level that would finally extend those protections,” Robertson said.
Recently, Sam Brownback, Republican governor of Kansas, stripped a bill giving state employees protections against discrimination. And several other states have introduced ‘religious liberty’ bills that would go so far as to allow businesses to discriminate against the LGBT community based on their religious beliefs.
No matter what we do for now ,the Nazis who are trying to enact these bill into laws would be doing that anyway.
They only show themselves to be exactly what they are. Don’t be fooled by their
claims that they are good Christians they aren’t. The Nazis during WWll called themselves Christians too.
REAL Christians are fighting with the GLBT Community for equal rights
Don’t worry too much any “laws” these Nazis are able to enact will be found to be
Un-Constitutional because they Violate the US Constitution
& the laws themselves would be Legally determined to be Hate Crimes.
Also Fox News Network (of all places ) has announced that Not 1 Ranking Member of the GOP is willing to endorse any Anti-Gay legislation at this point because they have determined that same sex marriage will become legal nationwide this summer. The Ranking Members of the GOP are no longer willing to fight against SSM anymore either.
There will be a few who will kick and scream as they are dragged to Marriage Equality in the State of Texas, but they are digging their heels in and will bury themselves as Marriage Equality becomes the law of the land.