Last night I had a dream ...

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with the president in it :) Perhaps that's because I've been thinking about his recent signing of the executive order to prevent discrimination against LGBT people by federal contractors. Some religious groups asked for an exemption from the order but Obama did not allow one ... good! Not just me who thinks so ... 100 Religious Leaders to Obama: No Religious Exemption in ENDA Executive Order.

But today I was reading an article about the executive order at Christianity Today, and I was a little less happy after reading this ...

[...] Many religious organizations, such as World Vision, World Relief, and Catholic Charities partner with the federal government, but often receive grants, not contracts, so are not affected by the order, said Stanley Carlson-Thies, director of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance. Religious organizations with federal grants are currently protected: A 2007 religious exemption memo from the federal attorney general's office says the Religious Freedom Restoration Act "is reasonably construed" to exempt World Vision (and other religious organizations that administer federal funds through social services programs) from religious nondiscrimination requirements on other federal grantees ....

Douglas Laycock, a professor of law and religious studies at the University of Virginia.

"And very important, [the] executive order creates no right for anyone to sue anyone else. So gay rights groups cannot organize litigation against religious contactors," he said. "Only the contracting agencies can enforce this order, and they may quietly enforce it with attention to religious liberty—which is what this administration has mostly done so far." ...

So this appears not to be quite the win for justice I had hoped for.