Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) told the Washington Blade that he won't support the Equality Act, which would update existing civil rights laws to protect LGBTQ Americans, unless there were religious exemptions.
Said Arielle Mueller, a Romney spokesperson, via email to the Blade: Sen. Romney believes that strong religious liberty protections are essential to any legislation on this issue, and since those provisions are absent from this particular bill, he is not able to support it.”
Biden has promised to make passing the legislation a priority in his first 100 days in office, but needs 60 votes in the Senate for it to pass. But doing so means ending the filibuster, and, as Michelangelo Signorile explained in a story posted to his substack yesterday, certain senators, like Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema, are in the way.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced in a letter to colleagues that a vote on the Equality Act, which the House already passed once in 2019 (it never received a Senate vote), would take place next week.