Hail to the Gap-Filler-in-Chief

Fresh from last month’s endowment upon America’s women of the unalienable right to free contraception, the White House this month is bestowing a new “right” upon lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender couples “to live where they choose.” (“HUD secretary announces equal access housing rule”).

Federally subsidized housing must be made available regardless of an applicant's sexual orientation or gender identity under a U.S. Housing and Urban Development rule that went into effect this week.

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan touted the new rule Friday morning at a White House conference on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender housing and homelessness at Wayne State University.

Donovan said HUD-funded housing providers cannot inquire about an applicant's sexual orientation or gender identity. Furthermore, Donovan said, Federal Housing Administration-insured mortgage financers are now prohibited from making loan decisions based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

"If you're denying HUD housing to people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, actual or perceived, you're discriminating," Donovan said. "You're breaking the law and you will be held accountable. That's what equal access means. And that's what this rule is going to do." (“HUD's Donovan in Detroit touts equal housing rule”).

By shrink-wrapping this new right in the form of an administrative rule, the President Obama doesn’t have to worry about interference from that pokey institution that convenes in the Capitol Building (known derisively around the Oval Office as “Congress, Shmongress”). For lack of political support from the American people, Congress has never voted to amend either the Civil Rights Act of 1964, nor the Fair Housing Act, to confer the same federal protected status on homosexuals that it does on race, religion, or disability.

The incessant blubbering by gay activists about discriminatory treatment from America’s homophobe majority is concerned less with solving any actual problem than with winning a protected-class status for homsexuals. Federal protected status would supercharge the already highly-effective homosexual lobby, placing virtually all opposition to the gay agenda on the wrong side of powerful antidiscrimination laws.  Think of the amendment of the Civil Rights Act as the LGBT version of Iran’s quest for a nuclear bomb.

But to justify a dubious solution, first you need a pretend problem. Just like last month’s revelation that America’s ivy-league law schools are a ticking time bomb of women pining for unaffordable birth control pills, so the new HUD rule is being announced in the context of the faux problem of “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender . . . homelessness.” 

Believe me, if the problem of LGBT homelessness registered even so much as a blip on the national radar screen, President Obama would never have bypassed standing invitations from Berkley, Harvard, or the University of Chicago to stage his “White House conference” (i.e., campaign event) at Wayne State University – my own alma mater, I should mention – not to mention an institution of higher learning of such note I had a prospective employer in New York City say to me, quote: “Never heard of it.”

Donovan’s operation here was so small he didn’t even have his own Sandra Fluke to regale attendees with the agonizing extent of the LGBT homeless problem. In fact, he more or less admitted they hadn’t actually found a problem yet, but we’re definitely looking.

Donovan said Friday plans are under way to conduct the first-ever national study of LGBT housing discrimination. He called it a “historic and important study” that HUD designed based on town halls conducted on the issue. The study is designed to get “a clearer picture of the problem” and to make “the case that LGBT discrimination is real and that we need to do something about it.”

Of course, if the studies prove that LGBT housing discrimination isn’t real, HUD’s conveniently already done something about it.

HUD’s new rule only applies to federal housing, so it can’t confer full protected status on LGBTs by itself.  But it’s clearly meant to be a stepping stone: According to Donovan’s assistant secretary for fair housing, John Trasvina, HUD’s new rules lack the full force of law until the Title VIII Fair Housing Act is amended. “’We are treating this as a program rule,’ Trasvina said. ’We need Title VIII to be amended.’”

How’s that? Instead of Congress passing laws that are given affect by means of administrative rules, we now have an administrative rule presuming to require Congress to pass conforming legislation to catch up.

Or we can look at it as the executive giving a friendly assist to a fellow branch of government.  Detroit’s U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, who attended the conference at WSU,

applauded President Barack Obama's administration for implementing the rule in the absence of congressional action to fill a "gap" in the anti-discrimination protections of the Fair Housing Act.

"I think this rule is a big deal," McQuade said. "It takes an act of Congress, and, my gosh, we can't even get a budget out of these people."

Well, to be fair, we can’t get a budget out of some of these people. But more to the point, if Congress can’t pass a budget, the President doesn’t get to implement his own – even if it’s to fill a “gap.”

Some things do take an act of Congress.  You can look it up.