Vox’s Alexia Campbell reports on a couple of organizations which want to continue to use superstition as one of their filters on employees:
Two conservative Christian groups in Texas believe that businesses and employers have the legal right to discriminate against LGBTQ workers on religious grounds, and they’re trying to get the courts to back them up.
The US Pastors Council and Texas Values, two nonprofit evangelical groups, filed multiple lawsuits in state and federal court this week, claiming that Christian businesses and churches have a constitutional right to fire — or not hire — LGBTQ workers.
One lawsuit challenges the federal Civil Rights Act, which makes it illegal for employers to discriminate against job candidates and workers based on their religion, sex, gender, and race. Two other lawsuits seek to strike down part of an Austin city ordinance that prohibits employers from discriminating against similar groups, and explicitly includes protections based on “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”
In one of the lawsuits filed Saturday against the city of Austin, lawyers for Texas Values said the organization will not comply with the law.
Yes, you, too, can be divisive. Perhaps the Center For Inquiry, an atheist organization if I’m to judge from the mail I receive from them, should protest that it should not be required to hire Christians and other evangelical religious types because it fears that they will attempt to convert their atheist employees to their chosen sects, and that would be against the Center’s code of ethics.
Yeah, I can hear the hypocritical howls from those same organizations from here.
Campbell goes on to note:
The US Pastors Council says Christian employers are allowed to discriminate against LGBTQ workers based on protections in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The federal law, enacted in 1993, sets a high standard for government legislators when writing laws that might burden a person’s right to exercise their religion. The act states that such a law must further a “compelling government interest” and must be tailored to minimize the burden on individual religious practices.
The law has generally been used to analyze other laws that might infringe on an individual’s religious freedom. But in a controversial 2014 ruling, the US Supreme Court extended the protection to Christian-owned corporations. In that case, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the arts and crafts superstore chain challenged the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate, which required businesses to offer health insurance plans that covered the cost of birth control.
I’ll note in passing that a single-payer health care law would take care of that fairly awful exception to the ACA.
But that’s not really my point. A “high standard” might be enshrined in law, but, in view of my post on how society appears to be breaking up, I’d like to suggest that Texas Values and the US Pastors Council are contributing to that very breakdown in American society of which Senator Sasse (R-NE) writes. They may think it’s effective to “hate the sin, not the sinner,” but by rejecting the “sinner” who has done nothing wrong but find their own gender more attractive, they are damaging that person on an individual level, and sending a message to other persons of that class that they are not valuable parts of society.
Perhaps in other countries it’s traditional to suppress those minorities which are troublesome, but this is America, where the European invaders who settled here while and after hating the American Indian virtually out of existence, had to learn to do better, first with their fellows from other European countries, and then from China and other non-European countries. Many of those met initial hostility and xenophobia, but eventually – usually with some sharp raps across the knuckles of the “natives” (cough) – they were accepted, and now heritage is merely a matter of curiosity.
And it’s this tolerance and recognition of the trivialities of differences which has helped to make America great. By disrespecting this tradition, they disrespect a great American tradition.
These two groups may be merely trying to follow the supposed precepts of their faith traditions, irrational as they may seem to be. Or there may be a darker undercurrent going on, because it’s fairly well known that, by emphasizing some group as being adversarial or, better yet, theologically repugnant, it is easier to focus the members of the group on the group’s agenda and to be successful carriers of it. So you tell them that the Bible frowns on the LGBTQ (did I miss any letters?) community, that God hates them, and to associate with them is to be tainted by their sins.
What better way to feel superior than have God on your side?
Of course, I’d never dream of suggesting Jesus never hated oppressed minority groups. (Ooops!) Or that Jesus’ message was more or less just Love thy neighbor! (Ooops! Just slipped out. Won’t happen again.)
Even this simple-minded agnostic devotee to straight-thinking knows that much. Maybe this Pastors Council should go back and read their Bibles again. Or wait for Jesus to appear to them while they’re laying hands and praying over D. J. Trump hisself.
Or perhaps return to the rationality on which the United States truly functions and try to figure out if there’s any rational reason to reject LGBTQ folks, and, if they discover that they can’t find any such, welcome them with open arms.
That’d be more in line with proper spirituality.
So to reconnect with the title of this post, I think any rational court would laugh these lawsuits out of court on the simple observation that a divided, embittered society is not a desirable end state in the eyes of government. Stop sowing hatred, folks, or get out of the country.
