Tag Archives: Human Rights Campaign

News

Federal government sues pro-LGBT Kroger for persecuting Christian employees

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Kroger promotes LGBT tyranny over religious liberty
Kroger promotes LGBT tyranny over religious liberty

I thought this story about how the federal government is suing Kroger, a far-left grocery store chain, was interesting. You would never see a story like this happening in a Democrat administration. But in a Republican administration, religious liberty is still more important than the feelings of “being offended” of people on the left. Let’s see the story, then I’ll tell a personal story about this topic.

Here’s Christian Post reporting:

A major supermarket chain is facing a lawsuit after firing two employees over their refusal to wear a rainbow emblem that violates their religious beliefs as part of their work uniform.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against the Kroger Company Monday in response to action taken by Kroger Store No. 625 in Conway, Arkansas, against two employees. The employees were terminated after they refused to abide by the new dress code, which required them to wear an apron depicting a rainbow-colored heart emblem.

The women contended that wearing the apron would amount to an endorsement of the LGBTQ movement, which contradicts their religious beliefs. According to the EEOC, “one woman offered to wear the apron with the emblem covered and the other offered to wear a different apron without the emblem, but the company made no attempt to accommodate their requests.”

The EEOC alleged that when the women continued to refuse to wear the apron with the emblem visible, “Kroger retaliated against them by disciplining and ultimately discharging them.”

Kroger’s actions violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, argued the EEOC, which is working to secure “monetary relief in the form of back pay and compensatory damages” for the two women “as well as an injunction against future discrimination.”

More details about the two brave Christian women:

According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, one of the women, Brenda Lawson, worked in the deli department at the store from 2011 until her termination on June 1, 2019. The other woman, Trudy Rickerd, worked as a cashier and file maintenance clerk from 2006 until her termination on May 29, 2019.

The complaint cited a letter written by Rickerd explaining her objection to wearing the apron. “I have a sincerely held religious belief that I cannot wear a symbol that promotes or endorses something that is in violation of my religious faith … I am happy to buy another apron to ensure there is no financial hardship on Kroger,” she said.

In case you didn’t know, Kroger has a reputation for putting LGBT rights above free speech and religious liberty:

Kroger has launched a 2020 Pride campaign company-wide, which includes its 3514 grocery stores across 42 states. The chain is the second-largest retailer after Walmart.

“At The Kroger Co., we embrace diversity and inclusion as core values, and we ingrain these in everything we do,” according to the company website. The site also notes that Kroger recently received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s 2020 Corporate Equality Index in recognition of its commitment to LGBTQ-plus inclusion and equality.

Kroger also says:

“We’re one of the few retailers willing to openly advocate for and make real change toward LGBTQ-plus diversity and inclusion, and we’re proud to offer:
—Same-sex partner benefits and transgender-inclusive healthcare.

—An Associate Resource Group that provides an uplifting community for LGBTQ-plus associates and allies.

—Strong alliances with LGBTQ-plus suppliers through our partnership with the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, Central Division, and seeks monetary relief in the form of back pay and compensatory damages, as well as an injunction against future discrimination.

The article continues by describing some of the programs that Kroger champions that would make any Bible-believing Christian uncomfortable. But Christians don’t matter to Kroger.

Anyway, I wanted to tell a story about this. I spent about 10 years of my IT career in a large IT company. I was regularly pressured by non-Christians to accept and celebrate LGBT values. Pro-LGBT propaganda was hung all over the building. Diversity and inclusion concerns were made part of the performance evaluation process. And so on.

After the Florida gay nightclub bombing, I remember my manager bringing me a rainbow colored ribbon and telling me to put it on. I told her that I would take it and wear it later. But these ribbons were being dispensed company-wide as a formal effort to promote LGBT values. I have no doubt that my refusal to wear the ribbon was noted and may have affected my performance review and promotion decision.

News

House Democrats pass Equality Act bill to put sexual orientation and gender identity above religious liberty

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21 states have SOGI anti-discrimination laws
21 states have SOGI anti-discrimination laws

Remember watching that video of the fascist thug Democrat Brian Sims, as he bullied the pro-life lady who was praying outside of an abortion clinic? Well, imagine that abusing Christians who take the Bible seriously became the law of the land, and a minority of secular leftist were empowered to use government as a weapon to silence and coerce Bible-believing Christians.

