Justin's Political Corner

A few weeks ago, a bipartisan group of legislators once again introduced the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in both the House and the Senate, which will prohibit ”employers, employment agencies, and labor unions from using an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity as the basis for employment decisions, such as hiring, firing, promotion, or compensation”; such protections are already provided based on things like race, religion, gender, national origin, age and disability.

But “Chaps” Gordon Klingenschmitt is not buying it because he knows that ENDA is really all about driving Christian businesses right out of existence.

“ENDA is the end of the world for [conservative] Christian employers,” Klingenschmitt claimed, saying that ENDA is not about equality but rather “bankrupting Christian business owners.” Even more frightening, ENDA is also apparently about forcing major corporations “to give homosexual bonus pay to your gay or lesbian lover” … whatever that means.

h/t: RWW

While the Supreme Court prepares to take up cases on marriage equality, the Family Research Council’s latest mailing [PDF] takes on ENDA – the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act.  “Like a B-grade 1950’s horror-movie, ENDA is coming back from the dead,” warns FRC President Tony Perkins. Perkins says President Obama is working with the “totalitarian homosexual lobby” to sneak ENDA into law, and if that happens, “Our freedom of religious will be destroyed.” The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer sounded a similar alarm in January.

“In fact,” says Perkins in his new letter, “under ENDA biblical morality becomes illegal.”

What ENDA would really do is simply extend existing protections against various forms of legal discrimination in the workplace to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

Polls show overwhelming public support for protecting gay and transgender people from discrimination on the job. But that doesn’t matter to FRC, which has a lot invested in convincing its supporters that LGBT equality is incompatible with religious freedom.  

Several years ago, FRC warned that a federal hate crimes law would be used to silence preachers.  Other religious right leaders said Christians would be tossed into jail for preaching against homosexuality. That legislation was signed into law in 2009; as Perkins himself makes clear, the freedom to trash-talk LGBT people has survived.

- H/T: Peter Montgomery at RWW

While he certainly has a lot of competition serving among the likes of Michele Bachmann, Steve King, Louie Gohmert and Steve Stockman, Rep. Tim Huelskamp is doing his best toposition himself as the leading congressman of the anti-gay radical right.

Huelskamp told Family Research Council president Tony Perkins in an interview before last night’s State of the Union address that President Obama seeks “to destroy the family and replace it with his view of a radical new social agenda.”

This President has a radical social agenda and the media will probably give him a pass when instead of talking about the fact that mom and dad don’t have a job we’re going to talk about how to destroy the family and replace it with his view of a radical new social agenda. So we’re going to hear a lot about that, we’re going to hear a lot of blaming and also a lot of talk about how he would solve this and that problem but gosh darn it he’s had four years to do that and he hasn’t solved one and I would argue it’s gotten progressively worse since he took office.

The congressman went on to criticize the Republican leadership for trying to avoid a discussion of social issues. Huelskamp, who last year falsely claimed that 85 percent of people in the U.S. don’t support legalizing same-sex marriage, insisted that Republicans “defend the seventy percent position that most Americans support traditional marriage,” which in Religious Right-speak means oppose marriage equality.

Of course, most polls find that just over half of Americans support same-sex marriage.

Huelskamp went on to call the Department of Defense’s extension of partnership benefits to same-sex couples and the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) as “radical ideas” that “most Americans do not accept” because they “specifically and selectively reward homosexual behavior.”

Once again, the majority of Americans favor job protections and partnership benefits for gays and lesbians.

H/T: Brian Tashman at RWW

Truth in Action Ministries has released their “2012 Issues Guide for Christian Voters” [PDF], which argues that federal spending on social services “goes against what the Bible says about caring for one’s own and others” and pushing for bans on abortion rights, stem cell research and emergency contraception. The group also warns of “radical judges” and an “out-of-control judiciary,” the “dangerous and destructive” health care reform law and the “false religion” of environmentalism.

