Night of the Living ENDA

November 5, 2013 · By Gina Miller · 21 Comments

Listen to the Christian Patriot Politicast of this column

business Just like the flesh-eating zombies in Romero’s classic 1968 horror picture Night of the Living Dead, the sinister “Employment Non-Discrimination Act” (ENDA) won’t stay in the grave. Although attempts to add “sexual orientation” to the list of federally protected people date back to the early 1970s, ENDA was first spawned in 1994 and repeatedly re-introduced and killed in subsequent Congresses. Back in April, it again became undead in the Senate, as S. 815, by pro-homosexual Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and 55 cosponsors, two of whom are Republican: Susan Collins (ME) and Mark Kirk (IL). In the House, we can “thank” openly homosexual Congressman Jared Polis (founder of ProFlowers) for its latest incarnation as H.R. 1755. A vote in the Senate is now imminent.

ENDA’s requirements and prohibitions for employers are “justified” under the umbrella of previous civil rights legislation, creating a bogus equality between innate characteristics like race and sex and the perverse behavior of homosexuals and other sexual deviants. This proposed legislation equates homosexual behavior with skin color in an apples-and-oranges “civil rights” fiasco. Why a fiasco? Because this horrible legislation will strip fundamental, God-given, constitutionally-protected rights from many American citizens while it conflates unnatural, unhealthy, immoral homosexual behavior with “civil rights.”

ENDA would be a devastating, unconstitutional blow to American liberty, essentially killing our God-given rights and freedoms of religion, speech and association. It is anti-business. It would require employers, under penalty of federal law for violations, to accept open homosexuals, cross-dressers, “transgenders” and whatever other sexual degeneracy they can come up with to “federally protect.” ENDA prohibits discrimination “on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Proponents of ENDA will argue that it does not strip religious freedom, because of the section exempting religious organizations, which states:

This Act shall not apply to a corporation, association, educational institution or institution of learning, or society that is exempt from the religious discrimination provisions of title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964…

Yet, the courts are all over the road on what constitutes a “religious organization” and the tests for such a determination. There is no guarantee that this clause will protect any such organization. Besides, this proposed legislation will not exempt owners of secular businesses who have moral or religious objections to hiring openly homosexual or cross-dressing people.

Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute wrote:

Every decent human opposes illegitimate discrimination based on objective characteristics that carry no behavioral implications, conditions, for example, like race, sex, or nation of origin. Many people, however, believe that making distinctions among behaviors is not only a legitimate human activity, but an essential one—essential, that is, for any moral society, particularly one in which religious liberty is jealously guarded.

ENDA will curtail religious liberty by prohibiting Americans from making distinctions between right and wrong actions even when those distinctions reflect deeply held religious convictions of orthodox Christians, orthodox Jews, and Muslims.

Our founding fathers knew that religious liberty was essential to a free society. It must never be subordinated to a manufactured civil liberty to engage with absolute unfettered freedom in acts of sexual perversion. And it is not unconstitutional to allow one’s religious beliefs to shape either business or political decisions. The Left does it all the time.

Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver wrote in an e-mail notice:

This radical legislation potentially puts Christians on the wrong side of the law and is one of the most dangerous bills to religious freedom ever considered in Congress!

… The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), slated for consideration in the Senate later this week, is anti-free speech, anti-religious freedom, and anti-business.

ENDA is yet another job-killing measure being advanced by liberal “progressives” who are once again placing their radical agenda above the national interest.

Intended to give special protection to homosexuals and cross-dressers, the bill would further burden small businesses and muzzle those with a biblical worldview.

… Morally and legally, ENDA will force, under penalty of law, Christian, Jewish, or Islamic business owners to adopt a secular-humanist viewpoint, ignoring all matters surrounding sexual morality while making hiring and firing decisions.

ENDA would compel business owners with 15 or more employees to leave sincerely held religious beliefs at the workplace door and submit to the demands of the homosexual activist lobby.

If ENDA passes, Christian-owned, for-profit businesses employing more than 15 people will be forced to accept applications from individuals whose behavior is in violation of the owners’ religious tenets.

ENDA also kills the 11th Amendment, stripping state immunity from federal lawsuits based on the strings attached to federal taxpayer money. As the bill is worded:

A State’s receipt or use of Federal financial assistance for any program or activity of a State shall constitute a waiver of sovereign immunity, under the 11th Amendment to the Constitution or otherwise, to a suit brought by an employee or applicant for employment of that program or activity under this Act for a remedy authorized under subsection (d).

