ENDA

A few weeks ago, a bipartisan group of legislators once again introduced the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in both the House and the Senate, which will prohibit "employers, employment agencies, and labor unions from using an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity as the basis for employment decisions, such as hiring, firing, promotion, or compensation"; such protections are already provided based on things like race, religion, gender, national origin, age and disability.

But "Chaps" Gordon Klingenschmitt is not buying it because he knows that ENDA is really all about driving Christian businesses right out of existence.

"ENDA is the end of the world for Christian employers," Klingenschmitt claimed, saying that ENDA is not about equality but rather "bankrupting Christian business owners." Even more frightening, ENDA is also apparently about forcing major corporations "to give homosexual bonus pay to your gay or lesbian lover" ... whatever that means.

Saying that ENDA "will be the end of Christian business as we know it," Klingenschmitt asserted that there is a demonic spirit at work behind the push for this legislation before asking why gays and lesbians should be entitled to employment protections when they are not going to Heaven.

"If the Bible will not give eternal benefits to homosexuals, if they cannot inherit the kingdom of God, why," Klingenschmitt asked, "on this world, should they get bonus pay or employment benefits?"

While he certainly has a lot of competition serving among the likes of Michele Bachmann, Steve King, Louie Gohmert and Steve Stockman, Rep. Tim Huelskamp is doing his best to position himself as the leading congressman of the anti-gay radical right.

Huelskamp told Family Research Council president Tony Perkins in an interview before last night’s State of the Union address that President Obama seeks “to destroy the family and replace it with his view of a radical new social agenda.”

This President has a radical social agenda and the media will probably give him a pass when instead of talking about the fact that mom and dad don’t have a job we’re going to talk about how to destroy the family and replace it with his view of a radical new social agenda. So we’re going to hear a lot about that, we’re going to hear a lot of blaming and also a lot of talk about how he would solve this and that problem but gosh darn it he’s had four years to do that and he hasn’t solved one and I would argue it’s gotten progressively worse since he took office.

The congressman went on to criticize the Republican leadership for trying to avoid a discussion of social issues. Huelskamp, who last year falsely claimed that 85 percent of people in the U.S. don’t support legalizing same-sex marriage, insisted that Republicans “defend the seventy percent position that most Americans support traditional marriage,” which in Religious Right-speak means oppose marriage equality.

Of course, most polls find that just over half of Americans support same-sex marriage.

Huelskamp went on to call the Department of Defense’s extension of partnership benefits to same-sex couples and the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) as “radical ideas” that “most Americans do not accept” because they “specifically and selectively reward homosexual behavior.”

Once again, the majority of Americans favor job protections and partnership benefits for gays and lesbians.

The response from the general leadership is: gosh, we can’t talk about social issues. But the President can? Someone has to stand up and defend the seventy percent position that most Americans support traditional marriage, most Americans understand the value of family, they understand it’s under attack and they understand that, they see it, they believe it. So we got to stand up. I’ve always been confused by Republicans that refuse to support a seventy percent position and say, ‘gosh we can’t take our stand there.’ But whether it’s Obamacare, whether it’s these radical DoD [Department of Defense] proposals coming out of the White House or changing all the employment rules to specifically and selectively reward homosexual behavior, those are really radical ideas and most Americans do not accept them.

So we’ll have an opportunity to hear from the President but again don’t forget he is a lame duck President, he’s not running for election again and I think this could be the most radical we’ll hear from him in a long time because it is Obama unleashed. We’re going to hear tonight probably exactly what he would like to do and he promised he’s going to change America and he’s still after that agenda and that goal.

Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition used the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in order to bolster her campaign against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act over the bill’s protections for LGBT employees. While speaking to Janet Mefferd yesterday about the Orange County, Florida, school system’s new non-discrimination policy that is similar to ENDA, Laffery said that just as parents are upset about the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting and are concerned about keeping their children safe, they should also be worried about ENDA’s “devastating effects” as schools will have “people with some real issues playing out their personal problems in the classroom.”

ENDA, the bill itself as I have been talking about it won’t become law, but they’re going to piece meal it. They’re going to start by making federal contractors—if you want to be a plumber for the government or want to do this, that or the other with the government, you have to comply with this order. They make try and find other ways of doing it, implementing the whole ENDA but I’m not sure exactly how at this point. But what I think people should focus on is: what does this mean locally?

