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ENDA is not a violation of the fundies First Amendment rights

The Wife heard an interesting tid bit on the radio that Focus on the Family is crying that ENDA (Employee Non-Discrimination Act) violates their First Amendment Rights to freedom of religion. They've been griping about this for some time actually. Apparently Focus on the Family is too busy gay bashing to really understand what, precisely, the First Amendment protects. The short answer is it doesn't completely protect you in the workplace. The far right attempted to use this same tired argument against racial discrimination and sexual harassment ... it didn't work.

I spoke to the Paternal Unit, nationally recognized free speech expert Paul McMasters, who didn't use all the profanity I wanted to but basically agreed that Focus on the Family is way off base. He pointed me in the direction of numerous articles showing how a blogger's free speech OUTSIDE the workplace could be controlled by his or her employer. Read, you can get fired for what you say publicly if your boss doesn't like it.

Now, let's do a little check up here: the government can make no law governing your speech or religious practices. It's a bit more complicated when it comes to your boss. Especially if your boss isn't the Federal Government.

Dear Old Dad pointed me to this article, by lawyer David Hudson, on religious freedom in the workplace. The important take aways from the article are as follows:

*Public employees have the protections of the First Amendment and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the major federal anti-discrimination law that covers virtually all public and private employers with 15 or more full-time employees. Employees in the executive branch of the federal government are also covered by the "White House Guidelines on Religious Exercise and Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace."

*Title VII generally prohibits an employer from discriminating against employees on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin or religion. Under Title VII, an employer must reasonably accommodate an employee’s religion unless doing so would create an “undue hardship.”

*The First Amendment's free-speech and free-exercises clause also protect public employees’ religious speech. The free-exercise clause provides that the government may not prevent individuals from freely practicing their religious faith. Public employees do not forfeit all of their free-exercise rights when they take a government job. If a government employer or workplace rule targets an employee’s religious speech and causes a substantial burden on his or her religious faith, it can be justified only if the employer shows a compelling interest. More often employer policies do not intentionally target an employee’s religious faith but have an incidental impact.

*In litigation, many public employers assert that they silenced an employee’s religious expression to avoid an establishment-clause conflict. The argument is that if the employer allows employees to speak about their religious faith on the job, the public will believe that the employer is sanctioning or endorsing the religious views.

You'll note all of that pertains to public employers. Private sector employers can have even more restrictions on their employees behavior in the workplace. They cannot, however, discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex or national origin. ENDA simply aims to add sexual orientation and gender identity to that.

If you attempted to file suit against your employer because you felt that your boss's hiring of a Native American, Latino, African-American, fill in the ethnicity here person, violated your First Amendment rights you'd be laughed out of court. Likewise, while your boss can't keep you from going to church he or she can regulate what you say about it in the office.

Gay people in the workforce are not going to keep anyone from praying or going to church. Therefore they really can't hurt anyone's religious freedoms. The Focus on the Family folks are still entitled to their "gay is evil" opinion but they won't be able use it to discriminate against the drag queen in the cube next to them.

Save Bryce

As I was listening to OutQ on XM, Michelangelo Signorile was taking calls on the plight of 23 year old Bryce Faulkner. Faulkner is a pre-med student from El Dorado, Arkansas. His mother just found out he was gay and apparently isn't too happy about it.

According to the Rev. Brett Harris's website, Faulkner's family has threatened to take away their support of his college education and nearly everything else if he doesn't get "cured."(WARNING: You may want to turn the volume down on your computer, the Rev. Harris has lots of sounds on his site when you arrive)

Bryce Faulkner is a bright young pre-med student who, like many in college, was totally dependent upon his parents for survival. His car, his cell phone, his education, even his job was all connected to his parents purse strings. Bryce was making plans to come out to his parents, but before he had the opportunity to carry out these plans, his mother found his email password and discovered communications between he and his lover Travis Of Green Bay, Wisconsin. As any person from the south, especially those whom have a conservative fundamentalist family and has come out of the closet knows, the family can become quite volatile in their reaction to the news. Bryce is no exception to this. In order to manipulate Bryce into accepting "treatment" for his homosexuality, they took away everything and left him the choice of becoming homeless and destitute or going into therapy. As anyone can imagine, this wasn't much of a choice. Being in the closet in a small town left him no one to speak to or to seek help to get him through the transition from the closet and into the light of day. His family took away every resource he had and left him with no phone to call for help, a car to drive to any help that might be out there and no money to even take a bus to Wisconsin to be with his lover. The program he is going into is a 14 month program, one of the most severe and intense of these kinds of programs.

Bryce and Travis love one another deeply. The very reason Bryce was going to come out of the closet was in order to move closer to Travis because they wish to spend the rest of their lives together. Anyone who loves another can understand the turmoil and deep pain Travis is feeling right now. Having someone you love manipulated into pretending the love you share is an affront to God and unacceptable. Being manipulated into being cloistered away for over a year of intense brain washing techniques that tell you your homosexuality is a choice, your love is unnatural and you will sent to a place of fire and brimstone unless you submit to their philosophical interpretation of theology. Anyone one who has even the slightest knowledge of programs like those offered by Exodus International (a group that believes homosexuality is a choice and can be changed through prayer and counseling) can be spiritually demoralizing, psychologically destructive and emotionally devastating. As a person who has had someone close to them go through this kind of treatment, I make it my mission to help anyone who is forced to go into this kind of misguided and ill-informed rehabilitation programs.

Harris doesn't indicate where this deprogramming is going to take place, but the site has gotten a lot of notice and has spawned a FaceBook group as well as a Twitter account. According to the FaceBook page, the Faulkner's have threatened Harris with litigation saying they're being slandered. So far it's all a good deal of they said vs. they said, but none-the-less compelling stuff.

Many of us are or know folks who have family like this: deeply religious to the point they've decided it's their job to do God's judgment. All I can say is if parents attempted to stop their child from being left-handed or brown-eyed they'd be the ones being carted off to some form of deprogramming. Being gay, lesbian, queer, bi or trans-gendered is a TRAIT. It isn't something we choose. It isn't a lifestyle "choice." It's WHO WE ARE. GET USED TO IT. WE AREN'T GOING ANYWHERE.

Ahem. Stepping off the soap box now.

Frankly, if there are mental health professionals performing any sort of deprogramming they ought to have their license revoked for participating in junk science. My guess is that, more likely, poor Bryce has been sent to some religious institution that will "deprogram" him straight into a lifetime of self-destructive behavior.

Massachusetts sues over DOMA

FINALLY! The state of Massachusetts is suing the Federal Government over DOMA. From AP:

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts is suing the federal government over a law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

State Attorney General Martha Coakley filed the lawsuit Wednesday in federal court in Boston. It says the federal Defense of Marriage Act interferes with the right of Massachusetts to define marriage as it sees fit.

The 1996 federal law denies federal recognition of gay marriage. Massachusetts was the first state to allow the practice.

The Boston-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders has already sued over the federal law. It says it discriminates against gay couples and is unconstitutional because it denies them access to federal benefits that other married couples receive.