The danger to our freedoms from this proposed legislation cannot be overstated. The pressure on our legislators to support it is massive. Misinformation and lopsided polling is being used to convince congressmen that there is wide public support for this legislation. One senate committee report touts ENDA’s “broad support,” citing polling and numerous major corporations and “religious” organizations that are on-board with it. The report quoted business leaders who claim that ENDA would be “good for business and good for Americans,” a damnable lie. The report begins:

Overwhelming majorities have indicated that they believe that LGBT Americans should have equal rights in terms of job opportunities, and that they support ENDA. In a 2011 poll, 73 percent of voters expressed support for LGBT workplace nondiscrimination protections. Indeed, 89 percent of Americans believe such protections already exist.

I didn’t bother to dig to find out who conducted the “polling,” but I have no doubt the wording of the questions had everything to do with that “overwhelming majority” support. If people truly understood the real freedom-robbing results of this legislation, it would have nowhere near that much support.

It is essential that we bombard our senators and representatives with demands to reject this evil legislation. I realize the battle for the soul of our Republic is fierce, and it seems we are facing an endless flood of wickedness coming from our elected and unelected “leaders,” but we must not grow wearing in resisting their efforts to “fundamentally transform” our great nation. Let them hear from you on ENDA. It is critical.

This article is printed with the permission of the author(s). Opinions expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the article’s author(s), or of the person(s) or organization(s) quoted therein, and do not necessarily represent those of American Clarion or Dakota Voice LLC.

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Gina Miller, a native of Texas and current resident of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, is a radio/television voice professional.

Gina Miller

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thisoldspouse

I thought I read a recent poll which indicated that over 85% of Americans thought that a business should never be forced to kowtow to homosexuals, such as providing services for a fake “wedding.”
- WXRGina
  
  That’s more like it, Spouse. These people are liars. They’ll do anything to force their Godless, communist policies through.
  - thisoldspouse
    
    Liars is right, along with their bought-and-paid-for news media. We are living in a fabricated world now, like Neo of “The Matrix” series, with a different world perception pulled down over our eyes (or an attempt to do so) to hide the truth. We can act according to the Truth, but not without “the ministry of ‘truth’” coming down on us hard to force us to comply with their perverted fantasy.
Dawn D

Not to worry Gina. Right now this legislation will NOT be enacted. However, come 2016-2018, all bets are off.

While I get the concept of ‘behavioral’ repulsion based upon not only the visual decadence that - frankly - does exist through public displays of sexually suggestive activities, i.e. Pride Parades, and also by ill-perceived and mostly inaccurate assumptions of romantically affectionate and truly loving, caring bonds between two people who have no difference between their genders. It’s the grotesque images of the former that still overrides more general acceptance of the latter. That former image is what really affords you validation through your Biblical interpretive manners and which makes it so easy for you and others like yourself to reject with deep suspicion, and unfortunately attaching those suspicions to the latter. Still, there is becoming a much broader and mostly youth driven awareness that, that latter image is whats really at stake here and will be, in the end, justifiably accepted.

And still, I have wonder why - if one believes in their Bible as literally as you so obviously do - that your not waging a similar campaign against crab and shrimp fisherman or the entire seafood industry. And while we’re at it, shouldn’t there be another crusade begun against the fashion and textile industries? Yet, these arguments can be left for another time.

I also do ‘get’ why you have such a suspicious character about you when these cultural divides come along and perceptually endanger a familiar and ‘safe’ harbor of willful discriminatory desire. I use the term ‘discriminatory’ in a sense of ‘Just Duty’, rather than the more flippant cast about moniker that is meant to shame. It all emanates from Scriptural teachings, leanings, and beliefs. And, you now wish to cast yourselves as potential victims in need of vanquishing in order to maintain that ‘Justness’.

Overall though, I just see such sadness right now. I see it as a result of actions from the left in their attempts to correct - justifiable so - actual civil rights issues. They have a habit and they will overreach and make what should be actionable and worthy causes to be feared by those from the right. I see it from the right in their attempts to maintain repressive constraints in theological beliefs they wish to forcibly empower themselves with. They even wish to enhance those constraints by manufacturing through - once again - interpretive belief a concept that without the strictness of theology as empowering governance, this country will not survive. Sadly, we are heading toward a very calamitous time.

Still though, I maintain hope.

