Second or third time I check, I'm greeted with an email from Eugene Delgaudio, president of Public Advocate of the United States. For those that don't recognize that innocent name, it's one of the far right groups listed by the SPLC as an anti-gay hate group.
Sigh. So yeah, I forwarded it to myself. And here, reproduced for your reading...pleasure, I suppose...it is:
Will Obama "payoff" the Homosexual Lobby?
Dear My Dad (yeah, that's what we're going with here,)For the record, I have made the following alterations to the piece above: italicized it, changed the font, indented it, and cut out the massive image header and sig files. No content changes. All links intact. I can send you the original.
The Homosexual Lobby is lined up for their payoff.
Within days of Obama's reelection, the Homosexual Lobby is publicly reminded the President of all he owes them for his success.
And they have something very specific they want:
An Executive Order to force through major parts of the Gay Bill of Special Rights.
You see, Obama has been threatening to sign this order for almost a year.
It was a massive out-pouring of protest from Public Advocate and other pro-family supporters that stopped him before.
With your help, I was able to spread this story across the country, alerting pro-Family activists to Obama's disgusting scheme.
And he quietly backed down.
But now he has the second term he was craving -- and he knows he will never have to face voters at the polls again.
And the Homosexual Lobby is working hard to claim that he owes their radical activists for his success.
The legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign, Allison Herwitt, announced to the press that the Homosexual Lobby expects the President to sign the Executive Order right away.
The Human Rights Campaign is the single largest arm of the Homosexual Lobby and has been actively trying to blacklist and silence Public Advocate since a showdown last year.
You see, the Gay Bill of Special Rights has been the cornerstone of the Homosexual Agenda since the 1980s.
Called the "Employment Non-Discrimination Act" to disguise its purpose, it would really create a federally-protected and enforced employment status for homosexuals and transsexuals.
Businesses, daycare centers and even churches would be required to hire and maintain quotas of radical homosexual employees.
They would be practically forbidden to ever fire or even refuse to hire any sexual deviant.
And if they don't comply, they would be risking a federal lawsuit -- maybe even jail time.
Public Advocate has worked tirelessly to defeat this bill every time it has been brought up in Congress.
But an Executive Order would run right around the legislative process.
It would force every department of the federal government to give homosexual employees preferred treatment.
It could even be used to coerce any company with government contracts, which is a list that continues to grow.
The leaders of the Homosexual Lobby believe this Executive Order will pressure Congress to pass the entire Gay Bill of Special Rights.
Public Advocate stopped the Executive Order last March, but it will be so much harder this time.
The Homosexual Lobby is claiming that the results of the last election were a "mandate" for their radical agenda.
You and I know the majority of Americans have not turned their backs on the Family.
Major media has completely ignored the fact that three of the five Republicans who sponsored the Gay Bill of Special Rights will not be returning to Congress this year.
And numerous other pro-homosexual races were lost.
In fact, the pro-homosexual Super PAC American Unity PAC, funded by billionaire Paul Singer, lost 6 out of 8 races; a fact the media willfully overlooks.
But I can't spread this counter-message alone.
When I tell politicians in Washington how many pro-Family Americans actually support Public Advocate, marriage and morality, they just shrug their shoulders and turn away.
My words alone won't change minds.
That's why I need your help today.
I want to bury the White House and Congress in pro-Family protests.
Let the president know that you do not support the "Employment Non-Discrimination Act” and you insist he not sign the Executive Order authorizing it.
You can send an email by clicking here:
www.whitehouse.gov/contact
Or call this number to speak directly to White House staff:
202-456-1111
And then please take a moment to sign Public Advocate’s Marriage and Morality Petition for me to show to your Congressman and Senators.
Please take action today.
And be ready for future fights.
The War on the Family is entering a new phase... you and I have to be ready for it.
For the Family,
Eugene Delgaudio
President, Public Advocate of the United States
P.S. Please chip in with a donation of $10 or more to help Public Advocate fight for traditional values.
