WASHINGTON, D.C. — Family Equality Council welcomes the reintroduction of the Equality Act today in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Equality Act is a comprehensive bill that will add LGBTQ people to existing civil rights laws and strengthening protections for all people — including women, religious minorities, and people of color — providing clear, consistent protections nationwide in employment, housing, credit, education, public spaces and services, federally funded programs, and jury service.
“Around 50% of LGBTQ people live in states with no statewide legal protections from discrimination, leaving approximately 8 million LGBTQ people and their families at risk of anti-LGBTQ discrimination simply because of who they are and who they love,” said The Rev. Stan J. Sloan, CEO of Family Equality Council. “Our LGBTQ community needs Congress to act; to insist on comprehensive and explicit protections from discrimination across all areas of life.”
“Despite the progress we have made, the Equality Act is still urgently needed to ensure the safety and security of LGBTQ people and their families,” said Denise Brogan-Kator, chief policy officer at Family Equality Council. “Across the country, LGBTQ people can still get fired from our jobs, evicted from our homes, denied service in a restaurant, or face our children being bullied in school simply because we of who we are, who we love, how our families were formed, and what our parents look like. Now more than ever, we need comprehensive federal protections that are clear and consistent.”
On Monday, the Trump administration included a measure to “protect the religious liberty of child welfare providers” in its 2020 budget proposal, which the Washington Post reported was intended to allow federally funded faith based foster care and adoption agencies to “reject LGBTQ parents, non-Christians, and others.”
“LGBTQ foster youth and parents urgently need passage of the Equality Act, which prohibits discrimination in child welfare services and prohibits conversion therapy, which so many LGBTQ and gender non-conforming foster youth are subjected to,” said Julie Kruse, director of federal policy at Family Equality Council. “America’s 443,000 foster youth are deprived of stable and loving families when foster care agencies turn away qualified LGBTQ parents based on a religious litmus test. And, the 20% of foster youth who identify as LGBTQ are particularly harmed when agencies discriminate.”
About Family Equality Council
Family Equality Council advances legal and lived equality for LGBTQ families, and for those who wish to form them, through building community, changing hearts and minds, and driving policy change. Family Equality Council believes every LGBTQ person should have the right and opportunity to form and sustain a loving family, regardless of who they are or where they live. Learn more at familyequality.org.
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Media Contact: Ed Harris, Chief Communications Officer, Family Equality Council
646-880-3005 x117 / eharris@familyequality.org