The future of the youth’s visions I spoke of earlier? In case you haven’t looked recently that future is forming now and it’s forming in a major way. Whether or not it’s because of some sinister ‘plan’ that has been instigated through a ‘nefarious governmental action’ like the ‘evils’ of a public education system, the fact remains. The youth of this country are changing their perceptions of what being gay or lesbian, or even transsexual represents to them. - I heard someone in my office the other day who was saying how a niece of theirs (17 years old) had said that “Everybody is bi-sexual. It’s just a matter of degree as to how MUCH attraction to the opposite or even the same sex that dictates how they respond to those attractions”. With more people growing to understand life in this manner, there will be less room to maintain that ‘Just Duty’ of constraint - religiously speaking - with any relevance.

The only balance required will be a need to still protect one’s own belief system. But, not to fear, the First Amendment is still intact. Therefore, balance is maintained even with the passage of ENDA.
- WXRGina
  
  This is not about “images,” nor am I “suspicious” of homosexuals. I care about homosexuals and wish them the best. It is the militant, radical homosexual movement working hand-in-hand with the communists running our government that I am fighting. This movement seeks to squash the freedoms of those who disagree with it. It seeks to bury Christianity and our freedom to express our biblically-based knowledge that homosexuality and other sexual sins are sins and always will be. If you deny the motives of the radicals, you are either deceived or lying, because it’s not possible that you are unaware of the relentless attacks by homosexual activists against Christian businesses and other organizations that resist assimilation into the homosexual machine that is steamrolling across our nation.
  
  You also don’t seem to understand that the Levitical instructions and restrictions were in place largely for the health and safety of the Israelites. You leftists always try to use those fallacious arguments about shrimp and clothing, which have nothing to do with the sin of homosexuality.
  
  This is not, and will never be, a “civil rights” issue. That is an illegitimate label to what is a behavioral issue, the choice by some people to act on their unnatural, unhealthy and immoral desires, which is not a “civil right.”
  
  Because the kids of the younger generations are being propagandized and recruited by homosexual apologists in the schools, media and entertainment industries does not mean their thinking is correct. No. We are watching the emergence of generations of very screwed up kids, and yes, it’s going to get calamitous.
  - thisoldspouse
    
    Speaking of clothing fabric, I hope you’re aware that ‘Dawn’ is a cross dressing man in actuality. He often posts under this false pretense of being a somewhat “conservative” “woman.” But putting lipstick on a big only conceals so much.
    - WXRGina
      
      Yes, Spouse, I have known he is a man since he first started posting here many months ago, back when this site used to be Dakota Voice, in fact.
  - Dawn D
    
    Gina, you are pushing your ideology in much too lineal a fashion. Or rather, being a ‘cherry picker’ as a matter of convenience and self-serving rationale. As much as theological believers wish to, you cannot utilize one part of Biblical Scripture for context without also utilizing other parts in parity without their own context and maintain credibility. My views once again are construed as leftist when they really aren’t. The suggestion that they are is simply avoidance and deflection. That in itself is a ‘claimed’ socialist tactic, don’t you know? Shrimp and clothing materials ARE relevent, as are selling girls off into wedlock, rape, divorce, adultery, and on, and on.
    
    Rather than being argumentative though, I would rather discuss the concepts of civil rights and what they mean. How they were derived and the back-ground on why they were necessary. And, how the civil rights issues are very much an unfinished concept with miles to go before we have ‘perfected this Union’.
    
    That’s what we need to be discussing more of in this country, not less. That is not a “leftist” point of view. It’s based upon the same desires as those Puritans who left England in fear of their own lives. regardless of what their religious motivation was. At the very heart was a desire to not be persecuted, to do things in the ways they saw right, and live in harmony. The thing is though, they kind of messed up when they came here because they seem to have all to easily forgotten those same principles when it came to the Natives who inhabited this land before them! Again, a wholly different side topic that has good and bad from differing points of view.
    
    It’s the ‘concepts’; the earliest beginnings of this country which began from a search to be free, at peace and productive that began the continued non-ending push for equality for all. The religious aspects of those days just made it easy to ‘control the flock’. That’s the way it was, and that’s the way a fair number of people would have it today.
    
    Bob - and I believe - you may have used this thinking in the past. Something about ‘coexisting’ between LGBT people and Christianity. I actually don’t buy into that philosophy. I know there are those on the left and yourselves on the right, who DO! Yet, if ENDA was and/or is passed, both sides will be surprised to find out just how much the two camps can actually get along and live striving for productivity rather than seeking acrimony to fuel flames of despair.
    
