President Barack Obama speaks before signing an executive order to protect LGBT employees from federal workplace discrimination in the East Room of the White House Monday, July 21, 2014, in Washington. Obama's executive orders signed Monday prohibit discrimination against gay and transgender workers in the federal government and its contracting agencies, without a new exemption that was requested by some religious organizations.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Monday ordered employment protection for gay and transgender employees who work for the federal government or for companies holding federal contracts, telling advocates he embraced the “irrefutable rightness of your cause.”

“America’s federal contracts should not subsidize discrimination against the American people,” Obama declared at a White House signing ceremony.

Obama said it was unacceptable that being gay is still a firing offense in many places in the United States, and he called on Congress to extend the ban to all employers. But legislation that would extend the ban has become embroiled in a dispute over whether religious groups should get exemptions.

The president had long resisted pressure to pursue an executive anti-discrimination order covering federal contractors in the hope that Congress would take more sweeping action. The Senate passed legislation last year with some Republican support, but it has not been considered by the GOP-controlled House. Now, said Obama, “It’s time to address this injustice for every American.”

Mia Macy of Portland, Ore., watched Obama’s announcement in tears as an invited guest in the East Room. The military veteran and former Phoenix police detective applied to be a ballistics expert with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as a male but was rejected after she changed her name and began identifying as a woman. She filed a successful complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and settled a discrimination lawsuit against the government last year.

“Having a president acknowledge us for the first time in history as citizens instead of second-class citizens is just monumental,” Macy said in a telephone interview.

Obama had faced pressure from opposing flanks over whether he would include an exemption in the executive action for religious organizations. He decided to maintain a provision that allows religious groups with federal contracts to hire and fire based upon religious identity, but he did not grant any exception to consider sexual orientation or gender identity. Churches also are able to hire ministers as they see fit under the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom.

Objecting to his order, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called it unprecedented and said it lends the government’s economic power to a “deeply flawed understanding of human sexuality” that faithful Catholics won’t abide.