(ThyBlackMan.com) Yes (transgenders) Further Erode Religious Freedoms in the Marketplace?
On April 20th the equal employment commission announced that Title VII of the federal sex discrimination law will now protect current and potential employees who believe they are being discriminated against because they are transgender.
The opinion was issued following a complaint brought by Mia Macy, a transgender woman who claims she was denied employment with the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives after the agency learned of her transition from a man to a woman.
The EEOC’s board of commissioners; most of which are Obama appointees and one Bush appointee held over. Voted unanimously to include “sex or gender stereotyping” as a form of sex discrimination.
The commission believed based relevant court cases that Title VII’s protections are broad; so that the term “gender” encompasses not only a person’s biological sex but also the cultural and social aspects associated with masculinity and femininity.
And they concluded “that intentional discrimination against a transgender individual because that person is transgender is, by definition, discrimination “based on … sex”, and such discrimination therefore violates Title VII.
It has the LGBTransgender community ecstatic with excitement; check out what the Communications Manager, for the Transgender Law Center, had to say in the Huffington Post.
This landmark decision which went into effect on May 21; will indeed have a rippling effect, not just on the public sector but private sector employers who have 15 or more employees.
According to the LA Times… Christine Nazer an EEOC spokeswoman responded by saying that the ruling is now “the EEOC’s position, and we will apply it in all our enforcement activities” under Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act, which prohibits job discrimination based on race, sex, religion and national origin.
“That will include investigations into discrimination complaints against private and public employers”.
So how will this effect businesses….
According to Michael D. Silverman, an attorney and executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund in New York, and Brian Moulton, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign in Washington…
All public and private HR departments will have to examine their companies’ policies regarding transgender workers.
Policies such as offering healthcare benefits that cover hormone-therapy treatments, and adopting workplace policies to address workplace issues when individuals transition from the gender of their birth to their preferred gender identity (whether or not there is a physical sex change).
Training other employees about how to handle the transition of their co-worker, how they will manage concerns that co-workers might express and how they will protect the transgender worker’s privacy while undergoing the transition.
Adopt guidelines on restroom use when one or more of their employees transitions to another gender identity or when they hire a transgender individual, as well as adopt flexible dress codes for when a worker transitions.
Yeah, I’m thinking the same thing your thinking. You’ve got to be kidding me! But they are not kidding folks. This has become workplace law!
Right under our noses…or should I say right in our faces! Based on ill-defined court rulings, they re-defined what “gender and sex” means, thereby misinterpreting the original intent of the Civil Rights Law under Title VII.
So we know that Federal, State and Local governments will have to comply almost immediately. But where does that leave Christian business owners or business owners who just aren’t comfortable hiring or having transgendered employees representing their company? Do they have any recourse or rights?
I asked this question to Ilona Turner, Legal Director of the Transgender Law Center, on my radio show and her answer was basically as an employer you have no recourse or rights! Unless you are a church or a religious affiliate.
So based on new EEOC policy, if a current male employee decides he doesn’t identify with his maleness anymore and wants to come to work in a dress, high heels, make-up and a wig. His co-workers, his employer, and potentially the customers that business serves; all must adapt and comply with him.
Or if a potential new hire applies for work as a man and tells you he or she is transitioning to their preferred gender. And you choose not to hire that person. Under either of these scenarios there is now an increased chance than you could possibly face charges of discrimination and legal action, which will cost time and money.
What has happened? How did we get here? How did we allow workers’ rights’ protections to devolve from I AM A MAN! Into I AM Ru Paul!
Will anybody have the courage to say that it is okay to discriminate against certain behaviors? Because that is exactly what transgenderism is a behavior. I’m not talking about harming anyone physically. That is ridiculous and illegal.
But transgenderism is not an innate trait. No study has proven that. Our modern feeble-minded culture has inferred rights on certain behaviors; because we lack the courage speak truth.
I implore conservatives, especially Christian conservatives; to wake-up out of our stupor!
Pray, Stand, Fight! Contact your lawmakers and the Chambers of Commerce in Washington, in your city, or state find out what your rights are; especially if you are a business owner or seek to have your own business someday.
The Left and specifically in this case the LGBT activists are demanding that we leave our Judeo-Christian beliefs at our homes and at our churches. With every new law, special right, protection or policy they are telling us you can’t bring that ideology into the market-place or the public square.
By using unelected officials to institute bad public policies.
By getting constitutionally illiterate jurists to decide court cases in their favor.
By convincing culture-driven, poll-watching, spineless lawmakers to enact erroneous laws.
And by emotionally deceiving society by misusing words like; fairness, equality, freedom and love.
They are indeed attempting to Jim Crow Christianity! Let’s see to it; that they don’t succeed!
First; it is not a behavior
Second: I was born neither male nor female
third: a Doctor chose for me at 7 weeks.
fourth: I did not find out until a medical condition in my thirties
fifth: It cosk me freinds, and a relationship of 15 years
sixth: I live in fear because of stories like this and people who take it to an excessive assult just because.
seventh: I have not been in a relationship since and have great freinds who often ask why I do not date
eigth: so perspecive time: If back in the civil rights movement it ok to have an african american use areas identified only as color.
Then If I am one or neither, but have to fit how the impression of how I look, and use the bathroom that corresponds to it no one would be the wiser, howeer if I use the one that is half of my anatomical gender, then I get assulted, or told I am in the wrong one?
That said, then how would you feel today if someome told you because of who you were to used the porta poty they set up outside because of how you looked, acted, and or if someone just felt uncomfortale.
There are medical conditions and you could do with a great deal of resarch on the conditions prior to presenting yourself as a both a biggot, hippocrite, and an idoit without having all of the facts prior to shooting things over the internt.
Oh yeah, Please take the above as either Bless Your heart, or I was Just saying, (SOuthern politness you know).
Judge not lest you be judged, and MLK had a dream that ALL People would be equa;!
And it’s absolutely appalling that an African-American would use the exact same “religious freedom to discriminate” argument that was used to justify discrimination against African-Americans in the 60’s. I’m sure your civil rights leaders would be very proud of this!
Your argument seems to hinge on the premise that being transgender is a choice and therefore should not be protected. But isn’t being a small minded “Christian” who ignores Christ’s commandment to love each other a choice as well?