Right Wing Watch has compiled a list of
the top ten outrageous claims Christian conservatives have leveled
against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).
ENDA, which seeks to ban workplace
discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, will
reach the Senate floor sometime next week.
(Related: Senate
to consider gay protections bill ENDA next week.)
“As the vote approaches, senators
will have to choose whether they will cast their lot with anti-gay
extremists or with common sense,” the site wrote in introducing the
list.
10. Matt
Barber: ENDA And Hate Crimes Laws Will Be Used To Protect Pedophiles
(October 2013)
Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel appeared
on Sandy Rios In The Morning, where he told guest host Wendy
Wright that hate crimes laws and the Employment Non-Discrimination
Act will be used to protect pedophiles: “When you have laws like
ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, being pushed, hate
crimes legislation, that are as you point out so well Wendy, that are
very vague in their definition of what is sexual orientation, we will
arrive at the point where you know these people who define their
sexual orientation by a sexual attraction to children want to be
lumped in among those who cannot be discriminated against based upon
their sexual orientation.”
9. Steve
Crampton: ENDA is Insanity (June 2012)
Speaking about a Senate hearing on
ENDA, Liberty Counsel’s Faith and Freedom radio host Steve
Crampton marveled that a transgender person was actually allowed to
testify on behalf of the legislation and complained that ENDA is not
about “equal rights” but rather “special rights” for gays and
cross-dressers.
Crampton stated that if ENDA passed, he
could come into work – “God forbid,” he said – wearing a
dress and would be allowed to use the women’s restroom. “In
years past,” Crampton said, “we had another word for this: It’s
called insanity.”
8. Rep.
Louie Gohmert Misleads on ENDA, Criticizes Faith Groups that Affirm
Gays and Lesbians “Despite the Plumbing that God Created”
(June 2012)
While speaking on Today’s Issues,
the Texas congressman said the anti-discrimination legislation is
“part of this administration’s ongoing war on religion, on
particularly Judeo-Christian values,” and asserted that Muslims
would also oppose the bill as well. However, Gohmert lamented the
growth of Christian and Jewish denominations and organizations that
affirm gays and lesbians and defend their rights, saying that they do
so “despite the plumbing that God created.”
7. Mat
Staver: ENDA “Will Harm Women and Children” (July 2013)
Liberty Counsel head Mat Staver in a
Freedom’s Call radio alert said that the ENDA bill is a
“farce” that will “harm women and children.” How? Because
employers “will be forced to hire cross-dressers,” whom Staver
believes will go on to molest and assault kids.
6. Linda
Harvey: Gays Deserve To Be Fired Because They “Insist On Displaying
[Their] Lifestyles To Everyone” (May 2013)
Mission America’s Linda Harvey stated
her belief that schools, and employers in general, should have the
right to fire LGBT personnel and urged them to exercise that right.
She said that the only person to blame for getting fired is the LGBT
employee who refuses to accept their employer’s “high moral
standards” and “insist[s] on displaying these lifestyles to
everyone and forcing their acceptance.” She said that “no one
needs to be involved in homosexuality” and that the “homosexual
lifestyle” is incompatible with being “an excellent employee”
as it “shows a disrespect” to others.
5. Tony
Perkins: “Totalitarian Homosexual Lobby” Out to Destroy Religious
Freedom with ENDA (March 2013)
“Like a B-grade 1950’s
horror-movie, ENDA is coming back from the dead,” warned Family
Research Council President Tony Perkins in a recent mailing. Perkins
said President Obama is working with the “totalitarian homosexual
lobby” to sneak ENDA into law, and if that happens, “Our freedom
of religion will be destroyed.”
“In fact,” says Perkins in his
letter, “under ENDA biblical morality becomes illegal.”
4. Andrea
Lafferty Cites CT School Shooting to Rally Opposition to
Non-Discrimination Policies (December 2012)
Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional
Values Coalition used the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in
order to bolster her campaign against ENDA. While speaking to Janet
Mefferd about the Orange County, Florida, school system’s new
non-discrimination policy that is similar to ENDA, Lafferty said that
just as parents are upset about the Sandy Hook elementary school
shooting and are concerned about keeping their children safe, they
should also be worried about ENDA’s “devastating effects” as
schools will have “people with some real issues playing out their
personal problems in the classroom.”
Lafferty maintained that ENDA is part
of the left’s “open season” on Christians on behalf of “fringe
minorities and people that are truly sick.” She warned that
Chick-fil-A restaurants may soon be “forced” to hire “weirdos”
seeking to undermine Christian businesses, warning that transgender
people are committing “the ultimate act of self-hatred” and need
“special medical treatment” rather than job protections.
3. Gordon
Klingenschmitt: Under ENDA, “Christians Will Be Bankrupted” And
“Starve To Death” (September 2013)
Dr. “Chaps” Gordon Klingenschmitt
emailed members of his Pray In Jesus Name Project warning that
Christians may face unemployment and starvation if the Employment
Non-Discrimination Act passes.
“The Government is now ordering you:
Forsake God or starve to death,” Klingenschmitt writes. “I pray
that I would choose bankruptcy, starvation, even death, before
disobedience to God.”
2. Bryan
Fischer: Businesses Threatened by “Flaming Homosexual” Job
Applicants and the “Return of Jim Crow Laws” (January 2013)
American Family Association spokesman
Bryan Fischer warned in a blog post that “ENDA would represent the
return of Jim Crow laws.” On his radio program Focal Point, Fischer
warned that if ENDA is signed into law businesses will be faced with
a barrage of “flaming homosexual” job applicants. “The
homosexual lobby,” Fischer said, “will send a guy in there
wearing stilettos, a dress and dangly earrings” in order to provoke
Christian business-owners “not to hire him.”
1. Mat
Staver: ENDA Will Result in the “Death of Some Individuals”
(June 2012)
Liberty Counsel chairman Mat Staver is
ratcheting up the rhetoric in opposition to ENDA, even going so far
as to say that if passed the legislation may lead to child
molestation, sexual assault, and death. Staver told Jim Schneider of
VCY America on Crosstalk that ENDA “will put individuals at
risk and ultimately result in significant damage and even death of
some individuals.”
Staver: “So you can go into these
restrooms or changing rooms, if you’re a man, and want to go in and
molest, or watch, or sexually assault young girls. So, I mean, the
absurdity of this is just beyond understanding how someone could be
in favor of it. This will ultimately, in addition to colliding with
religious liberty, in addition to forcing a radical agenda on people,
this also will put individuals at risk and ultimately result in
significant damage and even death of some individuals.”