Animus: (noun, A-ni-mus) “a usually prejudiced and often spiteful or malevolent ill will.”
Not to be outdone by all of the anti-LGBT legislation happening in North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, and other state legislatures, members of the federal House of Representatives is weighing in with their own proposed legislation and twisted rationale for it. The bills’ sponsors declare – with a straight face – that it is about the “freedom of religion” and “religious liberty” guaranteed in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. In fact, it has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with animus toward gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
H.R. 2802, sponsored by Raul Labrador of Idaho and co-sponsored by 167 of his Republican colleagues along with sole Democrat Daniel Lipinski of Illinois, is subtitled “A Bill to prevent discriminatory treatment on any person on the basis of views held with respect to marriage,” has the short title of the “First Amendment Defense Act,” or FADA. The bill proposes that “the Federal Government shall not take any discriminatory action against a person, wholly or partially on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”