Democrats Unveil LGBT Anti-Discrimination Bill

LGBT protestors wait to learn the outcome of the King v Burwell decision
in front of the Supreme Court. Photo: Ted Eytan | FlickrCC.

More than half of the states in the United States have no laws protecting gay people from housing, employment, and other forms of discrimination.

In an effort to change that a coalition of Democrats have introduced a measure to amend the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include sexual orientation as a protected class along with race, religion, and gender.

"After years under a legal cloud, [marriage equality] is now the law of the land, but #LGBT discrimination is allowed to flourish," New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the number three Democrat in the Senate, tweeted on Wednesday.

"We must shine a light on injustice. #LGBT discrimination has no place in our housing, employment, and education laws,” he said in another Tweet.

The Equality Act of 2015 has 155 co-sponsors in Congress and is backed by many leading businesses, including the technology powerhouse Apple. In a statement to Human Rights Campaign, the company stated, “At Apple we believe in equal treatment for everyone, regardless of where they come from, what they look like, how they worship or whom they love. We fully support the expansion of legal protections as a matter of basic human dignity.”

Supporters of the bill are using the fact that marriage is newly legal in all 50 states as both a springboard and justification for this next battle for the LGBT community. There is a vast misconception that it’s illegal to discriminate against gay people, but there are no federal laws that set out protections for LGBT Americans.