Posted on 10/23/2007 7:34:53 AM PDT by processing please hold
[snip]
Here are 14 good reasons to oppose the revised ENDA, H.R. 3685:
1. ENDA and H.R. 3685 would create federally-protected “rights” based on immoral, unhealthy and changeable homosexual/bisexual behavior — masquerading as “orientation” – setting a dangerous legal, moral and spiritual precedent. Homosexuality is not a “civil right”; it is a human wrong — one that is redeemable as proven by thousands of contented former homosexuals and ex-lesbians. Our Founding Fathers, infused with a Biblical view of fallen man, created limited government that sought to restrain the sinful outworking of men’s hearts (including the lust for power, hence our system of checks and balances). The law once punished sin (e.g., sodomy and anti-abortion laws), so it is preposterous to say that homosexuality-affirming laws are necessary to uphold basic, “constitutional rights.” ENDA represents the complete rejection of the Judeo-Christian Western legal tradition by creating newfangled legal “rights” that actually reward errant lifestyles and sexual misbehavior.
2. ENDA/H.R. 3685 would be used to defend the placement of openly homosexual and bisexual teachers in our nation’s public schools in ALL localities (see # 7). For the more activist-minded homosexual teachers who are already in schools, H.R. 3685 could lead them to more boldly promote and discuss their lifestyle in the classroom, as schools could be sued for discrimination if they dared to discipline activist “gays.”
3. ENDA/H.R. 3685 would punish Christians and religious traditionalists by leading directly to the loss of freedom for tradition-minded business owners with 15 or more employees. Take the example of an Orthodox Jewish owner of a for-profit day-care business who would NEVER hire an avowed homosexual, lesbian or bisexual as a supervising adult care-giver, because he believes Scriptural teachings that homosexual practice is immoral and reflects poorly on one’s character. This religious man would qualify for the exemption to ENDA if he has 14 or less workers. But God forbid that his business grows to 15 or more employees, because then, under ENDA, he could no longer apply his religious and moral beliefs about same-sex sin in his hiring and firing decisions . It must be remembered that top homosexual strategists now assert that their “moral” claim (the right not to be treated differently based on their “sexual orientation”) trumps our religious/moral obligation to oppose homosexuality.
4. ENDA is unnecessary: there is no outbreak of homosexuals getting fired; in fact, it is Christians defending their faith in the public square who are getting fired and mistreated — like Matt Barber, who was terminated by Allstate Insurance in 2005 after writing an online article on his own time critical of homosexual “marriage.” Moreover, private companies are racing to create pro-homosexual policies on their own: Kodak now gives special preference to homosexually-owned subcontractors as one of several “minorities” receiving favored consideration. We strongly disagree with these “gay”-affirmative-action-type policies, but corporations have the right to pursue them. However, with the proliferation of such corporate programs, there is no need for the heavy hand of government to act as a corporate Big Brother, forcing all companies to affirm homosexuality in their hiring and firing decisions. Let the free market decide this issue.
5. ENDA/H.R. 3685 would dramatically expand the power of the federal government and would put it behind ONE SIDE of the homosexuality debate: the politically correct and unbiblical claim that homosexuality is about “rights” and innocuous “orientations.” Therefore it would override traditional understandings of homosexuality as a changeable sin. Federal authority will be asserted to enforce homosexual “rights” over traditional Americans rights to operate their business according to their moral beliefs. At the very least, with half the nation still believing that homosexual behavior is wrong, the government should be neutral on this issue.
