First, that when Frank originally became active in politics in Boston, back when he was closeted, one thing that he gained early notoriety for was championing the closing of a local drag club…this was offered as evidence of his longstanding attitudes towards transgendered folks.

A second story was that when Tammy Baldwin was building her whip list of who would or would not support the original bill, her staffers also asked if Frank had polled them on support for the original bill, and nobody said they’d been contacted by him….suggesting that when he withdrew support for his own bill, it wasn’t because he’d found out it wouldn’t pass, but because inclusive language he didn’t like but had expected would be stripped in committee had somehow survived.

Anybody hear anything related to these?

Works for me.

After all, as a white male, I have none of those protections in the first place, and discrimination against Christians is openly supported by people like yourself, Kevin, who want the government to refuse to hire anyone who went to Regents University and to fire anyone who has who is already working there because of their religious beliefs.

Absolutely; it shouldn’t be limited to sexual orientation; if the employer is racist, absolutely; if I chose to do so, absolutely. The right to hire includes the rights to fire and not hire; an employer should be free to extend and revoke employment to anyone for any reason at any time.

Huh? The Lawrence v Texas decision removed a fraction of the extension of federal government by ruling that the government had no interest whatsoever in the private sexual goings on of 2 consenting adults. Furthermore, it helped to erode the idea that the government has the position to legislate morality. Seems to me that is very much in line with your idea to get the government out of people’s lives, or does that only apply to laws about how you run business?

Technically, no.

US employment law is governed by a common-law concept known as “at will”, which states two things:

a) An employer has the right to hire, terminate, promote, demote, or whatnot at any time

b) An employee has the right to accept, reject, or leave at any time.

In order for something to qualify as a contract, there is a binding requirement on both the employer AND the employee. And the problem is that the gay leftists and assorted groups want to bind employers, but not employees.

You have no right to patronize any business. That job is not yours, it’s your employer’s.

You don’t really think the Founders would have, in contrast to the entire remainder of the document, slip something in that would have given the government plenary power over nearly every conceivable aspect of our lives, do you?

Need I remind you that when that case was decided in 1824, a large number of the founders were still living? This group would include John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Indeed, the man who wrote the opinion, Chief Justice John Marshall, was a delegate in the Virginia convention responsible for ratifying the Constitution. Marshall worked closely with Madison to get it ratified in Virginia. Marshall was also nominated by President Washington to be Attorney General in 1795.

So the notion that John Marshall might have misinterpreted the founders “intent” is more than a bit silly.

Chase, would you hold that a business in just one state should be exempt from ENDA then? No interstate there.

It would be very hard to have a business who’s activities are confined to a single state. If you order materials from out of state that are for the business, such as salt for a restaurant, your business is engaging in interstate commerace. If you make a business call to another state, your business is engaging in interstate commerace. If you just have customers that buy your products and then carry them over state lines, your business is engaging in interstate commerace.

Perhaps if you were selling organic vegetables you grew in your back yard to your neighbors, then you could argue that you not engaging in interstate commerce.

And, of course, a Democratic President is almost ceratin to be elected.

Sooooo……I guess the people aren’t tired of corruption after all.

If an employer wants to fire or not hire someone for no other reason than their sexual orientation, he/she ought to be able to do so.

And if an employer is that big of a dick, why the hell would you demand that the government force him to hire you? Why have anything to do with him? Alternatively, would you want the government to force you to work for him?

If two-thirds of the populace believes that people with brown eyes should have their houses confiscated, would you tout that too?

Thing is, like the Marxist smoking bans, the folks who don’t have brown eyes wouldn’t care because it doesn’t effect them.

I can’t stand up against this organizational consensus.

Consensus is the absence of leadership. – Margaret Thatcher

I also will state that I don’t know anyone personally who is transgendered and, with the exception of my becoming a gay Republican, I can’t imagine anything stranger than wanting to change my sex. That said, I believe the struggle for transgendered rights is intertwined with the struggle for GLB rights and we should all fight that battle together.

The Commerce clause has been abused more than Michael Jackson’s child. I agree with rightwingprof on his points.

Also, Lefties were persecuted for years. My father’s being a ‘broken’ leftie likely saved his life. We’ve done just fine w/o any hate crimes legislation. Sinister means “of the left” after all