Marco Rubio vows to end transgender executive orders, bathroom bills
While campaigning in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Florida U.S. senator and GOP presidential hopeful Marco Rubio pledged to reverse President Obama’s 2014 gender ideology executive order should he be elected president.
While referring to the recent news of a Chicago-area school district, pressured by the Obama administration to allow a male identifying as transgender to use female facilities, Rubio said he would overturn Obama’s moves to force acceptance of students’ use bathrooms of the opposite gender.
“The executive orders would be to reverse the executive orders the president has made on things like gender equality in restrooms,” he stated.
“You’ve seen some local districts and others been forced to, you know, provide girls access to a boys’ bathroom, and so forth,” Rubio said. “These sorts of things you’ve seen in Illinois, for example, but also ensure that we’re not doing anything that at any part in our government that is putting organizations that are motivated by their faith or organized around their faith from having to violate the tenets of their faith, and that includes government contractors.”
photo donkeyhotey
Rubio also said that it is not right for the federal government to force faith-based people to sin as part of doing business.
“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,” he said. “That is not something we should be supporting.”
In July 2014, Obama signed Executive Order 13672, which added homosexuality and transgender status as a protected class for the employees of federal contractors.
With CBN News, Rubio acknowledged the increasingly hostile climate in the U.S. for individuals of faith and promised to deliver a Justice Department that is not bent on discrimination toward Christians and conservatives.
“There’s no doubt that we need to be extra-vigilant now about protecting the religious liberties of Americans,” he said, “and that includes having a Justice Department that’s vigilant about ensuring that those who hold traditional values are not being discriminated against.”
“That includes reversing any administrative decisions made by this president that force religious, or religious motivated entities,” he continued. “You may not be owned by a church, but you are a religious school, or your mission is to spread the Gospel and adhere to God’s teachings ensure that people in the private sector and the not-for-profit sector are being protected in living out their faith.”
The presidential contender also pointed out the importance of judicial restraint and respect for the Constitution, in particular with regard to abortion and homosexual “marriage.” He said the Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges decisions are “constitutionally flawed.”
“It is a document of limitation, and it’s supposed to be interpreted and applied based on its original intent,” said Rubio. “And there is no way that you can read that Constitution and deduce from it that there is constitutional right to an abortion, or a constitutional right to marry someone of the same sex. And what you have is a Supreme Court that wanted to reach a certain policy outcome and so creatively manipulated the Constitution to discover a right that for over two centuries, some of the most brilliant minds in legal history didn’t find.”
Rubio at the 2015 Defending the American Dream Summitt in Ohio photo/ Gage Skidmore
