Episcopal Church denounces bathroom bill

The national Episcopal Church denounced the bathroom bills that the Texas Senate is considering. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, president of the House of Deputies, urged Speaker of the House Joe Straus to continue opposing the discriminatory proposals.
They wrote: “As the presiding officers of the Episcopal Church, we are firmly opposed to ‘bathroom bills’ and particularly reject the idea that women and children are protected by them. As clergy who remember racist Jim Crow bathroom laws that purported to protect white people, we know the kind of hatred and fear that discriminatory laws can perpetuate.”
Straus said he didn’t want anyone’s suicide on his conscience as a result of a law he allowed through the Texas House of Representatives. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has made passage of a bathroom bill a top priority.
The Episcopal Church is schedule to hold its nine-day General Convention in Austin in 2018 and is threatening to move it if a bathroom bill passes.