Regular readers will be familiar with the cases where gay activists went after bed and breakfasts, wedding venues, photographers, florists, bakers, etc. who refused to participate in celebrations of same-sex marriage. Christians oppose same-sex marriage, because the leader of the religion defined marriage as being between one man and one woman. However, religious liberty wasn’t a defense in these cases, because these states had passed “SOGI laws”, which made it illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Equality Act is a Democrat bill that forces all the states without SOGI laws to allow gay activists to weaponize government against Christians, forcing them to participate in non-Christian celebrations of gay activism.

The Federalist described some effects of the bill:

On the surface, the “Equality” Act is supposed to protect LGBT folks from discrimination by adding the categories of sexual orientation and gender identity to all federal civil rights laws, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It would make claims of discrimination related to these characteristics legally actionable in the way racism is, and applying to virtually every area of life: the workplace, education, banking, jury service, federal funding, housing, medicine and psychiatry, and all public facilities.

It is a power grab in the guise of anti-discrimination. A bait-and-switch. It’s another attempt by a ruling micro-clique to exert mega-control over everyone else’s lives, including those it purports to protect. It allows the Mass State to maximize bureaucracy and social engineering, especially by its huge regulation of speech and expression. It erodes individual rights while claiming to uphold them.

Sane people of goodwill have a host of good reasons to object to the so-called Equality Act. And many of those reasons have been written up, including the de-sexing of toilets and showers, the compelled speech inherent in pronoun protocols and severe punishment for “misgendering,” the promised harassment of business owners, the invasion of girls’ and women’s sports by biological men who force on them an unequal playing field, the utter contempt for individual conscience, and more.

The net result of this act would be a huge inequality of power accrued to the state and drained from the individual.

Other areas that would be affected: tax exempt status for churches, private college admissions, scholarships and curricula, moral standards in Christian organizations, forced transgender treatments at hospitals and health clinics, foster and adoption agencies could not prefer naturally married couples.

The author of that article lists five specific effects of the law:

  1.  It Undermines Everyone’s First Amendment Rights
  2. The Ambiguities in the Bill Threaten the Rule of Law
  3. Nudge Toward a Chinese-style Social Credit System
  4. Redefining Humanity By Outlawing Sex Distinctions
  5. It Enshrines Socially Destructive Identity Politics

Let’s see what the article says about #2:

The first thing that should hit any reader of the so-called Equality Act is the ambiguity of its language, especially with the bill’s outright emphasis throughout on “perceptions.”

[…]Consider how much the “Equality” Act would rely on bureaucratic and court actors to divine the “perception” of the perpetrator or victim of so-called discrimination: it would have to calculate your intent, read your mind, check out your body language, pick you apart for any suggestion of malice. For example, it repeatedly refers to sexual orientation and gender identity as “actual or perceived.” Many times throughout, the text notes that discrimination (or identity?) involves “perception or belief even if inaccurate” (emphasis mine).

This dependence on perception or belief about a person’s self-identity did not exist before. The language of this proposed law is more fluid than gender fluidity on steroids, and it’s wild stuff to push, especially at the federal level. It invites no end of accusations and lawfare that bodes ill for society and promises much human wreckage. The only people “empowered” by such a scam are those on the upper levels of this newly devised food chain who can call the shots.

Here’s more about #3 for those who didn’t know about the China social credit system:

If passed, we shouldn’t be surprised if it eventually produces a social credit system not unlike what is happening in China, whereby your livelihood, education, career, mobility, and access to goods and services is based on a literal “score” of your compliance with government policy. To paraphrase Sir Richard Scruton’s excellent observation of how that works in China, I’d say that the so-called Equality Act would help create robots out of Americans, with the state programming what they can say and do.

As more people self-censor because of the risk of losing their livelihoods and social status, they simply become more prone to robotic compliance and conformity with limits on their speech. This is fast becoming the case in China, where citizens feel the need to build up their “social credit” to be allowed access to jobs, education, housing, and who knows what other goods and services. The so-called Equality Act’s restrictions on First Amendment freedoms would be a big step in that direction.

A social credit system that scores you for conformity would be a logical effect of the intent of the Equality Act: to punish free expression in just about every sphere of life, including the workplace, at school, in the public square, and in all public facilities, and any place that might be connected with federal funding. (By the way, Scruton was punished—stripped of his chairmanship of an architectural commission in Britain—simply for explaining what the social credit system does to people in China. That should be another lesson for us here.)

