CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1447, the Fair and Equal Housing Act. What would H.R. 1447 do? It would (per its summary at congress.gov) amend the Fair Housing Act of 1968 to add "sexual orientation and gender identity" to the list of classes the law protects against discrimination "in the sale, rental, or financing of housing." H.R. 1447 would also define "gender identity" "without regard to the individual's designated sex at birth," and would extend protections against discrimination to people who associate with gays or transgendered folk or folks merely perceived as belonging to these classes. And among this bill's 18 co-sponsors are seven Republicans, including original bill sponsor Scott Taylor of Virginia. I'll brook no caterwauling from the far-right about how this bill would violate the "right" of people to live only next to people who don't offend their "religious beliefs," because no religious belief grants you the right to discriminate. And I'll tolerate no silliness about how H.R. 1447 gives "special rights" to gays, either, because equal rights aren't "special rights for those other people."
Meanwhile, CREDO also helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any effort to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Back in the day, we learned that the amount of oil we'd get out of ANWR wasn't going to be very much, so why do certain elements in our government insist on opening it up? Possibly out of an ideological hostility to protecting public lands, possibly out of an ideological hostility to protecting wildlife, and possibly out of a desire to enrich one's oil corporation cronies. If these all seem like the same thing to you, I wouldn't exactly blame you. But you can't just consider the harm that oil drilling will do to the rare species and Native Americans who live in and near ANWR -- you must also consider the harm that a massive oil spill would do, since our government doesn't make oil corporations take preventive measures against oil spills anymore, nor does our government properly punish the corporations who cause the spills. They say fossil fuels are dependable and reliable, though of course they're more dependable as sources of unearned income for their executives -- the damage they cause to our way of life, whether through pollution or accidents, will prove far more "dependable."
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