6. ENDA is a “gay” lawyer’s dream: it would be abused by litigious homosexual activists, who seem to have a special gift for lying about conservatives and exaggerating their own victim status. If history is a guide, ENDA will lead to “gay” harassment lawsuits against people like the theoretical day-care entrepreneur above. Homosexual activists have already used dirty tactics to harass and take down pro-family leaders like Larry Cirignano, Scott Lively, and Gary Glenn — all victims of trumped-up “gay” charges. Glenn was falsely accused by a homosexual activist group, the Triangle Foundation, of favoring the murder of homosexuals (this writer has also been falsely accused of this). Cirignano recently had “civil rights” charges against him dropped after a lesbian invaded his Catholic group’s rally and then claimed that he assaulted her. Lively, founder of Abiding Truth Ministries, was hit with a highly-publicized lawsuit in 1991 based on similar trumped-up charges. Oregon Republican writer Betty Freauf describes what happened: “At one of the O.C.A. meetings, a photo journalist and homosexual-rights activist by the name of Catherine Stauffer attended the [pro-family] meeting uninvited. When asked to leave, she refused. Scott Lively then O.C.A. [Oregon Citizen’s Alliance] executive director, escorted her out of the meeting. She then had her frivolous assault and battery lawsuit which had been the plan all along. Judgments were granted to the plaintiff Stauffer in the amount of $30,000 each against O.C.A. and Scott Lively.” Certainly, some homosexual activists will not be able to resist using frivolous, ENDA-inspired lawsuits to intimidate conservative business owners into submission — especially those who speak out publicly against “gay marriage,” or oppose the homosexual lobby. Is it really hard to imagine homosexual activists sending “plants” into conservative-owned companies and then suing when the person is not hired, or is fired? Of course, the same might be attempted by apolitical yet greedy “gay” employees and lawyers seeking to manipulate the system through “discrimination” lawsuits.
7. ENDA would trample on the rights of the 30 states without homosexuality-based “sexual orientation” laws — including conservative “red” states like Oklahoma and Texas where there is little voter interest in passing such laws — by turning the whole nation, including all public schools (see #2), into a “special-protections-for-homosexual-workers” zone.
8. ENDA’s “religious exemption” is extremely limited and narrowly tailored: of course, it does NOTHING to protect the freedom of moral-minded small businessmen to hire and fire based on THEIR values system, not the government’s. But beyond that, ENDA’s “religious exemption” is also carefully circumscribed so as to box in non-church, religious-oriented groups, rather than liberate them (see points 12 and 13). Here is how H.R. 3685 defines “religious organization”:
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION - The term `religious organization’ means–
(A) a religious corporation, association, or society; or
(B) a school, college, university, or other educational institution or institution of learning, if–
(i) the institution is in whole or substantial part controlled, managed, owned, or supported by a particular religion, religious corporation, association, or society; or
(ii) the curriculum of the institution is directed toward the propagation of a particular religion
Now think of all the businesses, associations and schools that would NOT be covered by that definition: private, non-church or non-religious schools, day-care centers not directly tied to a church; small secular businesses (15 or more employees, including part-timers) owned by Christians; etc.
Moreover, Matt Barber (see #4), Policy Director for Cultural Issues at Concerned Women for America and AFTAH Board Member, makes this excellent point on the constitutionality of ENDA’s religious exemption: “For any religious exemption to pass constitutional muster, [it] would have to follow the individual business owner. The First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of religion which applies to all individual citizens, not just to a church, religious organization or corporation. It is unconstitutional to prevent, by force of law, an individual business owner from considering his sincerely held religious beliefs while determining how to best own and operate his private business.”
9. Even though ENDA proscribes quotas, H.R. 3685 would create de facto preferential status for “gay” employees – or those who claim that status (which is another issue: how does a company “prove” that an employee is or is not “gay”?). Especially for corporations and businessmen who fear lawsuits, ENDA would create a new category of “affirmative action” – for a group of people who, far from demonstrating a history of being disadvantaged economically, rank among the more affluent and privileged groups in society (for example, “gays” travel internationally at rates far higher than other groups) . (See #4 on existing private “gay affirmative action.”)
10. H.R. 3685 is merely the camel’s nose under the tent: even though homosexual Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) “threw tranny off the train” as it were – by backing a watered-down ENDA that does not explicitly cover transsexuals (”gender identity”) – the GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender) lobby is united in pushing for the even more radical version of ENDA, H.R. 2015, which fully covers “transgenders.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has agreed to bring that bill to the House floor for a vote if the bill’s sponsors can show they have enough votes to pass it. Passage of H.R. 3685 would make passing H.R. 2015 — what we’re calling the “Transgender Bathrooms for Business” bill — easier. 11. H.R. 3685 would advance the “same-sex marriage” agenda. It would be cited by activist judges as evidence that America is moving towards pro-homosexual “equality” (read: state-sponsored “inequality” for people of faith). The homosexual agenda always advances incrementally, but federalizing “sexual orientation” law is a long-sought goal of “gay” activists and liberal social engineers seeking to break down our Judeo-Christian traditions by normalizing homosexuality through the law.
