Marco Rubio Would Reverse Obama’s Executive Order Against LGBT Discrimination

Marco Rubio has consistently found himself farther right of almost all other presidential candidates this election period. When speaking on any topic – abortion, Syrian refugees, climate change, etc. – he has shown time and again that only Ted Cruz or The Donald can be more extreme than he is on some issues. That’s why it came of little surprise that one of his first orders of business should he be elected is to immediately reverse any progress made towards LGBT equality under our current President, starting with Obama’s executive order prohibiting LGBT discrimination for federal contractors.

Rubio contends that “God’s law” trumps the laws set by the U.S. government. “In essence, if we are ever ordered by a government authority to personally violate and sin, violate God’s law and sin, we are called to ignore that. We cannot abide by that because government is compelling us to sin,” he said.

“There are many government contractors and small companies who provide services to the government who are faith-based people, and they are, they are being compelled to sin by government in their business conduct,” Rubio said in response to Obama’s anti-discrimination order.

However, at no point are government contractors being “compelled to sin by government.” The truth is that the government is simply refusing to do business with companies with policies it disagrees with. Those contractors are in no way required to work for the government, so in actuality, they are just costing themselves the privilege of working with the government so long as they hold to their discriminatory hiring policies.

Rubio plans to reverse Obama’s decision to give LGBT workers a better chance at going to work, earning a living, and putting food on the table because of a misguided notion that the laws of America’s federal government are to be disregarded if they are contradictory to God’s laws.

America is not a theocracy. There is separation of church and state for a reason. If you want to work with the U.S. government, you cannot also commit workplace discrimination.