Knight: New ENDA Bill ‘Turns Private Sin into a Public Right’

From AFA’s One News Now; sign up for ONN’s daily news briefs HERE

Aug. 7, 2009

A conservative Christian leader says a Senate bill that would ban job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity “turns private sin into a public right.”

Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) has introduced a new version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that would add perceived and actual sexual orientation and gender identity to categories protected under federal law against discrimination [read homosexual newspaper Washington Blade account of Merkley’s ENDA bill HERE]. Proponents of the legislation call it a “fully inclusive” ENDA because it contains “gender identity” in the language. Democrats have been divided over whether the legislation should protect transsexuals and cross-dressers in addition to homosexuals.

Robert Knight (left), the senior writer for Coral Ridge Ministries, says the Merkley ENDA bill is more dangerous than previous versions because it includes gender identity.

“It takes away the idea that sex is created by God in two different categories — male and female — and it makes it entirely a radical, self-determined persona. The larger problem of this is it turns private sin into a public right,” he contends. “It puts Christian and Jewish employers on the defensive, saying that if you don’t give in and accord civil-rights privileges based on behavior that you know is sinful, ‘We’re coming after you. We’re going to fine you. We’re going to punish you.'”

According to Knight, the bill “criminalizes God’s biblical morality in the workplace.”