This Could Be The ENDA Of It All

Employers know best what qualities or characteristics are relevant to performing a particular job, not the federal government. So why does Congress want to inject itself into business owners employment decisions?

This is the question that needs to be asked as the Senate moves to vote on the so-called Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that would prohibit businesses from taking into account any conduct related to "actual or perceived sexual identity or gender identity" when making employment decisions even if it violates their religious beliefs or if it is inappropriate for their workplace.

ENDA would force religious business owners and workplaces such as Christian bookstores, religious publishing houses, pre-schools and religious television and radio stations to accept as normal any employee who has had a sex-change surgery, any employee who has changed or is "transitioning" their public "gender identity" (regardless of whether they have had surgery or hormone treatments), transvestites (people who dress as the opposite sex on an occasional basis for emotional or sexual gratification), and drag queens or drag kings (people who dress as the opposite sex for the purpose of entertaining others).

Making matters worse, "perceived gender identity" status does not require sex-change surgery, so ENDA would allow some biological males (who claim to be female) to enter and even appear nude before females in bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers. Situations like this have already been reported in several states with ENDA like laws such as Maine, Colorado and California.

ENDA offers no guidance on how employers should deal with these situations and opens them up to costly lawsuits by inviting disgruntled employees to sue for "discrimination" over a characteristic (in the case of sexual orientation) which is not even visible and of which the employer may have been unaware. This has already been seen in the case of public employers (which are explicitly covered by ENDA) where such laws at the local and state level have led to large settlements being paid at taxpayers' expense.

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