April 7, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — The GOP-dominated Nebraska state senate has ended debate on a bill that would have added “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the state’s employment nondiscrimination laws, effectively killing it, opponents of the legislation said Thursday.
Nebraska’s unicameral legislature also passed its first pro-life legislation since 2011, allowing citizens to buy state-issued “Choose Life” license plates. Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican, signed the bill into law Wednesday.
Nebraska joins at least 14 other states and 70 cities that have rejected “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” proposals in the last year, according to Liberty Counsel, which opposed LB 173.
“Sexual orientation” and “gender identity” measures — always enacted in the name of nondiscrimination and equality — have for decades been the basis for punitive lawsuits and actions by state agencies and LGBT activists targeting people of faith who believe homosexuality and “gay marriage” are morally wrong.
For example, the main LGBT lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America, which the Scouts ultimately won at the Supreme Court in 2000 before capitulating to “gay” and “transgender” activists 14 years later, was based upon a “sexual orientation” bill passed in New Jersey in 1991.
Proposed laws like LB 173 “are consistently used to criminalize anyone who speaks against” homosexual behaviors and activism, said Jonathan Alexandre, Liberty Counsel’s director of public policy. “This has been the case for countless business owners across the country who have been victims of the LGBT agenda.”
Alexandre said the legislature's decision not to move forward with the bill will help preserve “privacy rights and dignity interests of all Nebraskans.”
Joining Liberty Counsel in opposing the “gay/transgender” bill were Nebraska Mass Resistance (Nebraskans for Founders Values) and the Nebraska Family Alliance.
Brian Camenker, the national president of Mass Resistance, told LifeSiteNews that its Nebraska affiliate “went town to town across the state educating citizens and businesses about this horrible bill. The Legislative leadership got the message and stopped it, despite big pressure from the LGBT lobby and its allies.”
In recent years, well-funded homosexual-transgender activist organizations like Human Rights Campaign have been spending millions of dollars to push their agenda in traditionally red states.
Comparing gender rebellion to skin color
Regarding LB 173’s “transgender” component, Alexandre said, “It is wrong to force some people into intimate situations with members of the opposite sex while forcing religious institutions to deny their moral convictions on human sexuality.”
Gender-confused “transgender” activists demand the “right” to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms to match their “gender identity.” Many have gone so far as to compare being kept out of opposite-sex restrooms to segregationist Jim Crow laws that banned African Americans from using “whites only” restrooms and drinking fountains.
Such analogies have outraged blacks, as vocalized by the late African-American pastor and pro-family leader Ken “Hutch” Hutcherson, who said, “Don’t compare your sin to my skin.”
Jake Bliss, writing for the Nebraska Family Alliance, notes that there are two big differences between race and “sexual orientation,” one being that sexual orientation and gender identity frequently “describe an individual’s behavior, whereas race is unrelated to a person’s behavior.”
A second difference, Bliss said, is that “sexual orientation and gender identity are inherently ambiguous terms, whereas race is not.”
Ever more edgy “gender identities” are proliferating in the post-Christian West and now include: Genderqueer, Bigender, Gender Variant, Transfeminine, Agenda and Gender Fluid.