    @thisoldspouse:disqus, I have nothing really to say to you other than I will hold my tongue. I respect the owner of this site and intend to keep my comments civil.
    
    More the point though, that you would be so willing to treat others this way - I think - gives testament to the true need for ENDA.
    - http://www.americanclarion.com/ Bob Ellis
      
      When a parent requires their 5 year old child to go to bed at 8pm, but then lets their 15 year old go to bed at 10pm, are they “cherry picking” what is right…or applying a standard appropriate to the circumstances?
      
      When I was in the military, I had to be clean shaven every day when I went to work. Now that I’m out of the military, am I still required to be clean shaven when I go to work? After all, I wouldn’t want to “cherry pick” the standard, right?
      
      Or is it a different circumstance?
      
      Of course, it’s a different circumstance. The Creator himself set the dietary and ritual rules for the Old Testament nation of Israel as a part of the covenant he made with them. We don’t understand what all of those rules meant and what they were for, but we understand most of them. As Gina said, some were intended for health concerns in the climate and primitive circumstances they lived in, while still others were meant to teach them spiritual lessons (staying away from dirty animals to enforce the principle of staying away from things that make us spiritually dirty).
      
      Once Christ came and established a new covenant, God made it clear in the New Testament that those old dietary and ritual laws were no longer required. He also made it clear that his moral code-what is right for human behavior that affects our relationship with God, our relationship with others, and our adherence to his design-have not changed and will not change.
      
      As for civil rights, homosexuals have the same civil rights that anyone else has. Civil rights are based on our humanity (why they are also often called “human rights”). They are not based on our behavior. A person who behaves inappropriately in a work environment does not deserve special protection from being fired.
      
      Homosexuals are free to practice their sexual perversion in the privacy of their own homes. They are not free to rub other people’s noses in their sexual perversion-especially if it is overt like crossdressing and such-in the workplace. They are especially not entitled to force everyone in the workplace to endure having it rubbed in their faces, especially when the business owner has a moral objection to it, or even more importantly, their overt behavior in relation to their sexual perversion negatively affects the public perception of the business owner’s business. It is no more proper that homosexuals be allowed to overtly display their perversion in the workplace than it would be for a person who likes to have sex with animals to talk about that with his coworkers, or to touch an animal in an improper way while at work. It wouldn’t even be appropriate for a person who likes alcohol to walk around their place of employment with a bottle of whiskey sticking out of their back pocket (a legal product), just as it wouldn’t be appropriate for a homosexual to display evidence of their sexual habits in the workplace; both could and likely would bring disrepute on the image that a Christian business owner would like to project.
      
      As I have said many times before, two diametrically opposed value systems cannot peacefully coexist. One will necessarily dominate. Christians realize that homosexual behavior is wrong and is a perversion of human sexuality; they will therefore not tolerate open displays of it within their sphere of control (i.e. the business owner’s business). Homosexual activists believe they are entitled to display their perversion anywhere they desire, and are obviously quite willing to force that desire onto others, including the business owner who should be free to establish the kind of work environment and public perception of his business that he so desires.
      
      You can’t have both value systems in the same sphere. One will naturally dominate the other. For 400 years, the Judeo-Christian moral code has been the established system in America, and it produced the greatest, most free and prosperous nation in history. Today, however, some seek to replace it with a value system (or lack thereof) that champions hedonism and narcissism above freedom and a healthy society-and history has repeatedly proven that this is a good way to doom a culture.
- retiredday
  
  What exactly does crab and shrimp fishing (“or the entire seafood industry”) or the fashion and textile industries have to do with Gina’s article? Apparently those things mean something to you, but they are strikingly irrelevant to the subject at hand.
  
  I suggest you rethink your statement that the First Amendment is still intact. Millions of religious Americans are outraged at the unconstitutional intrusion into our religious freedoms by government. Various legal groups, such as the ACLJ, are constantly fighting in the courts to uphold our religious freedoms because of government efforts to ignore the First Amendment.
  
  When any special interest group, such as LGTBQ, can dictate legislation favoring themselves, the freedom of the whole is threatened. It’s all about authority. Those who reject the authority of the Bible reject the God of the Bible, who, like it or not, is the ultimate authority. Those who would invest all authority in government are bowing to tyranny. Say what you want about God, but he is not a tyrant. Only in Christ can you truly be free.
  
