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I believe that the LGBT community is not given the rights that they deserve, either because of religion or any other reason.

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“Legislation Affecting LGBT Rights Across the Country.” American Civil Liberties Union, www.aclu.org/other/legislation-affecting-lgbt-rights-across-country.

“Religious Liberty’ and the Anti-LGBT Right.” Www.splcenter.org, Www.splcenter.org, www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/splc_religious_liberty_and_anti-lgbt_right.pdf.

“LGBT Equality & Civil Rights.” Jared Polis 2nd District of Colorado, polis.house.gov/issues/issue/?Issue ID=5032.

Reports, Staff. “Six National LGBT Rights Groups Drop ENDA Support over Religious Exemptions.” LGBTQ Nation, LGBTQ Nation, 27 Aug. 2014, www.lgbtqnation.com/2014/07/national-gay-rights-group-withdraws-enda-support-over-religious-exemptions/.

“Poet Laureate Declares 'God Is Gay' in Tribute to Orlando Victims.” PinkNews, 22 June 2016, www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/06/22/poet-laureate-declares-god-is-gay-in-tribute-to-orlando-victims/.

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(Photo by ANDREW YATES/AFP/Getty Images)

Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy has declared that "our children are gay and God is gay" - in a poem released in the wake of the Orlando massacre.

Duffy was appointed as Britain's Poet Laureate in 2009, and is the first ever openly LGB person to hold the esteemed traditional role. ﻿

The Poet Laureate is expected to write verse for significant national occasions, and Duffy released a poem last week in the wake of vigils across the UK for the Orlando massacre.

The poem, titled Gay Love, declares: This writer is gay,/and the priest, in the old love of his church,/kneeling to pray.

"The farmer is gay, baling the gold hay/out in the fields,/and the teacher, cycling to school each day.

"The politician is gay,/though he fears to say,/knotting his tongue, his tie."

The poem continues to list people who are gay, including "the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker", before concluding: "Our children, are gay/And God is gay".

Despite angering some evangelicals, the poem was praised by the Bishop of Buckingham, Rt Revd Dr Alan Wilson.

He told Christian Today: "The last line is shocking. It is meant to be shocking. But shock is something we live with in Christian communities.

"I think you can see that the language of what she is saying is very similar to some of the more shocking things that Saint Paul says about God.

"I am sure there were Pharisees in Galatia who were very upset by what St Paul was saying because it went beyond what they knew of God."

Among teachings in Galatians 3, St Paul declares: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Jesus".

The Bishop added: "This is what is called 'queer theology'. It is not about being gay. It is about questioning and querying what we thought we could rely on in our religious traditions."

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Poet Laureate declares 'God is Gay' in tribute to Orlando victims

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Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy has declared that "our children are gay and God is gay" - in a poem released in the wake of the Orlando massacre. Duffy was appointed as Britain's Poet Laureate in 2009, and is the first ever openly LGB person to hold the esteemed traditional role.

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I believe that this correlates to what I am talking about as it speaks to everyone who has ever been happy. Even god has been happy and the only people who choose happiness are not selfish. But the friendliest and nicest people that you know because they may have faith, but their will is stronger than that. They can fight for what they believe in because what they are fighting for, is the right to laugh and love with whoever they want to. The reason that they can't, is mostly because gods children has chosen them as the undesirables. But they don't speak for god, they only speak for themselves and choosing their voice as the voice of god is selfish.

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This post focuses on how the ENDA(Employment non-description Act) and how they are withdrawing support from them because they are supporting workplace harassment of LGBT. I find that it relates to my topic on how religious based biased is the main factor in America, in how we handle the rights of the LGBT community. They considered this a violation of their rights as they don't want to support the policies of bigots. "The provision in the current version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that allows religious organizations to discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity has long been a source of significant concern to us"

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Updated: 5:30 p.m. EDT

WASHINGTON - Six of the nation's leading LGBT rights advocacy groups on Tuesday announced they were withdrawing their support for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act ( ENDA), fearing that broad religious exemptions included in the current bill could compel private companies to cite objections similar to those that prevailed in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week.