People are really upset because of this tragedy up in Connecticut and protecting our children and we’re going to see some devastating effects. What they did in Florida is they passed a measure which affects adults, teachers, staff and kids. Our concern is that transgender children in schools are a different issue than teachers and staff. What we’re going to see is people with some real issues playing out their personal problems in the classroom.

Like other Religious Right activists who have warned that ENDA will lead to sexual assault and death, Lafferty maintained that ENDA is part of the left’s “open season” on Christians on behalf of “fringe minorities and people that are truly sick.”

Lafferty warned that Chick-fil-A restaurants may soon be “forced” to hire “weirdos” seeking to undermine Christian businesses, warning that transgender people are committing “the ultimate act of self-hatred” and need “special medical treatment” rather than job protections.

Lafferty: I fully expect that depending on how the administration pushes this, we’re going to see people applying for jobs at Chick-fil-A and Christian businesses because families go there because A) the food is good and B) they want to support what Chick-fil-A stands for, and no better way of hurting a Chick-fil-A restaurant than to have a bunch of weirdos working there.

Mefferd: That is so weird you say that because I had an experience like that at Chick-fil-A just a couple of weeks ago, exact same experience. I thought: that’s very strange that this person is working at Chick-fil-A.

Lafferty: They may have chosen to hire this person but they’re going to be forced to.

…

Lafferty: I think minorities, those protected classes, are going to be shocked when they find out that a transgendered man or woman is going to be treated the same as an African American man or woman. That’s not right and the laws will be overridden if ENDA should pass. That’s why they are going jurisdiction by jurisdiction to try and force communities to accept this. This is the ultimate act of self-hatred and we are lifting this up? We should be giving them special medical treatment maybe.

Mefferd: Get them some help.

Lafferty: Not protected class [status].

Truth in Action Ministries has released their “2012 Issues Guide for Christian Voters” [PDF], which argues that federal spending on social services “goes against what the Bible says about caring for one’s own and others” and pushing for bans on abortion rights, stem cell research and emergency contraception. The group also warns of “radical judges” and an “out-of-control judiciary,” the “dangerous and destructive” health care reform law and the “false religion” of environmentalism.

But of course, no Religious Right voter guide goes without a section on gay rights, and Truth in Action Ministries tells members that END will “impose the homosexual political agenda on the workplace” and that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has started “Maoist-style ‘re-education’ in ‘diversity.’” The group also claims the repeal law will “violate the rights of those serving by forcing them to cohabit and shower with people who may desire them sexually” and “jeopardize the military’s health and blood supply, since homosexual men are far more likely to be promiscuous and to have STDs, including HIV/AIDS”

In 1996, Congress overwhelmingly enacted the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). But in 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struck down the state’s marriage law, and the state began issuing same-sex “marriage” licenses six months later, despite no change in the law. And in May 2012, a federal appeals court in Boston declared DOMA unconstitutional.

All candidates should be asked how they will defend marriage from this radical assault. It’s not enough to say they favor marriage if they also support same-sex “civil unions,” “domestic partnerships,” or “sexual orientation” laws, all of which incentivize homosexual relationships and devalue marriage. They should also be questioned about:

• The proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would impose the homosexual political agenda on the workplace;

• A constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union only of one man and one woman;

• New policies giving marital benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

Servicemen and women put their lives on the line. They deserve policies that ensure maximum military readiness and the best chance to win wars and return home alive. That’s why Congress overwhelmingly passed a law in 1993 incorporating as policy the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s ban on homosexual sodomy. But now the federal government has overturned “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” We believe this is profoundly immoral on several levels. It would:

• Hurt unit cohesion, morale, retention, and recruitment;

• Violate the rights of those serving by forcing them to cohabit and shower with people who may desire them sexually;

• Jeopardize the military’s health and blood supply, since homosexual men are far more likely to be promiscuous and to have STDs, including HIV/AIDS;

• Force chaplains to resign or to jettison God’s Law in favor of political correctness;

• Subject all personnel to Maoist-style “re-education” in “diversity.”

Likewise, Congress should resist any effort eliminate women’s combat exemption.