  Something LGTBQ people need to understand, is that God created gender, not you. And God created Man in his own image — male and female He created them. It’s God’s plan. He makes the rules. He has the authority. Reject Him at your own peril.
  - WXRGina
    
    Mike, his shrimp and textile argument is a typical leftist attempt to portray Christians as hypocritical. That’s a reference to the Levitical regulations and restrictions on diet and other matters. Because we are not bound by prohibitions on eating shrimp and other shellfish and wearing clothing made of different fabrics, leftists claim that we’re not obeying the Bible. It’s a nonsensical argument.
    - retiredday
      
      So, in other words, it’s just ignorance — a rehash of the argument posed by the Jews who felt gentile believers should also become Jews — an argument that was ended by the Council in Jerusalem in Acts 15. That’s why I didn’t “get” the reference. It was ignorant.
      - WXRGina
        
        Exactly, Mike!
      - DCM7
        
        People who hold anti-Christian viewpoints have to keep using the same long-since-refuted talking points over and over, because (1) they don’t have any valid ones to use instead; and (2) their desire to cling to their positions requires them to refuse to honestly listen and learn.
Sterling Ericsson

Can you explain then why it should be illegal, as it is under Title VII, for someone to be fired because of religious belief, but it should be legal to fire someone because of their sexual orientation? Even if sexual orientation is chosen, as you believe, so is religion, and yet that is still protected under federal law.
- http://www.americanclarion.com/ Bob Ellis
  
  Religion is a search for ultimate meaning and cannot be legitimately compared to a sexual behavior, especially one that is a perversion of normal sexuality.
  
  Even so, I’m not even sure that an employer should be forced to hire or retain someone because of religious belief. Government should treat everyone the same with regard to innate and morally neutral demographics (i.e. people working at a government job), but private businesses are not an arm of the government (at least, not in a free country like America has been for most of its history).
  
  Why should a business owner be forced to associate with someone whose values and most important beliefs may be antithetical to their own?
  
  Why would an employee even want to work for someone or associate with and contribute to the success of a business owner whose values and most important beliefs may be antithetical to their own?
  
  Would we consider allowing employment services to force people to work at this or that place of employment-especially if those who owned this or that place of employment held values that were repugnant to the employee, or had behaviors or practices that were repugnant to the employee? If we would not force the employee into an unwelcome association, why would we force the free market employer into an unwelcome association-in the business that they themselves built and own?
  
  Forcing private individuals and groups to associate with people that they don’t want to, for whatever reason, is a form of tyranny.
  
  There are plenty of jobs out there to be had without forcing people on both sides of the employment equation into associations that both do not welcome.
- thisoldspouse
  
  I appreciate your even-handed attitude in asking an honest question. It is not often that we see this attitude from opponents of the conservative topics on this site.
  
  For whatever reason, the Founders saw such a critical importance in religious belief - the right to hold AND ACT ACCORDING TO those beliefs - that they deemed it a right worthy to be not only ensconced as one of the unalienable rights in the Bill of Rights, but the very First of those rights addressed in the BOR!
  
  And not just any old do-it-yourself “religion” was the intended subject at hand. What many do not realize is that when the Founders said “religion,” they meant Christianity, in its many forms and sects. I know this sounds narrow and “bigoted,” but that is the original intent of those who set the foundation of this country. And sexual perversion is diametrically opposed to true Christianity.
StopTheStatists

It’s no secret that those behind this proposed legislation have as their ultimate goal (in addition to being a major infringement upon religious freedom,) to “help bring marriage equality closer.” ENDA would be a huge step toward that goal. Similar to all the “anti-bullying” programs being foisted upon school district across the country (in New York, the State mandates every school have a “Dignity for all Students” program,) ENDA is actually about stopping workplace discrimination. Just as “anti-bullying” is actually the LGBT activist’s insidious method of indoctrinating school-aged children to accept their radical ideas of gender/sexuality issues, so to ENDA is the means to enforce “tolerance” of their immoral behavior through legislation (albeit unconstitutional) that strikes at the core of American productivity and liberty.
- thisoldspouse
  
  The anti-bullying campaigns have been the most ingenious homosexual Trojan horses to be brought into the very center of childhood learning. What’s so ironic is that these programs have very little intention to stem the incidences of bullying. It’s just coming out in new studies that anti-bullying policies have actually INCREASED bullying in many instances. But this is just necessary collateral damage to the homosexual lobby. The real goal always was to forcefully legitimize homosexuality.

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