HRC on ENDA

The [Homosexualilty Advocacy] Campaign, which calls itself the Human Rights Campaign, which doesn't support rights for polygamous people (so much for equality), as been advertising on behalf of passing "ENDA", which could force employers to let people dress inappropriately on the job along with a bunch of other things.

Here's a statement they have been using:

There’s no state law protecting LGBT workers in 33 states! Sign our petition to Congress to pass ENDA!

That first sentence, of course, is FALSE. There are many laws protecting workers in every state, and LGBT people are not excluded from those laws. Taking their statement at face value, I could note that perhaps 50 (or all 57) states have no state law protecting heterosexual workers! What HRC is trying to do is further erode freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, free enterprise, and property rights, by further intruding into the hiring, firing, promotion, demotion, and other decisions of employers.

They want people to get upset that there's no specific law in 33 states that prevents an employer from saying, "I don't want to hire you because you're a man who has sex with men" or "I don't want to hire you because you're a man who is dressed as a woman." However, there's no law against an employer saying :I don't want to hire you because you're heterosexual." That's right. There's also no law againt an employer saying "I don't want to hire you because you're ugly", "I don't want to hire you because you're an introvert", "I don't want to hire you because you like to watch Honey Boo Boo", or a million other things, but the HRC doesn't seem to care about any of that. They have a very narrow focus of wanting to force people who do not approve of homosexual behavior or crossdressing to hire people who do those things anyway, and create whole addition class of potential lawsuits, as in "The reason I didn't get promoted is because I'm bisexexual!" when perhaps the reason was poor performance.

I think employment decisions should be up to a mutual agreement between an employer and a potantial employee (or their chosen representatives), not anyone else.

Of course, the homosexuality and crossdressing advocates will try to liken this to civil rights laws meant to stop discrimination against people based on their skin color or ethnicity, but there's a difference because those things are more readily apparent and are not behaviors. There was also a history in this country of enslaving people, denying them basic human rights, and publicly torturing and lynching people with impunity in well-attended festive events based on their skin color. Finally, a lot of people think it is time to drop the laws about racist discrimination, too, rather than increasing restrictions on employers.

You know what protects LGBT workers? The same thing that protects heterosexual workers: making your employer's job easier in a way it wouldn't be if they didn't have anyone at all for that position or had to go through the trouble of finding someone else. Being a good employee is an employee's protection. If someone doesn't keep or doesn't promote an employee who should be kept or promoted, it is the employer who loses out the most, especially of that employee goes elsewhere.