USCCB: Obama's "gender identity" regulation is a "serious threat"

quote:

---

(CNSNews.com) – The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) condemned new regulations to implement President Obama’s July 21 executive order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating "on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

These regulations were put in place by the Department of Labor last week in an update “to add gender identity and sexual orientation to the classes it protects” against discrimination.

"This rule will extend protections to millions of workers who are employed by or seek jobs with federal contractors and subcontractors, ensuring that sexual orientation and gender identity are never used as justification for workplace discrimination by those that profit from taxpayer dollars," said Patricia A. Shiu, director of the department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.

However the bishops called these regulations “a serious threat to freedom of conscience and religious liberty.”

“Additionally, the regulations advance the false ideology of ‘gender identity,’ which ignores biological reality and harms the privacy and associational rights of both contractors and their employees,” the bishops noted.

“Our Church teaches that '[e]very sign of unjust discrimination' against those who experience same-sex attraction 'should be avoided' (Catechism of the Catholic Church, CCC 2358)--but it appears on an initial reading that these regulations would prohibit far more than that ‘unjust discrimination,’” the bishops said in a statement on Friday.

“In particular, they appear also to prohibit employers’ religious and moral disapproval of same-sex sexual conduct, which creates a serious threat to freedom of conscience and religious liberty,” the bishops explain.

---