Liberty Counsel chairman Mat Staver is ratcheting up the rhetoric in opposition to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), even going so far as to say that if passed the legislation may lead to child molestation, sexual assault, and death. Staver told Jim Schneider of VCY America on Crosstalk yesterday that ENDA “will put individuals at risk and ultimately result in significant damage and even death of some individuals”:

Staver: So you can go into these restrooms or changing rooms, if you’re a man, and want to go in and molest, or watch, or sexually assault young girls. So, I mean, the absurdity of this is just beyond understanding how someone could be in favor of it. This will ultimately, in addition to colliding with religious liberty, in addition to forcing a radical agenda on people, this also will put individuals at risk and ultimately result in significant damage and even death of some individuals.

Staver also claimed that ENDA “will be the biggest club that the homosexual agenda will have to ultimately beat down people of faith and moral values” and could lead to the abolition of gender, morality and marriage in order to “undermine the very concept of God himself”:

Schneider: How critical is it Mat that our listeners contact their U.S. Senators at this time pertaining to ENDA?

Staver: I think it’s absolutely critical, we cannot have this law pass, we just simply cannot have it pass, it will literally reshape America and business and you will have your religious freedom on a collision course with this radical homosexual agenda. This will be the biggest club that the homosexual agenda will have to ultimately beat down people of faith and moral values.

…

Staver: Years ago I said what the ultimate goal of this homosexual agenda was not this sexual orientation where you are wired to a particular way but ultimately the abolition of gender. It’s hard for us to even comprehend that, how can you abolish the concept or the construct of gender, male and female, it’s so objective, it’s so obvious, how can you do that? But that’s exactly what they want to do: anything that you see is just fictitious; it’s only what’s in your mind. If you abolish the concept of gender you ultimately undermine morality, you ultimately have no morality and norms for men and women or sexual behavior. As Alfred Kinsey ultimately wanted to do, he wanted to undermine morality in marriage. Why? So he could undermine the very concept of God himself.

Rep. James Lankford (R-OK) earlier this week told Think Progress that being gay is a “sexual preference” and a “choice issue,” and that he wouldn’t support employment protection legislation because people aren’t born gay. While speaking with Family Research Council president Tony Perkins today on Washington Watch Weekly, Lankford insisted that being gay is a behavioral choice and people shouldn’t receive “special privileges” for it in the workplace:

Perkins: The idea there is they’re looking for special protections; your point is that everybody should be treated equally, no one should be fired or denied employment based upon their sexual orientation, in the ideal world we won’t even know about it, why would we even ask that question?

Lankford: Right. But neither should you have a situation where no one can fire you because of your behavior outside of the workplace, we also should not be in a situation where there are special protections extended to say ‘if I have a certain sexual behavior then you can no longer fire me, I’m a protected class and I can do whatever I want in the workplace,’ that’s not true either. So we are trying to be able to keep that balance, when you say you create special rights you also create special privileges and protections to say that they are untouchable in the workplace and they can have any kind of work conduct they choose to on that, that’s not correct. This is one of those instances where we look at every individual as created in the image of God, every person as valuable to God but every person has to be able to show that they are going to work hard and do the right thing in the workplace and outside.

He also spoke with Perkins and American Family Association president Tim Wildmon on Today’s Issues where he distorted the Think Progress report while accusing them of misrepresenting what he said, which he apparently doesn’t realize is on video.

Perkins: This is really a case study on how the left is working these days, what they do is they go and they try to ambush somebody and get them to say something or say something and take it completely out of context in which they made those comments, they slap a false headline on it, and then they feed that to the more, and I say more not ‘completely,’ legitimate news outlets, it gets on to places like MSNBC and they just hound it. I wonder though, Congressman, does this really get beyond the liberal media? How many normal people actually watch these things and respond to them?

Lankford: Well, it depends on what they are picking up and what they are reading and who else picks it up. When they throw an inflammatory headline out there saying, ‘Congressman Supports Firing People Because They Are Gay,’ then immediately people begin to pick it up and say ‘oh goodness.’ Of course when you read the story, there is no story in it, there is no fact to that headline, but it even reached into Fox News.

Actually, that wasn’t the headline, which is: “GOP Rep. Lankford Explains Why It Should Be Legal To Fire Someone For Being Gay: ‘It’s A Choice Issue.’” Think Progress did not claim that Lankford wants to fire people for being gay but said he thinks it should be legal for employers to do so.

