Here's NOM bleating about the (unfortunately remote) possibility that LGBT people will finally get anti-discrimination protections at the federal level. I've had to remove their bolding to add mine for emphasis:
The battle lines have been drawn. On one side, you have those who will not stop at an illegitimate redefinition of marriage who are now demanding passage of something they call the Equality Act — which, despite its name, absolutely takes away equality for people who hold religious convictions. It's really the Persecution of Americans Act.Apart from their horrible description of transgender people, I find their logic to be ludicrous. They've claimed that people who don't want school students to learn facts about sexuality are somehow going to be persecuted if they can't get that. So that's the latest demand from the religious right. Unless they can force their way into public schools, shove their faith down everyone's throat, and deny children factual information about topics they don't like, then they're the ones being persecuted. For my longer commentary on this issue, see my diary "The Death Sentence Of The Christian Right".The legislation being backed by homosexual activists gives them special legal rights and the ability to bring down the power of the federal government to investigate and punish any individual or group they claim is discriminating against them. Don't want to personally be involved in a gay ‘wedding'? Discrimination! Don't want your children and grandchildren taught in public school that same-sex unions are beautiful and normative? Discrimination! Don't believe that a man who "identifies" as a female is actually a woman? Discrimination! Don't want to have a biological male in the women's restroom or school showers? Discrimination!
By the way, NOM, don't stereotype and smear all religious people as agreeing with your bigotry by saying their equality will be denied. Most religious people do not agree with you on this issue.
On Thursday, researchers from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) unveiled a new survey featuring a range of data highlighting America’s rapidly shifting perceptions of LGBT people and same-sex marriage. Among its many findings, the poll reported that majorities of every major religious group now support legal nondiscrimination policies to protect LGBT people: of those surveyed, 71 percent of Catholics, 67 percent of white mainline Protestants, 60 percent of white evangelical Protestants, and 59 percent of non-white Protestants said they would back laws to shield LGBT individuals against discrimination in jobs, public accommodations, and housing.If you keep doing this, you are only going to become more and more isolated, even from the people you claim to represent.[...]
Yet PRRI’s poll found that not only do the majority of Americans (60 percent) oppose laws that exclude LGBT people, most religious people don’t like them either. Fifty-nine percent of white mainline Protestants, 63 percent of non-white Protestants, and 64 percent of Catholics reject these kinds of exemptions, as do 73 percent of religiously unaffiliated Americans. Only white evangelical Protestants endorse this new breed of “religious liberty” bills, and then only barely: just 51 percent say that a religious business owner should be able to use their faith to exclude a customer because of their sexuality.