Not really.
Here’s the skinny; for the past decade plus, gay rights organizations in Washington State have been trying to get a bill passed that would make it illegal to discriminate against someone because of their ‘sexual orientation’, just as it is now illegal to discriminate against someone because of their gender, race, creed, disability or religious choice.
In the past, it has come relatively close to passing, but has not as of yet. This year, the bill again came very close to passing, failing to do so by only one single vote.
Members of the official GLBT group at Microsoft went and testified as private citizens to the state legislature, doing their duty as citizens and giving testimony to their representatives in government as private citizens in the case for why this bill should become law.
As you may well know, Microsoft is a heavy political donor locally as well as nationally and they had put their support behind this bill, even if only half heartedly.
Along comes a man named Ken Hutcherson. Mr. Hutcherson is actually Pastor Hutcherson of the Antioch Bible Church based out of Redmond, Washington, and yes, he is also the ex-NFL linebacker you pictured when you first read his name.
Pastor Hutcherson was able to get a meeting with the higher-ups at Microsoft and told them that their company “Did not sit well with God� on the ‘sexual orientation discrimination’ bill.
Actually, he really just threatened a boycott by Christians of all Microsoft products if they didn’t move this issue down on their legislative importance ladder.
And Microsoft acquiesced.
So the loss of this bill for literally the ‘umpteenth’ time is now all Microsoft’s fault. At least if you listen to the loony left wingers.
I have a few issues I would like to address in regards with this topic:
First of all, as a libertarian (notice the small ‘l’) I do not believe that the government should be in the role of telling businesses who they have to employ.
If some jackass who owns his own business prefers to hire only white supremacists, that is his right. He will pay for that right in the court of public opinion and the court of the free market when his hiring practices become known and potential customers refuse to use his goods or services because of them.
On the other side of the coin, I do not believe that any business owned by peoples not of northern European decent has ever been fined for not hiring Caucasians, although I know and you know that it happens frequently.
Secondly, I absolutely cannot stand for PC terms such as ‘sexual orientation’. It makes it sound as if genitalia acts like a compass and points in a direction. “Hi there, my name is Phil, I’m a Capricorn and my sexual orientation is 36 by 192 degrees, NNW. I like Pina Coladas and walks in the rain.�
Makes the phrase sound pretty much as immature as it actually is, doesn’t it?
My next complaint is that the left wing wants Microsoft to be involved in this issue. I thought the left was for getting big money out of politics altogether? I mean, if Microsoft was lobbying to get the state B&O tax reduced or removed, they would go ape-shit-crazy and be screaming about Microsoft using their money to buy influence.
But on civil rights issues that interest them, they DEMAND that the world’s largest software company owned by the world’s richest man use its influence to get them what they want.
Now, we all know the left is full of hypocrites, but this is just blatant.
For instance, take Monday’s Robert Jameson column in the Seattle Post Intelligencer (they call it that because all the intelligence has left the damn paper, post haste):
“Microsoft retreating in fear of red state retribution�
“If corporate America leads the way, elected officials — especially those on the fence — might be more inclined to follow a humane line of thinking.â€?
Have mercy, Miss Percy! Will these people ever figure out what they want?
What say you?
This sexual orientation bill is all about the protection racket. The homosexuals and their ilk want the Feddle Gummint and the State Gummints to “protect” them. Turn them into a “protected class”.
In the last few years that I worked for Multnomah County, Oregon, the ultra-liberal County Executive, Diane Linn, repeatedly added protected classes. Not just homosexuals, that was a done deal the day she took office (actually, I think her predecessor, another incompetent liberal, did it first). So she added cross-dressers and a couple other minor fetish behaviors to the list. The end result is that everyone is protected in Multnomah County except white males, who actually are in the minority.
I think that this conflict goes back to the Founders’ Judeo-Christian beliefs. While taking great pains to exclude organized religion from the Gummint, the Founders expressed, time and time again, that their belief systems were the basis for moral governance. Judeo-Christian beliefs have no room in them for the queer agenda. Those beliefs tell us to be tolerant towards the afflicted, and since homosexuality isn’t a choice, it must be an affliction, so I am tolerant of homosexuals up to the point where they try to natter at me that their sexuality is the same as mine.
I’m so sorry, it isn’t. As a heterosexual, I follow the normal natural order. Homosexuals do not, for such behavior patterns do not persist in higher mammals, only in some lower life forms such as amoebas, and some plants.
Queers are fond of trying to cite Abe Lincoln in support of their agenda. They say that when he freed the Negro slaves by extending the protection of the Constitution to them, he was really acting to end discrimination of all minorities.
Nothing could be further from the truth. First, one has to look at the thought patterns of 140 years ago. White men ran the Union, pretty much without help from minorities (including wimmen). Those white men were literalists in their outlook. What you saw is what you got, and there were no “nuances” in their communication. When those men decided to free the slaves, and fought a tragic civil war to do it, they were only elevating black men to the level that white men had attained. Nothing more. Nothing about wimmen, nothing about queers or transgender people, just black men.
It’s only been in the last century that women were given the right to vote, and only very recently have there been any more protected classes established.
Quite frankly, the establishment of more protected classes hasn’t improved our government one bit. It’s made it much more expensive to run, requiring many new employees to monitor and regulate actions taken on behalf of the protective classes, but nothing outward has been improved.
Actually, the establishment of protected classes is an overall negative for government. Conflict is the standard by-product of these actions, and conflict resolution is expensive.
When we finally face the inevitable, and call a new Constitutional Convention to establish the Second Republic, the efficiency of government WILL be a major issue. To make government more efficient, one mainly has to reduce conflict.
Why, thank you for remindingme, George. I seem to have left a section of this post on the editing room floor. Don’t ask how.
I find it peculiar how the GLBT community wants a bill like this, which will give them special rights, no matter what anyone says, they will have more rights that myself if they get this protection, yet then go on to demand “To Be Just Like Everyone Else� and be given the “Right to Marry�.
So they want to be just like everyone else, except for the special rights?
Please hand me a cup o’ tea. I’m gonna need to sit down and crunch the numbers on the this one again because, if you ask anyone deep into this issue, I’m a bigot.
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