Sunday, May 13, 2007

Attack on First Amendment Liberties? I don't think so

Following the same pattern of lies they have been engaging in, members of the anti-gay industry is trying to frame ENDA, the law that would protect lgbts from discrimination, as a piece of disciminatory legislation:

Matt Barber, Policy Director for Cultural Issues with Concerned Women for America (CWA), warned, “This bill would force Christian, Jewish or Muslim business owners to hire people who openly choose to engage in homosexual or cross-dressing behaviors despite a sincerely held religious belief that those behaviors are dangerous, sinful and not in keeping with basic morality.

So exemptions for religious institutions is not enough for these groups. They are trying to break it down to the fact that business owners who have a personal aversion to homosexuality should be able to discriminate?

Sorry that just doesn't make sense.

What's the next step? Christian business owners with a "sincerely held religious belief" against Islam or Judaism should discriminate? And that crack about "behavior" won't help Barber's argument. Defining homosexuality by what one does rather than who one is actually hurts Barber's argument. After all, people choose to follow a particular religion. Should they be discriminated against because of it?

I think that Barber's poor argument for allowing discrimination against lgbts underscores just who we are dealing with here. Barber's group, Concerned Women for America, and other so-called pro-family groups aren't interested in fairness or any values that don't embrace their world view of things.

They have a right to believe that homosexuality is a sin but the way they go about trying to justify ways to codify their beliefs into public policy just goes to prove how un-Christian they are.

The next argument Barber brings up further insinuates my point:

For instance, female employees would have to endure both systematic sexual harassment and a hostile work environment by being forced to share bathroom facilities with male employees who get their jollies from wearing a dress, high heels and lipstick.

Barber's claim is a prime of example of anti-gay industry technique number five as outlined in my upcoming book - dire consequences, or predicting that pro-gay laws will cause all sorts of mayhem to take place. Barber offers no proof of his predictions because he is relying on the ignorance and fear that many have of the transgender community to quantify his lies.

The fact of the matter is that I really don't think that Matt Barber actually believes what he writes. I think he believes that homosexuality is a sin and therefore any technique or claim that keeps lgbts from being more protected and visible is permissible.

In other words, I think that Barber is looking at what he is doing as the job of a political operative trying to win an election.

Now for a political operative attempting to win an election, Barber's techniques are tolerable; awful, shameful, but tolerable. Politics is a world of compromises where sometimes the ends do have to justify the means.

But for a man such as Matt Barber and a group (i.e. Concerned Women for America) who puts themselves on a pedestal as being pro-family and the purveyors of morality, if the means are not pure then the ends cannot be pure. God does not like ugly, even if it is done in his name.

Using evasive claims about "sincerely held religious beliefs" and horror stories of abnormal crossdressers is yet another hole in Barber's and Concerned Women for America's careful built wall of integrity.

They obviously did not learn anything during their unsuccessful fight to keep the House from passing hate crimes legislation. How long will they continue to dig their well of lies before they fall in?