Just to be clear, I live in a state with no SOGI law, and I still write about studies, etc. that are critical of the gay agenda from behind an alias. The second that this Equality Act becomes law, I would instantly have to delete this blog, my Facebook page, and my Twitter in case “discrimination” was “perceived” by an LGBT activist based on my previous writings, and they decided to investigate.

News

How would the Democrats’ “Equality Act” affect Christians and conservatives?

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21 states have SOGI anti-discrimination laws
21 states have SOGI anti-discrimination laws

I’m following this Equality Act legislation as it moves through the House of Representatives. The bill would prohibit individuals and businesses from discriminating by sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). These SOGI laws already exist at the state level, in places where Christians are being sued and coerced to affirm and celebrate gay rights.

Here is a good article from The Stream, explaining 7 ways that the law would affect you:

  1. It would penalize Americans who don’t affirm new sexual norms or gender ideology.
  2. It would compel speech.
  3. It could shut down charities.
  4. It would allow more biological males to defeat girls in sports.
  5. It could be used to coerce medical professionals.
  6. It could lead to more parents losing custody of their children.
  7. It would enable sexual assault.

Let’s take a quick look at some examples of these changes already in progress.

I’m not covering #1, because everyone knows about the case against the Washington state florist, and the case against the Colorado baker and the case against the New Mexico wedding photographers.

For #2, here’s an example:

Virginia high school teacher Peter Vlaming lost his job for something he did not say.

A county school board voted unanimously to fire the veteran teacher over the objections of his students after he refused to comply with administrators’ orders to use masculine pronouns in referring to a female student who identifies as transgender.

If this goes national, I could get into the same sort of trouble at work for misgendering a co-worker or a customer.

For #3, I’d already heard about how foster parent and adoption agencies in some SOGI anti-discrimination states shut down because they couldn’t place children in traditional-marriage homes.

Here’s a different example:

In Anchorage, Alaska, a biological male born Timothy Paul Coyle goes by the name of Samantha Amanda Coyle. On two occasions, Coyle tried to gain access to the city’s Downtown Soup Kitchen Hope Center, a shelter for homeless, abused, and trafficked women.

In one attempt, authorities said, Coyle was inebriated and had gotten into a fight with a staffer at another shelter, so Hope Center staff paid Coyle’s fare to the emergency room to receive medical attention. Coyle sued the center for “gender identity discrimination.”

If thise goes national, you can expect that any social services organization would be charged with discrimination for any attempt to separate out men from women in bathrooms, showers, sleeping ares, etc.

For #4, we know already that biological males are identifying as women, and now biological women are unable to compete with them to win any prizes.

Here’s an example of #5, where medical professionals can be coerced to perform sex-change surgeries:

Under state sexual orientation and gender identity laws, individuals who identify as transgender have sued Catholic hospitals in California and New Jersey for declining to perform hysterectomies on otherwise healthy women who wanted to pursue gender transition.

For #6, I’ve blogged recently about how Canada allows the government to seize children from parents who disagree with gay rights and transgender transitioning.

But it happens in the USA, too:

In Ohio, a judge removed a biological girl from her parents’ custody after they declined to help her “transition” to male with testosterone supplements.

After the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital’s Transgender Health Clinic recommended these treatments for the girl’s gender dysphoria, the parents wanted to pursue counseling instead. Then the county’s family services agency charged the parents with abuse and neglect, and the judge terminated their custody.

Similar cases are proceeding through the courts with children as young as 6 years old.

And for number #7, I’ve blogged before about sexual assaults in bathrooms and other places by transgender women (biological men).

Here’s an example:

A complaint under investigation by federal education officials alleges that a boy who identifies as “gender fluid” at Oakhurst Elementary School in Decatur, Georgia, sexually assaulted Pascha Thomas’ 5-year-old daughter in a girls’ restroom. The boy had access to the girls’ restroom because of Decatur City Schools’ transgender restroom policy.

School authorities refused to change the policy even after Thomas reported the assault. Eventually, she decided to remove her daughter from school for the girl’s emotional well-being and physical safety.

As in all the examples mentioned, if the Equality Act became law, like the Democrats want it to, then any of these things could happen to you, if you decline to celebrate or participate in the gay agenda.

Although the Constitution lays out rights, those rights don’t matter to Democrats, your exercise of those rights makes people engaged in LGBT lifestyles feel unhappy. Their unhappy feelings trump your Constitution rights. At least that’s the case if the Democrats pass their bills, and appoint their judges to the courts.