Iowa Representative Steve King says a
federal gay protections bill currently being debated in Congress
amounts to legalized entrapment.
In discussing the Employment
Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that would prohibit workplace
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity,
Tuesday on the radio program of the Family Research Council, a group
opposed to gay rights, King said the legislation would open the door
for Christian businesses to be blackmailed.
Speaking
with the group's president,Tony Perkins, King said: “I can
imagine someone coming in and interviewing one day in man's clothes
and come back the next day and apply for a job in woman's clothes,
and then setting up a lawsuit in a sting operation to harass our
religious organizations.”
“If people wear their sexuality on
their sleeve, then they want to bring litigation against someone that
they would point their finger at and say 'you discriminate,' it is an
entrapment that is legalized by the ENDA Act, it appears to, and it's
a violation of the individual rights of employers to, at their own
discretion, decide who they want to hire and who they want to fire,”
King said.
“We don't need more federal
mandates,” King added. “And we surely don't need a political
statement, and that's what this is, too. This is the homosexual
activist lobby taking it out on the rest of society. They are
demanding affirmation for their lifestyle. That's at the bottom of
this.”
King remains one of Congress' loudest
opponents of gay rights.
He was the first lawmaker to call
on President Barrack Obama to fire Kevin Jennings, the openly gay
director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. King said
Jennings was unfit to serve because “his life's work has been the
promotion of homosexuality.”
Comparing gay men and lesbians to fairy
tales, King insisted being gay is a choice in denouncing the
legalization of gay marriage in Iowa. “Unicorns, leprechauns, gay
marriages in Iowa – these are things you will never find because
they just don't exist,” he said last year.
ENDA remains bottled up in committee.
However, openly gay Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank has said
he believes the legislation will reach the House floor before the end
of May.