ENDA: The ‘Transgender Bathrooms for Businesses’ Bill

H.R. 2015 Would Force a Gender Confusion Revolution on U.S. Businesses

By Peter LaBarbera

For once we agreed with Barney Frank (sort of), at least before he sold out to the “transgender” lobby. 

“There are workplace situations — communal showers, for example — when the demands of the transgender community fly in the face of conventional norms and therefore would not pass in any Congress. I’ve talked with transgender activists and what they want — and what we will be forced to defend — is for people with penises who identify as women to be able to shower with other women.”

—Homosexual Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), BEFORE he changed his mind and embraced including “transgenders” in the Employment NonDiscrimination Act (ENDA)  

“Technically, you cannot truly change one’s sex. That’s why the procedure is not really called ‘sex change surgery’ but ‘sex reassignment surgery.’ The idea is to alter the physical appearance of a person’s anatomy to approximate as nearly as possible the anatomic arrangement of the other sex.”

— Melanie, “Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS), the Nuts & Bolts,” a “Transgender Support Site” 

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Employment NonDiscrimination Act (H.R. 2015) Language: 

“EMPLOYER PRACTICES.—It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer—

(1) “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to the compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment of the individual, because of such individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity; or

(2) “to limit, segregate, or classify the employees or applicants for employment of the employer in any way that would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment or otherwise adversely affect the status of the individual as an employee, because of such individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.”

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TAKE ACTION:  Call the Congress (202-224-3121) or use e-mail to urge your Representative and Senators to reject ENDA (H.R. 2015) and the insanity of forcing business across the nation to accommodate and subsidize gender confusion in the name of “civil rights.” Also, call President Bush (202-456-1414) or e-mail him at comments@whitehouse.gov to urge him to veto the “trans”-affirming ENDA, along with the “Hate Crimes” bill (H.R. 1592) that his aides have indicated will likely be vetoed. 

Fast on the heels of the “Hate Crimes” bill (H.R. 1597, recently passed by the House) is the second of two top homosexual activist priorities: ENDA, the “Employment Nondiscrimination Act,” H.R. 2015, recently introduced by homosexual Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). Please read at the bottom of this story the homosexual newspaper Washington Blade’s analysis of the “transgender” provision of this radical bill.

To read about ENDA’s dubious “religious exemption” provision, click HERE.

Veteran observers of the “gay” movement will recall that Frank himself once strongly criticized the idea of including transsexuals in the ENDA bill (see above quote). But like most “progressives,” Frank has seen the light, or maybe he just heard the shouts — from radical “trans” activists who have skillfully adapted militant “gay” tactics to their own misguided cause, including calling their outspoken critics “transphobes.”

Several giant corporations have already settled on pro-“transgender” bathroom and dress policies — probably the same companies who would subject their employees to biased, pro-homosexual “diversity” lectures — but can you imagine inflicting these “transgender” regulations on small and mid-level companies through federal law via ENDA?

This is one of the most perverse applications of “civil rights” to date — and it’s headed straight for your business if you have 15 or more employees. What female employee wants to share the company restroom with a big-boned man claiming to be “transitioning” to “womanhood”? Will companies have to build “transgender male” and “transgender female” restrooms (or “Designated GLBT Restrooms”) to accommodate the various “orientations” and avoid government prosecution?

 

Churches and religious-oriented groups are quasi-exempt under ENDA but secular businesses owned by Christians or religious Americans are not. ENDA is a “gay” and “trans” lawyer’s dream. What about jobs such as a teacher in which the employer might not want the “transitioning” employee to model his newfound “gender identity” to children? Or service jobs (say a maitre d’) in which the employer may not want the newly “gender variant” employee to be in such a public role?

Imagine a male employee, John, who since he became employed at XYZ Corp., about a decade ago, has used the men’s restroom. Then one day he informs his boss that in a week he will come to work in a dress as “Joanna” and begin his MTF (“male-to-female”) metamorphosis into “womanhood.” (According to widely accepted regulations within the “transgender” world, he must “live” full-time as Joanna, taking female hormones, for a full year before he becomes eligible for “sex-reassignment surgery,” which will turn his healthy sex organ into a makeshift female sex organ. If you have the stomach to read what is actually done to a man’s body in “sex reassignment surgery,” click HERE, but be warned: it’s horrifying stuff. We must pray for these poor souls who are so confused that they would destroy their healthy, God-given bodies to assuage their inner conflict.)

