U.S. President Barack Obama is using executive orders to promote homosexual and transgender rights. After years of pressure, President Obama has agreed to take executive action to ban federal contractors from discriminating against employees because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity. He also said he would sign an executive order banning discrimination against transgender federal employees. While he cannot impose these rules on all American businesses, the order would affect about 14 million people. The president hopes that Congress will pass broader legislation that would apply to nearly all employers, but it has languished in the House of Representatives.
Gay rights advocates praised the decision. Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch called on the White House to include religious exemptions for churches and other houses of worship and religiously affiliated organizations.
“If Congress won’t act, I will. I have directed my staff to prepare an executive order for my signature that prohibits discrimination by federal contractors on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity,” Obama said at a gay pride celebration at the White House, an annual event that the president has hosted every year since taking office.
In 1998 President Bill Clinton signed an executive order banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the federal civilian workforce, but it did not include gender identity. Earlier Obama also announced executive actions he will take on immigration reform, among other things.
Significantly, the U.S. House of Representatives is being used to hold back the tide of moral corruption that has swept over America in recent years. President Obama “lamented the fact that he is compelled to [sign executive orders] thanks to entrenched House Republicans.”
“I don’t prefer taking administrative action,” the President said, “I’d rather see permanent fixes to the issues we face.”
“Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot… Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed” Luke 17:28, 30