In yet another swamp victory, the Trump administration has decided to re-nominate a radical LGBT activist and Obama-era holdover for commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) — a bureaucracy that shouldn’t even exist.
Lesbian Chai Feldblum has been serving in the post since 2010, having been made EEOC head without Senate approval, via an Obama recess appointment. And from some dark recesses is whence her ideology comes. As Powerline reported Tuesday, “Feldblum is…the architect of the Obama administration’s radical LGBT agenda, including its policy mandating that transgender individuals can use the restroom of their choice” — in other words, sexually confused boys in girls’ locker rooms.
The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins provides more detail:
She came to the administration with an impressive resume of radicalism — complete with jobs at the Human Rights Campaign, the ACLU, and a clerkship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who authored the Roe v. Wade decision. She not only wrote the deceptively named “Employment Non-Discrimination Act” (ENDA) which is a threat to religious freedom in the workplace, she openly vowed to implement ENDA by regulations if Congress didn’t pass it. At one point, Chai even signed on to an online petition “‘Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families and Relationships,’ which advocates for polygamy and government recognition… for… diverse kinds of partnerships” — a view she later disavowed.
But perhaps Feldblum is most remembered for pulling back the curtain on the same-sex marriage agenda. Asked what would happen if religious liberty clashed with the “rights” of people who identify as LGBT, she brazenly stated that she’d have “a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.” That’s chilling, FRC warned at the time, since as head of the EEOC, she would act as the head referee on disputes over workplace discrimination. If Americans were hoping for neutrality, they certainly didn’t get it under Chai’s leadership.
… When she was asked about the rights of Christians hiring employees of their choosing, she replied, “Gays win; Christians lose.”
Of course, this “gay rights” vs. religious-rights debate should be no debate. Free exercise of religion is in the Constitution. Homosexual “rights” (which really are special privileges) aren’t.
In reality, the EEOC shouldn’t even exist. It’s plainly unconstitutional for the federal government to be involved dictating to private entities what their employee demographics should be. Moreover, even if you believe that the government needs to contravene “discrimination,” note that states and localities generally have their own anti-discrimination laws, along with bureaucracies to enforce them. Why are we paying to have different layers of government do the same thing?
Yet while states have the power to enforce workplace “diversity,” this doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Hearing, though, that people should have a right to discriminate raises eyebrows even among many conservatives. But the relevant principle here is freedom of association, an imperative for liberty. As I argued last September:
Every sane person recognizes your right to include in or exclude from your home whomever you wish. And it doesn’t matter if your reason for exclusion is that an individual is Catholic, Jewish, black, white, conservative, fat, ugly, homosexual, or likes Fig Newtons. Now, question: Why should you lose this right simply because you erect a few more tables and sell food or engage in some other form of commerce?
It’s still your property, paid for with your own cash and created by the sweat of your own brow. Why should you lose your freedom of association just because you want to make a living? Is the message, submit or starve?
If you cannot exercise choices relating to association and religion on your own property, do you really have the freedoms of association and religion at all? As Dr. Walter Williams has pointed out, our commitment to a “liberty” isn’t evidenced by a willingness to let people exercise it in ways we like; even tyrants do that. Commitment to a liberty is only evidenced when we tolerate exercise of it we dislike.
Also note that this unjust government intrusion was legitimized by a contortionist-worthy judicial rationalization. As I wrote last February:
Of course, this all goes back to a Supreme Court ruling stating that private businesses can be viewed as “public accommodations,” which was a huge step toward the Marxist standard disallowing private property. And it has led to endless litigation, with the Boy Scouts sued by homosexuals, atheists, and a girl (who wanted to be a “boy” scout); the PGA Tour sued by a handicapped golfer who wanted a dispensation from the rules; Abercrombie & Fitch sued by a Muslim woman who wanted to wear her hijab on the job; and Barnes & Noble sued by a male employee who claimed he suddenly was a female employee, just to name a few cases. It has also led, now, to some Americans being confronted with a Hobson’s choice: cast the exercise of your faith to the winds and bow before the government’s agenda, or kiss making a living goodbye.
Such is the situation with a case currently before the Supreme Court, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The Colorado government is essentially telling the shop owner, Jack Phillips, that he must bake cakes for faux weddings, bake no wedding cakes at all, or go out of business. Land of the free?
So because we’ve accepted that government can trump freedom of association, now it’s not just that the state forces us to serve certain classes of people (Phillips does, mind you, sell to homosexuals). It also wishes to compel participation in certain classes of events. What’s next? A Jewish or black baker forced to service a Nazi or KKK affair?
Is this standard, that a man’s business is the government’s castle, really the American way?
Photo: dbeck03/iStock/Getty Images Plus
