On Tuesday, The New York Times editorial board revealed its true agenda in supporting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act: the desire to compel religious believers to abandon their traditional ethical tenets in favor of the Times‘ superior moral universe. After declaring their support for the ENDA, which supposedly fights discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace by giving goodies to trial lawyers, the Times declared that religious exemptions should be ended in the bill:
The Employment Nondiscrimination Act, however, has a significant flaw — a terribly broad religious exemption. The exemption would extend beyond churches and other houses of worship to any religiously affiliated institution, like hospitals and universities, and would allow those institutions to discriminate against people in jobs with no religious function, like billing clerks, cafeteria workers and medical personnel.
The Times did not make clear how far the exemption should extend, but the implication is that private religious schools might not make the cut. The Times then stated, “the exemption would give a stamp of legitimacy to the very sort of discrimination the act is meant to end. Any attempt to further enlarge the exemption should be rejected.”
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act itself broadly defines the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” Under the Act, an “individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity” can never be the basis for a dismissal, even though that phrase is rendered meaningless by the modifier “actual or perceived.” The trial lawyers become a privatized thought police. The Act also defines gender identity as “The gender-related identity, appearance, or mannerisms … of an individual, with or without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.” That means that if a man shows up suggesting that he’s a woman at a given workplace, no matter what the workplace, the employer is plumb out of luck.
The Times‘ embrace of a top-down notion of morality springing from government, rather than an open market in which the most qualified employees are pursued by employers intent on generating profits, is a religiously discriminatory one. But then again, religious freedom has never been on the Times‘ agenda.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.