U.S. Catholic Bishops Embrace Workplace Discrimination
by Michael A. Jones, May 25th, 2010 www.gayrights.blogspot.com
Survey after survey shows that most Americans don’t want to see LGBT people fired from their jobs, solely on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. We don’t want to see hotel workers fired because they’re gay — like what happened at a Tennessee hotel last year. Nobody wants to see lawyers fired because they’re rumored to be lesbian — like what happened to an attorney with the Department of Justice under President George W. Bush’s watch. And nobody wants to watch college administrators told to pack their bags because they’re transgender — like what happened at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire to a transgender woman in 2004.
Indeed, polling on this shows overwhelming majorities of Americans believe that it’s wrong to fire employees based on their sexual orientation or gender identity (upwards of at least 89 percent agree with that). So who believes that it is OK to fire LGBT employees?
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, that’s who. They’re out with a letter today, sent to Congress, urging legislators to vote down the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA). And as is the case with almost any piece of LGBT-related legislation, from hate crimes to immigration equality to health care, they’re citing the fear that passage of ENDA will eventually lead to America becoming a cornucopia of same-sex marriage.
The leap of logic needed to say that preventing workplace discrimination will lead to the enactment of same-sex marriage is mammoth in size. It’s almost like suggesting that because I stubbed my toe yesterday, I’m going to win the lottery tomorrow. Non sequitur is an understatement here.
But what’s particularly sad about the U.S. Bishops’ letter to Congress is that it’s rife with doublespeak about discrimination. On one hand the Bishops cite the Catechism of the Catholic Church in saying that LGBT people “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.” But with the other hand they’re saying that they can’t support ENDA because it might legitimize sexual conduct that the Bishops find abhorrent. Out of one side of their mouths, the Bishops are saying “Catholic teaching states that all people are created in the image and likeness of God and thus possess an innate human dignity that must be acknowledged and respected.” Yet outside the other end of their mouths, the Bishops are saying that LGBT shouldn’t be protected against unjust workplace firings because it might lead to same-sex marriage.
So which is it? Either the Church abhors discrimination, or it’s a party to it. They don’t get to have it both ways.
ENDA has been somewhat pushed to the back burner at the moment, given the immediate attention afforded to repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” But the issues at the heart of ENDA are no less important. Right now, LGBT people can be fired in 29 states solely because of their sexual orientation. Worse yet, in 38 states employees can be fired on the basis of their gender identity.
But for the U.S. Bishops, the fact that LGBT people can be given pink slips at a moment’s notice without any recourse is the price that society has to pay in order to keep same-sex couples from polluting the world.
“The movement to redefine marriage to include two persons of the same sex (a.k.a. same-sex “marriage”) has changed the law substantially … at both the state and federal level, and it has become increasingly clear that laws like ENDA have been instrumental to those changes,” wrote the Bishops.
In 2007, when a version of ENDA was last debated in Congress, the U.S. bishops chose to remain neutral. I’m not entirely sure what’s changed in three years that’s turned the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference from Switzerland to Sudan on the issue of workplace discrimination, but the bishops made it clear in no uncertain terms today — firing people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is a-OK with prominent men in collars.
Meanwhile, if you want to push your legislator(s) to get behind ENDA, and help end workplace discrimination once and for all, you can do so by signing this petition here. Don’t let a group of Bishops out of touch with mainstream opinion on the subject of workplace discrimination have the last word.