But of course, no Religious Right voter guide goes without a section on gay rights, and Truth in Action Ministries tells members that END will “impose the homosexual political agenda on the workplace” and that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has started “Maoist-style ‘re-education’ in ‘diversity.’” The group also claims the repeal law will “violate the rights of those serving by forcing them to cohabit and shower with people who may desire them sexually” and “jeopardize the military’s health and blood supply, since homosexual men are far more likely to be promiscuous and to have STDs, including HIV/AIDS.”

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW

Rep. Paul Ryan is considered a single-issue candidate — a vice presidential pick who bolsters Mitt Romney’s argument that this election is about the economy and only the economy.

Ryan hasn’t dedicated much time to social issues. But the Wisconsinite, best understood as an anti-tax, anti-spending purist, has taken positions outside the mainstream on issues like abortion and women’s health.

An examination of Ryan’s record reveals a congressman who, with few exceptions, has hewed to his party’s far-right base on social issues. He has supported a federal ban on abortion even in the case of rape and incest, and a ban on gay adoption.

In January 2011, days after Republicans took over the House, Ryan co-sponsored legislation to declare that “each human life begins with fertilization,” providing fetuses the same rights as a person, thereby permitting states to ban all abortion, without exceptions.

“At the core, today’s ‘pro-choice’ liberals are deeply pessimistic,” Ryan said in a lengthy September 2010 statement titled “The Cause of Life Can’t Be Severed from the Cause of Freedom.” “They denigrate life and offer fear of the present and the future — fear of too many choices and too many children. Rather than seeing children and human beings as a benefit, the ‘pro-choice’ position implies that they are a burden.”

The Romney campaign didn’t respond to inquiries to clarify Ryan’s position on abortion in extreme cases. His campaign has previously noted that Romney supports exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother in his opposition to legal abortion.

LGBT groups are disappointed with Ryan’s record on gay rights. He voted in 2004 and 2006 for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. He also voted against repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” as well as hate-crime legislation. In 1999, he voted to ban gay couples from adopting children in the District of Columbia.

The congressman famously broke with the right wing in 2007 to vote for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which prohibited workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The move won him praise from gay conservatives.

Ultimately, social issues don’t animate Ryan. Despite his ardent pro-life stances, for instance, he has been willing to look the other way and endorse Republican candidates who support abortion rights, as long as they’re with him on fiscal issues.

h/t: Sahil Kapur at TPM

In fact, Ryan has a voting record to reflectevery anti-LGBT position that Romney has taken. Here’s a recap:

• Banning state-level same-sex marriage. Just as Romney opposed same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, Ryan supported the 2006 banon same-sex marriage in Wisconsin.
• Supporting a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Romney has promised to campaign on a federal marriage amendment, but Ryan has already voted for one — twice, in 2004 and in 2006.
• Defending discrimination against same-sex couples. President Obama announced last year he would no longer defend the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act, a decision Romney has characterized as an “assault on religion.” Ryan voted to limit funding to the Justice Department that might be used to oppose DOMA by the Obama administration.
• Opposing federal non-discrimination protections. Romney believes that states should get to decide whether LGBT people are protected from employment discrimination, and similarly, Ryan voted to kill the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in 2007, though heultimately voted for it. His refusal to include sexual orientation and gender identity in his Congressional office’s nondiscrimination policy demonstrates where he stands.
• Opposing repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Though Romney has said he would not reinstate the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, he did oppose repealing it until “conflict was over” (i.e. the never-ending “War on Terror“).  In 2010, Ryan voted against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
• Opposing hate crimes protections. Just as Romney vetoed a bill funding hate crimes prevention in Massachusetts in 2003, Ryan voted against expanding the federal hate crimes law to protect the LGBT community.

Ryan is perhaps best known for his budget, and that too would devastate LGBT families by eliminating many of the public services they depend upon because of the economic inequities they face. 

h/t: Zach Ford at Think Progress LGBT

The Democratic Party platform drafting committee approved on Sunday language endorsing same-sex marriage in addition to other pro-LGBT positions as part of the Democratic Party platform, according to two sources familiar with the drafting process.