12. H.R. 3685’s exemption for “religious organizations” would divide society further by effectively creating a two-tiered system of rights. Some Christians and religious people operating in exempted religious groups would get the “special right” to factor in their opposition to homosexuality in their hiring and firing decisions — but morality-conscious secular groups and business owners would lose their freedom to similarly defend heterosexual norms. This is not fair. Many nonreligious people oppose homosexual behavior and creating “rights” based on immoral, aberrant sex: why should they have any less freedom to act on their beliefs than religious citizens?
13. ENDA/H.R. 3685 will lead to further compromise in the Church: its religious exemption would mollify pastors and make them LESS likely to stand on principle and fight the aggressive homosexual agenda, since they would be “protected” (for now) from ENDA’s oppressive mandates. Of course, homosexual activists would later seek to tighten or eliminate religious- and church-based exemptions (there’s that incrementalism again). If homosexual activists truly respected people’s freedom to oppose homosexual behavior, would they constantly be complaining about “religious-based discrimination”? Would they be relentlessly attacking the Boy Scouts and have tried to make it illegal for the Scouts not to hire homosexual (and atheist) scoutmasters? Many “gay” advocates view Christian opposition to hiring homosexuals as simply another form of invidious discrimination to be overcome through law, academia and cultural mobilization.
14. ENDA confuses the issue of civil rights in America and trivializes African Americans’ struggle against discrimination. H.R. 3685 insults African-Americans and confuses the civil rights equation considerably by taking the 1964 Civil Rights Act – designed with the noble goal of redressing institutional racism in America — and refitting it to put the U.S. Government officially behind the false concept of homosexuality as a “civil right.” Blacks cannot change their skin color. Homosexuals can leave that lifestyle behind, as many have. (Conversely, people can become “gay” by embracing that ideology and lifestyle. Nobody can “become African American”; that’s how you are born.) Being black is not a moral issue. Embracing sinful and destructive homosexual behavior is. It has long been the goal of “gay” activists to exploit the noble Black civil rights movement — even appropriating its language of “equality” and drawing bogus analogies between ending legal bans on interracial marriage (a good and just reform) and the campaign to legalize homosexual “marriage” (a revolutionary attack on a sacred institution). ENDA would put government muscle behind this exploitation, and make it much easier to teach schoolchildren that homosexuality is a civil rights issue, not a moral one.
Very. But what in Washington isn't ironic these days.
Christopher Shays is a co-sponser.
So is Congresswoman Deborah Pryce (R-OH).
All I saw as co-sponsors was one ‘R’ Shays.
Then look again. Deborah Pryce co-sponsored it as well.
Just as one example, the Log Cabin Republicans issued a press release reading in part:
“Unfortunately, too many Americans still face job discrimination because of their sexual orientation–characteristics that have no bearing whatsoever on their ability to effectively perform their job,” said Log Cabin President Patrick Sammon. “Log Cabin thanks Republican Representatives Deborah Pryce and Chris Shays for introducing ENDA.
Source: http://online.logcabin.org/news_views/reading-room-back-up/log-cabin-praises-house.html
Yep, I went back and there she is.
Rep. Deborah Pryce [R-OH]
Don't know how I overlooked it.
I think the GOP should demand "transgendereds" be included, and also introduce Amendments to ban discrimination against people with "monogamous relationships with animals"...just to ensure the bill will be DOA.
We need to get back to the dirty tricks and pranks of the Gingrich minority, pre-1994.
I saw something on that, let me see if I can find it again.
[JURIST] An employment non-discrimination bill [HR 3685 text, PDF] protecting gays, lesbians, and bisexuals but not trangendered individuals went to the full House Thursday after being reviewed by a number of House subcommittees. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act covers hiring and firing practices, the setting of compensation levels, and promotion determinations, and makes it illegal for employers to consider an employee's sexual orientation when making decisions in the workplace.
The absence of transgender protections has prompted sharp opposition [ACLU press release] to the measure from civil rights groups. Democrats who introduced the bill in September were worried that the inclusion of language applying to transgender employees would cause the bill to fail and have vowed to address the issue in the future. California Representative Linda Sanchez [official profile] was one of four Democrats to vote against the bill in committee, saying that, "We could have done better." Currently less than half of US states specifically prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation [JURIST news archive], and only half of these laws include protection for transgender individuals. AP has more.
Additional info HERE
What a disgusting liberal POS.
He's a loathsome vile creature.
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