Quotas for Transsexuals: What ENDA Portends

A man dressed as a woman entered a women’s locker-room at a college in Washington State. This locker-room at Evergreen State College is used not just by co-eds but also by little girls who use the college for programs.

In a subsequent police report the transvestite was accused of “sitting with her legs open with her male genitalia showing.” Put aside the absurdity of a “her” having “male genitalia” and focus on the fact that what this man did was perfectly legal. Police and the school had to ignore the complaints because in Washington State “sexual orientation and gender identity” are protected categories of nondiscrimination. It seems a pre-op transsexual may sling his junk with impunity.

Then there’s the story of Brian Griggs who had charges brought against him by the Seattle Human Rights Commission. His crime? Playing a Christian radio station in the business he owned and also posting a letter from his Congresswoman questioning open gays in the military. According to Walter Olson of the Cato Institute, Griggs has to spend thousands of dollars to defend himself.

Washington State is not the only one. California has a similar law with similar results. Some employees of the city of Oakland started a gay and lesbian association. Two Christians started a Christian association and were ordered by their supervisor to cease and desist under threat of firing. Their efforts were called “homophobic” and contributing to the “harassment” of gay employees.

There is a small patchwork of states that have such laws that inevitably harm businesses and religious objectors to the dominant sexual ethos. But these are only states. However, the US Senate yesterday passed something called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that will enforce a similar law nationally.

ENDA says any organization with 15 or more employees may not “fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to the compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges or employment or the individual, because of such individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.”

ENDA defines sexual orientation as “homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bi-sexuality” but, in the words of Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation, “offers no definition of those terms or what principle limits its ‘orientation’ to those three.”

ENDA defines gender identity as “the gender-related identity, appearance, or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, with or without regard to the individuals designated sex at birth.” That means transsexuals.

Keep in mind that sexual orientation and gender identity have awfully slippery definitions. As Anderson says in his Heritage Backgrounder, “Sexual orientation and gender identity are commonly understood to be subjective, self-disclosed, and self-defined.” They are not like race, which is a properly protected category.

Dr. Paul McHugh, one of the giants of psychiatry, former head of that unit at Johns Hopkins University, filed an amicus brief in the DOMA case before the Supreme Court several months ago and addressed exactly this topic. “Social science research continues to show that sexual orientation, unlike race, color and ethnicity, is neither a clearly defined concept nor an immutable characteristic of human beings.“  He noted from his decades of experience that sexual orientation is completely fluid and changes dramatically over a lifetime.

McHugh wrote that gender identity “is even more fluid and erratic, so much so that in limited cases an individual could claim to ‘identify’ with a different gender of successive days at work.”

Besides the question of who is being protected here—a he-she on Monday could be a she-he on Tuesday—this new law exposes businesses to immense intrusion that could litigate them out of the marketplace.

What’s more, religious liberty would be further imperiled. Hobby Lobby, a business started by Christians and advanced along Christian lines, would be forced to hire transsexuals at their registers and as their sales force. And if they didn’t, they would be in violation of federal law. Your child’s grade-school Principal shows up one day in a dress and fake boobs. You don’t like it? Your child is scandalized? Too bad for you and your child.

And if ENDA passes you can say good-bye to all state laws banning gay marriage. The 36 states where it is not allowed would inevitably have to fall.

Race hustlers everywhere know exactly where this is headed, toward self-imposed quotas by businesses large and small. The only way a business can inoculate itself against charges of discriminatory hiring practices is to hire the aggrieved class no matter what. If pushed by the Justice Department, Hobby Lobby’s only line of defense would be to trot out the transsexuals. They don’t even have to know how to type as long as they have lopped off their penises or at least wear dresses.

One of the truly strange things about the gay-rights movement is how free they are with their strangest cousins. You would think that even gay men and lesbians might be rather embarrassed by the T in LGBT. But so bold are they, so fearless, that they now lead with the T. Most Americans are rightly put off by such displays of obvious psychological disturbances.

The bill that just passed the US Senate was met with no genuine objection even by conservative Senators, so cowed are they by the new totalitarians of the sexual left. The bill now moves to the House of Representatives where there are more spines, one hopes.

For a glimpse into your future, ponder the words of Colleen Francis, the transsexual who spread his/her legs for the little girls in the locker-room of Evergreen State College in Washington State. He/she said,  “This is not 1959 Alabama. We don’t call the police for drinking from the wrong water fountain.” No, but apparently we let a grown man show his genitals to little girls and call it progress.