USCCB: new federal LGBT regulations advance ‘false ideology,’ pose ‘serious threat’ to religious freedom

December 10, 2014

Implementing an executive order issued by President Barack Obama, the US Department of Labor has issued new regulations forbidding federal contractors and subcontractors from discriminating “against employees or applicants based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

“In recent years, the speed of our progress on equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans has been nothing short of astonishing,” said Secretary of Labor Tom Perez. “Today’s announcement is the next step in America’s continued march of progress … more evidence that the long arc of the moral universe continues to bend toward justice.”

In their initial response to the regulations, four bishops who chair committees of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said that the regulations “appear also to prohibit employers’ religious and moral disapproval of same-sex sexual conduct, which creates a serious threat to freedom of conscience and religious liberty, because under no circumstances may Catholics approve of such conduct.”

“Additionally, the regulations advance the false ideology of ‘gender identity,’ which ignores biological reality and harms the privacy and associational rights of both contractors and their employees,” the bishops added. “In justice, the Administration should not exclude contractors from federal contracting simply because they have religious or moral convictions about human sexuality and sexual conduct that differ from the views of the current governmental authorities.”

 

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Further information:

• USCCB Chairmen Respond to New Department of Labor Regulations (USCCB)
• Equality, Fairness and Opportunity (Department of Labor)
• US issues anti-discrimination rule for employers (AP)
• USCCB decries Obama’s LGBT executive order as ‘unprecedented and extreme’ (CWN, 7/22)