The withdrawal was first announced earlier Tuesday by The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and by mid-afternoon the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU), Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), and the Transgender Law Center issued a joint statement that they would no longer support the current version of ENDA because it provides "religiously affiliated organizations ... a blank check to engage in workplace discrimination against LGBT people."

At issue is last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case brought by Hobby Lobby that said family-owned businesses do not have to offer their employees contraceptive coverage that conflicts with the owners' religious beliefs.

The ruling has since led to an increase in calls for greater permission to discriminate against LGBT Americans on the basis of religious liberty.

The action leaves the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) as the only national LGBT advocacy group to continue lobbying for the legislation in its current form.

In a joint statement, the ACLU, GLAD, Lambda Legal, the NCLR and the Transgender Law Center said their support for ENDA "is no longer tenable:"

The provision in the current version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that allows religious organizations to discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity has long been a source of significant concern to us. Given the types of workplace discrimination we see increasingly against LGBT people, together with the calls for greater permission to discriminate on religious grounds that followed immediately upon the Supreme Court's decision last week in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, it has become clear that the inclusion of this provision is no longer tenable. It would prevent ENDA from providing protections that LGBT people desperately need and would make very bad law with potential further negative effects. Therefore, we are announcing our withdrawal of support for the current version of ENDA.

For decades, our organizations have challenged anti-LGBT workplace discrimination in the courts and worked for the passage of inclusive non-discrimination laws at the local, state, and federal level. We do this work because of the devastating toll workplace discrimination has had, and continues to have, on the lives of LGBT people. It is unacceptable that in the year 2014, men and women are forced to hide who they are or whom they love when they go to work.

The current patchwork of legal protections at the state and local level has left LGBT people vulnerable to discrimination. For this reason, we have supported federal legislation to explicitly protect LGBT people from discrimination in the workplace, and have urged President Obama to sign an executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.

[...]

Because opponents of LGBT equality are already misreading that decision as having broadly endorsed rights to discriminate against others, we cannot accept a bill that sanctions discrimination and declares that discrimination against LGBT people is more acceptable than other kinds of discrimination.

Earlier Tuesday, Rea Carey, executive director of the Task Force, told The Washington Post that religious exemptions in the version of ENDA passed by the Senate last year are too broadly written and would allow religious institutions or companies to fire LGBT workers, or not hire them based on religious beliefs.

"If a private company can take its own religious beliefs and say you can't have access to certain health-care, it's a hop, skip and a jump to an interpretation that a private company could have religious beliefs that LGBT people are not equal or somehow go against their beliefs and therefore fire them," Carey said in an interview with The Washington Post.

"We disagree with that trend. The implications of Hobby Lobby are becoming clear," she added.

ENDA, approved in the Senate in November 2103, would outlaw workplace discrimination against LGBT Americans, but critics say the broad religious exemptions would allow religiously-affiliated employers, hospitals, colleges, and charities, to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

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As well, ENDA does not prohibit discrimination in housing, public accommodations, education or many federal programs.

Meanwhile, House Republicans have said they will not consider the bill, in part because they believe ENDA's current religious exemptions aren't broad enough.

LGBT rights advocates say expanding the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include sexual orientation and gender identity would offer comprehensive civil rights protections for LGBT Americans.

Carey said her group is also pushing to ensure that President Obama does not include a broad religious exemption in an executive order that he is expected to sign that will ban discrimination against LGBT employees of federal contractors.

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Six national LGBT rights groups drop ENDA support over religious exemptions

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WASHINGTON - The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force announced Tuesday that it is withdrawing its support for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), fearing that broad religious exemptions included in the current bill could compel private companies to cite objections similar to those that prevailed in last week's U.S.