Immediately following Lankford’s appearance, Wildmon lashed out at LGBT-rights advocates for their “vile, wicked, [and] evil ways,” which he says reveals “the depravity of that lifestyle,” while Perkins astoundingly maintained that the Religious Right never speaks poorly of the LGBT community:

Wildmon: These homosexual and lesbian, transgender, bisexual, I don’t know if there’s any other word left that they are using now, these activists out there, they act in the most vile, wicked, evil ways, I’m telling you.

Perkins: Everything they accuse Christians of doing, which they don’t generally do, I have not found many on this side, if they do they are not acting in the character of Christ, but they do everything they accuse everybody else of doing.

Wildmon: Oh yeah, they will threaten you, they will call you names, they will post things on your Facebook pages and things like that and it just shows the depravity of that lifestyle, quite frankly, not all of them but a lot of the activists, man they are vile.

It took me just about two hours to make it through "The Stoning of Sally Kern: The Liberal Attack on Christian Conservatism - And Why We Must Take a Stand" which pretty much tells you all you need to know about this vapid amalgamation of right-wing cliches that Kern cobbled together and tried to pass off as a book.

Kern's book reads like a greatest hits collection of right-wing talking points as she fear-mongers about everything from Kevin Jennings to ENDA to the Department of Homeland Security while mixing in references to the works of David Barton, David Horowitz and even full-blown Christian Reconstructionists like Gary DeMar.

[As it turns out, Kern more or less has Barton to thank for turning her into a national pariah as it was at one of his Wallbuilders ProFamily Legislators Conference that she first learned about the insidious homosexual agenda that was a bigger threat to this nation than terrorism and decided to begin speaking out against it.]

In the book, Kern claims that her original statement was poorly worded and then taken out of context and misrepresented ... and she then proceeds to clarify by saying the very same thing:

One of the snippets from my now infamous speech that has been replayed endlessly by my critics on the Left is the sentence in which I say that the homosexual lifestyle and its agenda are "a greater threat than terrorism." If I hadn't been in such a hurry to hit all my points, I would have elaborated on that thought in a way that wouldn't have left me so open to outrage and demagoguery ...

Terrorists seem to do damage to our nation and to its people. Yet we, the American people, are bringing the wholesale destruction of our nation upon ourselves as we wholeheartedly embrace homosexuality, a lifestyle proven to be dangerous and deadly. We are currently very vigilant against the terrorist threat against us. We seem oblivious to this more pervasive inner decay.

My hope and prayer is that this book and the hate-storm I've been through will in some way help to change that dangerous complacency.

I haven't felt this cheated by a Religious Right author since Matt Barber conned me out of $30 by surreptitiously stitching together a bunch his columns and then selling it as a book.

• Joseph Farah says "Newt Gingrich is a liberal."
• Micah Clark, executive director of the American Family Association of Indiana, says Mitch Daniels "has a bit of a weakness on the homosexual demands."
• Phyllis Schlafly gets worked up over the strangest things.
• Mitt Romney hires Mark DeMoss.
• From the latest FRC prayer update: "May Tennessee enact this bill to prevent ENDA-like ordinances! May Congress do so likewise, if the President dares to circumvent Congress by issuing an ENDA-like Executive Order!"
• Finally, quote of the day from Gingrich spokesman Rick Tyler: "The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces."

After telling a reporter from Think Progress that he wouldn’t appoint any Muslims to his administration, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has doubled-down on his religious test for public office. Cain told the conservative site NewsMax that his opposition to Muslims serving in government comes fro his belief that “they are not free to infuse their religious beliefs into our laws”:

“They can accuse me of bigoted speech all they want,” Cain counters.

“I want people committed to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States in my administration. I don’t have the time or the desire to worry about somebody or some faction that wants to impose shariah law on this nation. I believe in American laws in American courts.

“The First Amendment says everybody can practice whatever religion they choose. [Muslims] are free to practice their religion in the United States, just like all other legitimate religions. But they are not free to infuse their religious beliefs into our laws. We don’t do that in the United States, and if I’m president I’m going to work to keep it that way.”

But in an interview with Bryan Fischer, Cain claimed that the US and the constitution is “based on biblical principles, [and] I want to get back to those principles as president.” He also said that he was called by God (via text message) to run for the office.

Another likely Republican presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, similarly criticized Muslims for purportedly trying to bring their religious beliefs into politics while at the same time urging Christians to “try and change” laws since “civil laws are supposed to comport with God’s laws.”