Sheila Jackson Lee: “I thank the gentleman very much, and I thank Mr. Cicilline. Let me refute the suggestion that this is a bill that was…”

“I thank the gentleman very much, and I thank Mr. Cicilline. Let me refute the suggestion that this is a bill that was rushed to the floor. This is a work that has been germinating for 5 years plus, and many of us have watched and been engaged in meetings and collaboration to ensure that the bill would reflect all of what America is about. I want to speak to my religious friends--that is, all of us claim a religion of some form--and I want to say to them that religious liberty is not dead, but it is alive. This bill focuses on saving lives; it focuses on understanding what it means to be transgender and denied the right to serve in the United States military. It stands up for African American transgender women who have been killed in the South, in the region that I live in; and it stands up for the person who knocked on the door and could not get housing because of their status. And so I would ask my friends who are Mormon, Seventh Day Adventists, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and other religions: How would you feel if you knocked on a door and you could not get in, if they had no place for you at the inn? So I am well-aware of the Restorative Act, dealing with religion, passed in 1993, but I am also aware of the Supreme Court case, the Hodges case in 2015, which said: ``They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law.…”