Any law which criminalizes discrimination in employment on the basis of sexual orientation has two effects:
It requires that an employer consider each potential employee fairly on the basis of their ability to do the job, without regard to their sexual orientation, etc. -- a factor that that would generally have no significant bearing on the performance of their duties.
It interferes with the employers desire to discriminate against a specific group of individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation. Sometimes an employer's religious faith discrimination is based on bias that form part of their religious faith. This is not new.: Many religious groups in the 1960's taught that blacks were inferior and should be segregated from the rest of society on the basis of their race.
Many religious traditions to this day teach that women should be excluded from positions of authority and power on the base of their gender.
Many religious organizations refuse to hire a person of another religion, even to perform a non-religious task like sweeping the floor or sorting mail.
Thus many employers may feel that their religious freedom to discriminate is being taken away by the ENDA law.
It is impossible to protect one group's right to be considered fairly for jobs without interfering with another group's right to discriminate. Connie Mackey, vice president of government affairs with the Family Research Council, (a fundamentalist Christian organization) said in 2002-APR that the ENDA bill to criminalize discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation runs counter to the Bill of Rights. "ENDA will require Americans to hire people they believe to be committing immoral acts, precisely because they commit those acts. It violates employers' and employees' freedom of religion, of speech and association." 1
It is worth noting that much of the discussion on this bill is factually incorrect. For example, another fundamentalist Christian organization, Focus on the Family, reported that "Senators have renewed their push to grant special rights for homosexuals in the workplace." 1 In reality, the bill would give no more rights to persons with a homosexual orientation than it would to a person with a heterosexual or bisexual orientation. A heterosexual who was refused a job as a bartender in a gay bar on the basis of his sexual orientation could sue for damages just as a homosexual could sue if she or he were refused a manufacturing job making widgets in a factory on the basis of their sexual orientation. If gays and lesbians receive "special rights" as a result of this bill, then heterosexuals and bisexuals would receive those same "special rights."
About the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)
