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The Lying Game

The Radical Christian Right says they’re strict biblical constructionists. If it’s in the Bible, it must be true.

OK, then, what about the ninth commandment—do not bear false witness. Or, as we say in the 21st Century, no lying!

With the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act—or ENDA for short--soon to be voted on by Congress, lying is all these folks can do.

The bill would prohibit discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the workplace. To be clear, religious organizations, businesses that exist solely to serve religious organizations and businesses with under 15 employees would be exempt.

ENDA is an absolute necessity because in 31 states you can still be fired if you’re queer.

Yet, a recent poll by Harris Interactive found that nearly two-thirds of all American adults believe it is unfair that federal law does not protect LGBT people from job discrimination. In addition to the majority of Americans believing in fairness, it seems that corporate America is getting in the act as well.

The Human Rights Campaign just released its 2008 Corporate Equality Index. In the six years HRC has been doing this research, the number of corporate employers who received a 100% rating—they’re doing everything right to create a welcoming, protected workplace for LGBT people—went from 13 in 2002 to 195 in 2008.

Clearly, the tide of fairness and inclusion is on our side. So, what are Radical Christian Right groups like Concerned Women for America or their shills in Congress like Republican Roy Blunt from Missouri saying about the bill that would just let us work without fear of reprisal?

They’re telling lies. They’re misleading the public. They’re using the tried and true scare tactics that have characterized their vitriol against LGBT from day one.

Blunt contends that passing ENDA would create a crisis for Christians.  He said “Not being able to hire people based on their agreement with your sense of principles and values . . . would be devastating.” Getting through his double speak, he’s basically saying that Christian employers should be able to have a morality litmus test for prospective employees. Sorry but if that were the case, we’d be rolling back the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The arguments made against the law that made it illegal to discriminate based on the race and national origin were also steeped in the supposed Christian values of some employers who did not have to work with someone who wasn’t white.

The folks at Concerned Women for America contend that being gay is a “changeable sexual behavior.” If we’d only change back to straight then we wouldn’t have to worry about being fired from our jobs.

Well, here’s the truth for you—I was never straight, I just tried it on for size before I knew I could be true to myself. The lie that “gays can change” is one of the Radical Christian Right’s pillars of deceit and deception. It is their clarion call for denying us our civil rights.

Another of the Right’s absurd pillars is the notion that granting us employment protections steps on their freedom of religion. Matt Barber, CWA’s Policy Director for Cultural Issues said “ENDA would essentially force employers to check their First Amendment protected rights to freedom of religion, speech and association at the workplace door.”

Well if that doesn’t echo the arguments against the 1964 Civil Rights Act I don’t know what does.

However, the idea that our mere presence in a workplace abridges someone else’s freedom of religion is absolutely absurd. If I, as a lesbian, go to work at a telemarketing firm that employs more than 15 people, how exactly does my sitting in my cubicle making phone calls hinder the supposed devout Christian in the next cubicle from going to church on Sunday, raising his kids the way he wants or participating in bible study? It doesn’t.

What these folks really believe but don’t say is that our mere existence gets them upset. We just shouldn’t be because in their strict biblical constructionist minds we’re sinners and don’t deserve to walk on the same hallowed ground as they do.

As the Radical Christian Right continues to tell lies about us—if you listen to them you’d think we want the whole world to be gay—we’ll continue to tell the truth. Our lives, our love, our economic well-being, our families are worth protecting.

A Time To

Tuesday was September 11^th. Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. If there were ever a few days that bring Ecclesiastes third chapter to life, these are it. “A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance”—it’s the fourth verse that always jumps out at me.

With all the look backs in the news, one can’t help but be moved by the memories of September 11, 2001. 43 at the time, I knew my world had been irrevocably changed. The relative safety I felt within America’s “secure borders” was now threatened. War had come to us—a shift from our usual export of military might.

Tuesday night I cried. Today I get to laugh and be joyous. I, along with my fellow Jews, get to celebrate our new year. It’s a time for reflection and resolution but also a time to laugh and dance. The dancing really gets going at the end of this stretch of fall Jewish holidays when we actually do the Torah two-step during Simchat Torah, the holiday that marks the end and beginning again of the annual cycle of reading the entire scroll.

However, the fourth verse of Ecclesiastes is not just relevant to this week. It speaks directly to the up and down political life that the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community must navigate year in and out.

Causing fear, anguish, tears and mourning is the recent revelation that a gang of Neo-Nazis had organized themselves in Israel. Ironic, huh? The group of eight, ages 16-21, are all Israeli citizens from the former Soviet Union. They immigrated to the nation established because of Hitler and the holocaust under the Law of Return which allows anyone with a least one Jewish grandparent to become a citizen.

The skin-heads lived in and terrorized a town called Petah Tikva where they targeted gays, drug addicts and Jews who outwardly showed their faith—like donning a Kippah, the scull cap many observant Jews wear. Nazis in Israel—truly a time to mourn.

In New Jersey, where it seems a local Methodist organization owns the entire hamlet of Ocean Grove, there’s quite the controversy over whether lesbian or gay couples can use the area’s Boardwalk Pavilion for civil unions. The Methodists who run the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, the group that owns all the land, beach and 1,000 ft. of the sea in this tiny community, consider themselves strict biblical constructionists. They feel biblically justified in their refusal to let civil unions happen on the property.

Just one teeny, tiny glitch—the Association has been enjoying tax-exempt status from the state saving it up to $500,000 a year through the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Green Acres Program. When Ocean Grove first got the exemption, it said quite clearly that their properties were open to the public and that the pavilion had been used by outside groups.

Needless to say, this one is in the courts. Given the political climate in the Garden State right now—a recent survey showed 63 percent of registered voters were fine with the state legislature upgrading civil unions to full marriage--the two lesbian couples who brought a complaint to the state’s Division of Civil Rights may soon be standing under the pavilion exchanging vows. Instead of tears of anguish and pain, we’ll all be crying tears of happiness when they get to say “I do.”

It’s time dance for a lesbian couple in Maine who are now allowed to jointly adopt a brother and sister they’ve been parenting for the past six years. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court struck down an earlier ruling denying Ann Courtney and Marilyn Kirby the right to both adopt the kids. While they always knew they were a family, now the courts and the legal system agree with them.

“A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance”—this is a constant in our political lives. That’s not to say that straight folks don’t have personal loss and joy. But most of the time, they don’t have to worry about the political implications of their lives—they just weep or laugh, or mourn or dance without having to worry whether their relationship is legal, if their kids are protected or if they’re going to lose their job because of who they love.

May the New Year bring all of us health, happiness and political security.