Retiring gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who sits on the committee, told the Washington Blade on Monday that the 15-member panel unanimously backed the inclusion of a marriage equality plank after a national hearing over the weekend in Minneapolis, in which several witnesses testified in favor of such language.

“I was part of a unanimous decision to include it,” Frank said. “There was a unanimous decision in the drafting committee to include it in the platform, which I supported, but everybody was for it.”

Frank emphasized that support for marriage equality is a position that has been established for the Democratic Party, from the president, who endorsed marriage equality in May, to House Democratic lawmakers who voted to reject an amendment reaffirming the Defense of Marriage Act earlier this month.

A DNC staffer, who is familiar with the process and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the language in the platform approved on Sunday not only backs marriage equality, but also rejects DOMA and has positive language with regard to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The exact wording of the language wasn’t immediately available.

H/T: Washington Blade

WASHINGTON, DC — Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), best known as the “boring” choice atop Mitt Romney’s vice presidential list, told ThinkProgress today that he doesn’t believe it should be illegal to fire someone for being gay because doing so would make businesses less “comfortable.”

In an interview at the Faith & Freedom Conference, Portman explained why he opposes the Employee Non-Discrimination Act, which would ban firing someone because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity. “What I’m concerned about in Paycheck Fairness and other legislation like that is the fact that it will spawn a lot of litigation the way the legislation is written,” the Ohio Senator said. He worried that the legislation “would make it more difficult for employers to feel comfortable.”

KEYES: The Senate’s going to be taking up the Employee Non-Discrimination Act. Do you think that it ought to be illegal to fire someone for being gay in the United States?

PORTMAN: I don’t believe in discrimination…

KEYES: But whether or not it should be legal.

PORTMAN:What I’m concerned about in Paycheck Fairness and other legislation like that is the fact that it will spawn a lot of litigation the way the legislation is written.So you don’t want it to be a boon to lawyers, you want it to actually help people. But no one should discriminate.

KEYES: So you’re worried that people might actually take up claims that they were discriminated against?

PORTMAN: […] A lot of them would create a lot of legal rights of action that would make it more difficult for employers to feel comfortable, to be able to hire, and to keep this economy moving. So you have to be careful how you do it.

Over 70 percent of Americans support legislation protecting LGBT people from workplace discrimination, and 9 in 10 mistakenly believe that a federal law doing so already exists. Unfortunately, the frontrunner to be the Republican vice presidential nominee is not among them. 

H/T: Scott Keyes and Annie-Rose Strasser at Think Progress LGBT

Freshman Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.) told ThinkProgress in a recent interview that he was against laws designed to protect employees from workplace discrimination based on their sexual orientation, because of his belief that being gay is a “choice.”

“Race and sexual preferences are two different things. One is a behavior-related and preference-related and one is something inherently — skin color, something obvious, that kind of stuff. You don’t walk up to someone on the street and look at them and say, ‘Gay or straight?’” Lankford said. “I think it’s a choice issue. Are tendencies and such? Yes. But I think it’s a choice issue.”

President Obama’s announced support for marriage equality has lit some fires in Congress; bad ones in the House, but encouraging ones in the Senate.

Sen. Tom Harkin, Chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, And Pensions, has announced that he will hold hearings on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), legislation which would ban workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in all but the smallest companies. Greg Sargent reportsthat a bipartisan group of senators, Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Bob Casey (D-PA), Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Susan Collins (R-ME), requested hearings in committees with jurisdiction.

It’s legal to to fire someone solely because they’re lesbian, gay, or bisexual in 29 states. In 35 states, employers can fire someone solely on the basis of gender identity or expression. Protecting a person’s livelihood is easily as basic as recognizing who they love. It’s time for ENDA.

H/T: Joan McCarter at Daily Kos