Sooo...aside from the fact that my Dad is on their mailing list, which makes me facepalm, let's take a look at this logically.
This is ENDA in it's latest form: H.R. 1755 and S. 815. Now those are summaries, but let's look at the relevant text:
Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2013 - Prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity by covered entities (employers, employment agencies, labor organizations, or joint labor-management committees). Prohibits preferential treatment or quotas. Allows only disparate treatment claims.
Prohibits related retaliation.
Makes this Act inapplicable to: (1) religious organizations, and (2) the relationship between the United States and members of the Armed Forces. Declares that this Act does not repeal or modify any federal, state, territorial, or local law creating a special right or preference concerning employment for a veteran.Well, that seems fairly clear. The whole thing is about preventing employer discrimination. It doesn't say "you have to hire so many gay people." It doesn't say, "you have to favor gay people." Oh, look, there's even an exception for churches! Hey, isn't that swell, no forced hiring of gay people for you!
Except, you know...well, again, there's the whole fact that no-one is being forced to hire gay people. So it's really just license to discriminate. Like, if your church had a thing against black people, this wouldn't make you hire them, but you could fire them for being black.
Oh, and that bit about making it impossible to fire gay people? Nope, you just can't fire them for being gay, unless you're a church. You can fire them for workplace performance issues, you can fire them for theft, you can, in fact, fire a gay person for anything that it would be reasonable to fire anyone over. The clincher here is that by making this argument, Delgaudio is arguing that simply being gay is reason enough to fire someone.
Let's step back and look at that in the cold light of day: would any sane person argue that you could fire someone for infidelity? Or for getting a divorce? Or getting an abortion?
Nope! But hey, those are all major threats to the Christian ideal of family. But we don't discriminate against people based on those reasons.
To move back to ENDA, and let Delgaudio dig himself deeper, the bill explicitly allows only those claims which fall under disparate treatment.
Here's the definition of disparate treatment, just in case you were wondering:
Disparate treatment, in the employment context, refers to when a person is treated differently from others. The different treatment is based on one or more of the protected factors and the different treatment is intentional. This is distinguished from the concept of "adverse impact", which may be unintentional and applies to a protected group rather than an individual. For example, disparate treatment occurs when a supervisor allows the majority of his/her employees to enjoy a particular job benefit but denies a single employee that same benefit.
Welp, that pretty much douses my hopes of ruling the world through the fine art of buggery. All that means is that if I'm working for someone, they can't deny me equal treatment or fire me solely because I'm gay. That's it.
Oh, and the whole bit about the HRC taking credit for Obama's political success and calling for him to sign an executive order?
That looks like this:
Allison Herwitt, legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign, said gay-rights supporters want to see movement from the president soon.
"The push is to have them do it sooner instead of later," Herwitt said. "I do think it helps pave the way for a fully inclusive [Employment Non-Discrimination Act]. ... It is the way that the government puts its imprimatur on what's important and makes a difference in people's lives. The president would be saying it's important not to discriminate."
Ummm...sounds like she's less wanting dictatorial law, and more wanting the president to show his support for a bill. You know, light a fire under Congress.
So...it would appear that Mr. Delgaudio outright lied about a lot of stuff, there. Anyone that feels like arguing with their hate group status, kindly note that fact: he is outright lying to prevent the passage of a bill that acts only to protect a minority group from employment discrimination. And not as a preventative measure, but as a provision for a narrow avenue of legal action in specific cases where discrimination has occurred.
Let's take on a few other things, shall we? I mean, we've already buried his primary argument, so let's pick at what's left.
Delgaudio leads off by with the question of whether or not Obama will "pay off" the homosexual lobby. There's a few problems here, but we'll jump right to the heart of things.
Damn skippy Obama's going to work hard to help the people who helped put him in office. And by "those who helped put him in office" I mean "liberals."
That's politics 101. Bush helped the automotive and oil industries, Clinton helped the middle and lower classes and small businesses...although, honestly, he did that in such a way that we came out with a budget surplus, so he really helped everyone.
