Proposed ENDA Amendments Hardly Sufficient to Reduce Threat to Religious Freedom; Vote Tomorrow

 Today’s corporate employees are more likely to be fired or punished for OPPOSING homosexuality than for “being gay.” In 2005, Matt Barber was fired by Allstate in 2005 after writing a column opposing homosexuality. A staffer at Human Rights Campaign, the powerful homosexual group now crusading for the federal ‘ENDA Our Freedom’ bill, “reported” Barber’s column to an Allstate staffer, leading to Barber’s firing. Call Congress today at 202-224-3121, or go to www.congress.org, to urge your Representative to oppose ENDA, HR 3685.

NOTE TO READERS: Proposed amendments to H.R. 3685, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) approved by the Rules Committee for a vote on the House floor — probably tomorrow — do little to address the bill’s core problem: it tramples on the rights of Christian and moral-minded businessmen by creating new federal employment rights based on aberrant sex (or at least the inclination toward homosexuality/bisexuality). AFTAH released the following media advisory today:

Americans For Truth
http://www.americansfortruth.org/

November 6, 2007

Contact: Peter LaBarbera: 630-717-7631

Americans For Truth Says ENDA, H.R. 3685, Would Lead to Religious Persecution

Christian Newswire. NAPERVILLE, Illinois — Americans For Truth President Peter LaBarbera today urged Christian, Muslim and other moral-minded Americans to “wake up to the tremendous threat that the ‘ENDA Our Freedom’ Bill, H.R. 3685 (Employment Nondiscrimination Act), poses to their religious and First Amendment freedoms.” H.R. 3685 could be debated on the House floor today. [It now appears the vote will be Wednesday, Nov. 7.]

See Americans For Truth’s paper, “14 Good Reasons to Oppose HR 3685, the ‘ENDA Our Freedom’ Bill.”  Call Congress at 202-224-3121 or go to www.congress.org.

“In an era when homosexuals are being hired – not fired – for “being gay” — and when Christians are already being punished or fired by corporations like Allstate for opposing homosexuality, ENDA would lead to further harassment of faith-motivated employees by creating federal ‘rights’ based on homosexuality and bisexuality,” LaBarbera said.

He offered this example as to how ENDA would codify discrimination: “Take an orthodox Jewish entrepreneur who owns a large day care center. He can now factor in his morality about homosexuality as a sin. (He rejects the idea of innate, innocuous “sexual orientation.”) Under ENDA, if his company were to grow to 15 or more employees, he would lose his right to consider his own religious and moral beliefs in hiring/firing decisions. A bisexual with good credentials who does not get hired might sue him for “discrimination.” (If he’s an outspoken pro-marriage advocate, he might be targeted for a “gay” lawsuit.) The government’s politically correct view of homosexuality could force this man, and hundreds of thousands like him, to violate their conscience. It’s Big Government with an amoral twist and, incidentally, a homosexual activist lawyer’s dream.”

To understand the inherent conflict between “gay rights” and religious freedom, LaBarbera pointed to lesbian Georgetown professor Chai Feldblum’s 2005 Beckett Fund presentation, “Moral Conflict and Liberty: Gay Rights and Religion.” Unlike most homosexual activists, Feldblum at least recognizes that religious citizens have a valid moral claim in opposing homosexuality, yet she asserts that homosexuals also have a “moral” claim for their “civil rights” (including same-sex “marriage”). She calls the conflict between those two claims a “zero-sum” game.

“Feldblum says her ‘morality’ outweighs that of traditionalists. I would strongly disagree, seeing that this nation was founded by people seeking religious freedom. ENDA would take away Christians’ and others’ right to stand up for Biblical morality and live by the dictates of their own moral conscience,” LaBarbera said.