Pat Toomey (R-Pa) was among the senators who voted for the Employee Non-Discrimination Act, yesterday, Nov. 7, and the bill that would make it a federal crime to discriminate against employing gays is now before the House.
Hopefully, it dies a quick death. It’s a bad bill. In the current form, the bill does not exempt religious institutions that hold homosexuality to be sinful but even with such an exemption it would still be a bad bill.
Senator, you are a good guy but the only thing anti-discrimination laws do with regard to hiring and firing is to screw things up for the “protected category”.
The source of all anti-discrimination laws regarding employment is the civil rights movement that freed blacks from Jim Crow. Even those, while understandable, were still bad ideas.
The black experience differed from the Irish/Italian/Japanese/Jewish/everybody-whose-ancestors-did-not-come-on-the-Mayflower experience not in the existence of job discrimination but in the existence of government oppression which included acts of terror. And those other ethnic groups would go on to thrive despite the discrimination, and that would have likely happened with blacks as well once the government oppression was ended.
As it is now the protected category makes it less likely for a black to be hired. Ask yourself this: if you are an employer would, everything being equal, be more or less inclined to hire the guy you can’t easily dismiss?
And gays certainly don’t need protection with regard to hiring.
In fact, if gays do become protected by civil rights laws, I envision a whole lot of bad employees suing their employers for disciplining them who care not a whit about their sex lives. Ironically, this will make employers much more, well, thoughtful, about hiring gays.
To Toomey’s credit he attempted to add an amendment that would have exempted religious institutions. To his discredit, he voted aye anyway even though the amendment was rejected.
“I voted for final passage to help move the legislative process forward. I hope that – should the House consider this bill – it will move to improve and strengthen this measure so we can both advance equality in the workplace and protect religious liberty,” he said.
As we noted, it’s still a bad bill even with the amendment.
Good Senator Supports Bad Bill
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