TONY PERKINS, president of the Family Research Council
Through ENDA (which FRC has blocked for a decade), businesses would be ordered to make hiring, firing, and promotion decisions — not based on a person’s qualifications — but on their sexual expression. Homosexuals, cross-dressers, and transgendered workers would automatically qualify for special treatment that other workers would not.
Can you imagine walking into your child’s classroom and meeting a teacher dressed in drag? Neither can most Americans. But unfortunately, that’s just one of the many consequences of adopting a law as dangerous as this one. Preschools, daycare centers, summer camps, religious chains like Hobby Lobby or Chick-fil-A — they’ll all be subject to the law, regardless of their personal beliefs and workplace standards.
To get the full low down on FRC’s extreme fear of what will happen should ENDA pass, check out its publication: “ENDA: A Threat To Free Markets And Freedom Of Conscience And Religion.”
BRIAN BROWN, president of National Organization for Marriage
A bill coming up for a vote in the Senate next-week innocuously named the “Employee Non-Discrimination Act of 2013 (ENDA)” is nothing other than a Trojan horse built to attack the foundational institution of marriage between a man and a woman.
This disastrous piece of legislation is modeled on various local and state non-discrimination statutes that have already been used as tools in advancing the same-sex ‘marriage’ agenda around the nation. In the wake of Justice Kennedy’s misguided opinion in the DOMA case (Windsor v. U.S.) it is certain that this federal ENDA bill will become a fulcrum used by same-sex ‘marriage’ activists to try to foist a marriage redefinition regime on the entire country.
Why is ENDA so dangerous? Because with the precedent set by this bill, courts in states around the country would soon find easy rationale for ruling that any organization or business that treats same-sex ‘marriage’ as different from man-woman marriage are discriminatory by definition. Under the law, individuals holding the common-sense belief that marriage is about giving kids a mom and a dad would be subject to punishment. Expressions of support for true marriage in the workplace would no longer be a fundamental right, but discriminatory, bigoted and an actionable offense!
BRYAN FISCHER, director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy at the American Family Association
ENDA would make it a federal crime to take sexual deviancy into account in personnel decisions of any kind. Any and every employer who decided not to hire a crossdressing transvestite, for instance, would face a business-ending lawsuit whether the business is a Christian bookstore, a trucking company, or a daycare center.
ENDA would grant special legal protections in the workplace to those who are active practitioners of the infamous crime against nature. Not only would employers not be allowed to take such conduct into account, their businesses, livelihoods and careers would be in in jeopardy if they did.
It is not only likely but a matter of virtual certainty that transvestites will begin applying for jobs at values-driven businesses just so they can get turned down and then immediately file the mother of all discrimination suits against businesses such as Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A.
If you don’t think that’s a virtual certainty, you are clueless regarding the meanness, vindictiveness and cruelty of homosexual activists.
Things are bad enough as it is, as photographers, florists and bakers have been fined, threatened with prosecution by government officials and driven out of business altogether by Big Gay. The last thing we need is to give these bullies a baseball bat they can take into any values-driven business and start trashing the place.
A conservative business owner’s right to the free exercise of religion? Gone in a puff of hateful bigotry. His right to free speech? Gone. To even express his values when it comes to personnel decisions will put him on the rack. His right to freedom of the press? Gone. Even so much as writing a letter to the editor expressing his values will become a business-ending offense.
DANIEL HOROWITZ, blogger for Red State
Most egregiously, the leftists, who refer to this steaming pile as the next Civil Rights Act, are implicitly comparing African Americans to the aforementioned groups. They are creating a protected class for people who suffer from a mental illness and think they are the opposite gender.
Imagine you are a small business owner, and one day a cross-dressing individual shows up and agitates for a job, and regardless of your beliefs or business, you can’t say no to their obvious socially discordant appearance. Think of a scenario where a person shows up and demands he-she use the opposite gender bathroom at the office?
Imagine a female employee complains to you that a male worker is harassing her in the bathroom (this is already happening in schools) because “they” chose to identify one way, but act another? Imagine you run a day-care center and are confronted with a worker of either gender who openly engages in bizarre sexual-identity behavior around the children? If you choose traditional scientific understanding over political correctness, you would be fined under this bill by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).