Lobbyists exist because lobbying works. You can't bitch when you do your damnedest to keep a guy out of office and he then doesn't go out of his way to stomp on his voting constituency at your request. If you want a president to help you out, fighting him at every turn isn't the best way to do it.
So yes, there's a kernel of truth in this madness, if only that a sitting president would be dumb not to play nice with the people who helped him get elected.
Which, again, would be "liberals" not "gay people." Cause we're only 10% of the population, folks. Sorry, but we're not the new Illuminati. Sadly, in my opinion. I mean, how awesome would it be to go to the annual "Rule the World" convention? But I digress.
Still, backslapping and hand ups generally should fall in the first term, wouldn't you think? You know, when a prez needs the support for the second term. Which, by the by, you'll note that Obama didn't play to his supporters wholesale during his first term. Because, and let's stress this, Obama was trying for bipartisanship for pretty much his entire first term. You know, compromise to allow the nation to move forward?
Which, I'd like to remind everyone, never happened. The president has been fought and stonewalled on nearly every issue from day one. We are in sequestration, because there has been a massive surge of partisanship. The two parties are flat refusing to work together on some of the biggest issues today, including the freaking budget.
So yeah, after being kicked into the dirt and stomped on while offering a handshake multiple times, why is anyone surprised that Obama might take the executive order route? He's tried everything else to pass legislation and advance the causes he believes in. And, before anyone screams "abuse of power" please a) reference the fact that ENDA isn't a special treatment bill, and b) that while they can be abused, they're part of the job, and c), they're an internal policy measure, not a law. A balance to Congress' check, if you will.
And that balance, in some situations, comes down to: "If you won't even talk about the issues I'm pointing out; if you've kicked and fought me for every inch of ground; if, in short, you've dicked with me for no reason for far too long: I can, and will, set policy for this administration as a way of publicly showing you up."
It's a way of knocking some sense into Congress. It's a way of reminding them that they sort of have to be effective at their jobs. It's used in concert with Congress usually, as a way of backing them up. And when used to go around them, it's used sparingly, because it's the nuclear bomb of presidential power. It's the one way the president can flat look at Congress and say, "Fuck you. You chose me to lead the executive branch, and then you fought me on how I do my job. This is what I want the government I lead to do within its own structures and organizations. Now what?"
And, while it may be treated as a license to go nuts, like when FDR created Japanese-American detainment camps as a side effect of trying to keep Japanese spies out of war zones (although I'd need more research to be sure he wasn't going for detainment camps. I can't research everything for you;) it's not a law. It's a dictate of policy. It doesn't magically create ironclad legislation. Seriously, if the president could just declare things to be so, and they were, we'd be a dictatorship.
Oh, and it can totally be overridden. As long as Congress has the guts to do it. Yeah, you read that right. A two-thirds super-majority can overturn an executive order. There just has to be enough congresspeople willing to put their reputations on the line.
So the bottom line, my friends, is this: Delgaudio is a liar, using fear and hate speech to whip up support for his view that is should be legal to discriminate against gay people in the workforce.
The president would be well within his powers and sanity to lend a hand to his supporters (again, liberals) over his most concerted opponents objections by influencing internal government policy in their favor because that's all politics ever.
And even if the president does sign an executive order, you have nothing to worry about. Again, it's a policy action, and besides: if you believe Delgaudio's statement, the majority of America opposes ENDA. If there is such a majority, then their duly elected representatives will have no trouble mustering the super-majority needed to shoot the prez down.
Unless, of course, you believe that the majority of Americans are for LGBT rights. In which case, you know, you're basically arguing for a minority privilege. Saying that regardless of what the majority of the voting population wants, what you want should prevail.
You know. Special treatment.
Whatever way the wind blows, though, I have this one question: why let this guy, who is lying to his supporters to keep their support, continue acting as a leader? I mean, seriously? Do we celebrate that now?
Regardless of whether you believe Delgaudio's organization deserves its hate group label, can we at least agree that blatant lies are not good Christian behavior, and that supporting this organization as part of the fold is a bad idea?
Anyone?
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