Isn’t it a bit much to expect of normal, female XYZ employees to all of the sudden welcome “Joanna’s” presence in the ladies’ restroom? In fact, as I read the Blade account below, under ENDA’s proposed regulations, John/Joanna would be able to use the female restroom BEFORE his “sex reassignment” surgery. Indeed, the website “e-transgender,” quoting the homosexual/transgender group Human Rights Campaign, advises corporate human resources managers as follows:

“Employers should grant restroom access according to an employee’s full-time gender presentation.”

Read: if John “lives” (identifies) as Joanna full-time, he should be able to use the female restroom. Biologically-born ladies, beware!

What about the privacy rights of John’s female co-workers? Don’t they have the right not to feel personally invaded as they go to the restroom at their job? Will businesses have to put out new bathroom policies and undergo company-wide bathroom-usage training to explain the new policies?

 

But the situation becomes a crisis when the federal government — aided by politically correct activist judges — forces businesses to advance this Gender Confusion Revolution in the name of “civil rights.”

Is this really an area in which the federal government should even be involved? It’s bad enough that big business is rolling over to the bizarre “T” (Transgender) agenda — with some even subsidizing horrifying “sex-reassignment surgeries” that destroy men’s and women’s healthy bodies. (I once attended a conference for FTM (“female to male”) “transgenders” in which young women proudly showed off their flat chests — the result of “chest surgery” operations in which their healthy breasts were removed to make them look like the “men” they wanted to be.)

Of course, the larger goal here — shared by the “gay” and “transgender” lobbies — is to change your mind and heart regarding gender-confused conduct. The law is merely a tool in their never-ending quest to overturn America’s Judeo-Christian norms regarding family, sex and marriage.

We predict that businesses will deal with this very sad and strange “transgender” issue by building special restrooms and/or shower facilities for their “transgender” or alternatively “gendered” employees — spending countless millions to subsidize mentally disordered, deviant behavior. (Gender Identity Disorder, or GID, is a recognized mental disorder.) This corporate spending would accelerate dramatically should ENDA become law, as businesses would fear lawsuits if they failed to honor “trans” rights.

Call Congress (202-224-3121) or use e-mail to urge your U.S. Representative and Senators to reject ENDA, H.R. 2015. Also, call President Bush (202-456-1414) or e-mail him at comments@whitehouse.gov and ask him to veto the pro-“trans” ENDA, along with the “Hate Crimes” bill (H.R. 1592) that his aides have already indicated will likely be vetoed.

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The following is excerpted from an April 27 Washington Blade report on ENDA and “transgenders”; as you read this, imagine a small business owner with, say, 20 employees trying to make sense of this legislation and the potential new federal regulations it would usher in for his company:

Grooming standards

 

Two separate provisions in the bill entitled “Certain Shared Facilities” and “Dress and Grooming Standards” allow employers to place restrictions on transgender employees under certain conditions. And in what some are likely to consider a groundbreaking development in federal law, the two provisions also address how employers may deal with employees in the process of transitioning from one gender to the other.

 

Supporters said the limited restrictions give employers the authority to require transgender employees to dress according to the gender into which they have transitioned.

 

“Nothing in this act shall be construed to establish an unlawful employment practice based on actual or perceived gender identity due to the denial of access to shared shower or dressing facilities in which being seen fully unclothed is unavoidable, provided that the employer provides reasonable access to adequate facilities that are not inconstant with the employee’s gender identity as established with the employer at the time of employment or upon notification to the employer that the employee has undergone or is undergoing gender transition, whichever is later,” the bill states.

 

On the issue of work-related grooming standards, the bill states, “Nothing in this act shall prohibit an employer from requiring an employee, during the employee’s hours at work, to adhere to reasonable dress or grooming standards not prohibited by other provisions of federal, state or local law, provided that the employer permits any employee who has undergone gender transition prior to the time of employment, and any employee who has notified the employer that the employee has undergone or is undergoing gender transition after the time of employment, to adhere to the same dress or grooming standards for the gender to which the employee has transitioned or is transitioning.”

 

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said the provision relating to shower facilities is aimed at places such as steel mills or other facilities where workers must shower before or after work. She said the language was reviewed thoroughly by transgender rights groups and legal experts, who came to a consensus on how to address this and the dress standard issue.

 

“Most employers have a dress code,” she said. “This is something that we have accepted as a society. What this language does is provide a fair way for employers to handle this.”