Saturday, May 03, 2014

Al Sharpton, In Heels

Now that a single federal judge has decided Michigan will have same-sex marriage, it’s time for the next step. Under the guise of a coalition of concerned business leaders, the gay lobby is pressing forward to write special status for homosexuals into Michigan law.  As reported in the Detroit News,

Some of Michigan’s top business leaders are launching a campaign to expand the state’s workforce discrimination protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

Job providers from across the state have formed the Michigan Competitive Workforce Coalition, a partnership of business leaders and their companies, with the intention of working with lawmakers to update Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA). (“Execs want Michigan anti-bias laws for gay”).

No identity politics here, folks – it’s just all about the economy.

Who knows what subtle persuasions were brought to bear behind the scenes that has led us to this? What we do know is that, listed amongst the coalition’s “top business leaders” is Kerry Moss, executive director of ACLU Michigan, which is already an active player on behalf of homosexual activism.

Conspicuously missing from Thursday’s article are any examples illustrating that Michigan even has an invidious problem with workplace discrimination against homosexuals.  Oh, sure it happens sometimes, just like it happens more and more (and more) to encounter employees in virtually every conceivable context who are openly – often ostentatiously – gay. 

Yet the message in the Detroit News’s headline is that Michigan’s scaring away prospective gay talent (and let’s not forget prospective transvestite talent, too!) You might wonder why, if Michigan’s coalition of enlightened employers means to entice the nation’s gay talent to their companies, they’d start by pushing through a law meant  to expose themselves and every other Michigan employer to endless lawsuits for discriminating against them once they get here.

The truth is, re-writing ELCRA would be a drastic remedy for a problem that either doesn’t – or hardly – exists, not that it matters to whoever’s behind the Michigan Competitive Workforce Coalition.  This is only a gambit to sell  “discrimination protections” as the wedge that gets protected status for homosexuals under ELCRA. For all the hoopla about “equality” on the subject of homosexual rights, the News is correct in reporting that, “It is currently legal in Michigan to fire or refuse to hire someone because they are gay or lesbian.”  If you’re surprised to hear that, you can thank years of horrible coverage of this topic by a media 90% gay-friendly already, and 100% scared to death of their gay friends.

Homosexuals have never been defined as a “suspect class” under Michigan’s civil-rights statute. “Suspect class” is the term used in civil-rights law to define a minority group that has historically faced discrimination). By way of comparison, the granddaddy of all American anti-discrimination laws, the federal 1964 Civil Rights Act making race-, sex-, or national-origin discrimination unlawful, also has never defined homosexuality as a suspect class.  Among the reasons for this is that alternative sexual orientations are not immutable the way being male or female, black or white, are immutable.  Years of homosexuals comparing their plight with what  blacks endured in America has only accentuated the triviality of homosexuals’ demands.  

Some of these employers may have authentic business reasons for wanting to be perceived as gay-friendly, like wanting to target that market for their products.  But there are alternative ways to do that that don’t require fooling around with the state’s fundamental civil-rights statute.  They could advertise positions in any of the myriad media catering to homosexual audiences, or adopt company policies as unctuously celebratory of personal sexual deviance as any homosexual lobbyist could imagine.  I’m much more inclined to believe that they’re only coalescing now because there’s a rainbow-and-rhinestone gun being held to their heads.

Gay activists aren’t scheming to change ELCRA because they actually believe gays are too scared to move here and work. Winning protected status for homosexuality has been the holy[sic] grail of the gay lobby since forever. It’s certainly far more important than same-sex marriage, which was always only a freakshow that somehow (oh, yay!) turned out to be a thousand times more useful for capturing the sympathy of distracted Americans than a third decade of guilt-tripping everyone about AIDS and Matthew Shepard. Once your sexual preference wins protection as a suspect category, you (and any activist group you happen to be working with) have access to all of the wonderful legal weapons available to punish, or threaten punishment, for anything you can characterize as “discrimination” against you as an individual. 

It also means if you thinks it’s boring to work for the gay-friendly hipsters at Google or Blue Cross, you can pretty much look for work anywhere in Michigan knowing that if any employer dares dislike you for showing up at a business meeting in drag, you can sue his bigoted ass from now till Mardi Gras 2018. Every schoolroom, restroom, church sanctuary, voting site, rental property, workplace, government bureau, doghouse, outhouse, henhouse, or any other imaginable setting will be a hard target for anti-discrimination litigation from the highly sophisticated and lavishly funded gay lobby.  If you enjoyed Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and BAMN handling the nation’s race relations, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

Because we all know that the gay community never, ever, goes overboard when it comes to pressuring straight society to be more tolerant.

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