For several years, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act -- which would add sexual-orientation to the list of prohibited grounds for employment discrimination -- has been working its way through and around Congress. This past summer, additional hearings on the Act were held, and Rep. Pelosi apparently intends to move on the Act in the coming months. (Here is a link to HR 2015.)
Let's start by stipulating that it would be reasonable and justifiable for Congress to provide that covered employers may not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Now, turn to the actual proposed text. While earlier versions of the proposed Act had said, clearly, "[t]his Act shall not apply to a religious organization," the current version says that the exemption would only be available to a religious organization that has "as its primary purpose religious ritual or worship or the teaching or spreading of religious doctrine or belief." (See Sec. 6(a)). Another Section (Sec. 6(b)), says that, with respect to non-exempt organizations, the proposed Act would not apply to "the employment of individuals whose primary duties consist of teaching or spreading religious doctrine or belief, religious governance, supervision of a religious order, supervision of persons teaching or spreading religious doctrine or belief, or supervision or participation in religious ritual or worship."
So . . . the Act would apply to parochial-school teachers, unless they are "religion" teachers? It would apply to (pretty much) any employee of, say, Catholic Charities?
Then there's this, from Sec. 6(c):
Under this Act, a religious corporation, association, educational institution, or society may require that applicants for, and employees in, similar positions conform to those religious tenets that such corporation, association, institution, or society declares significant. Under this Act, such a declaration by a religious corporation, association, educational institution or society stating which of its religious tenets are significant shall not be subject to judicial or administrative review. Any such declaration made for purposes of this Act shall be admissible only for proceedings under this Act.
I'm not entirely sure what this means, but it strikes me as strange for the government to declare that a religious association's ability to hire (anyone?) be contingent on its identifying, for the government, those of its "tenets" (what is a "tenet", anyway?) it regards as "significant." (Are there insignificant "tenets"?)
I've heard some rumors that President Bush has said he would veto the Act if it contains this language. We'll see.
On September 6, 2007, the Senate voted on the "Boxer amendment" regarding the longstanding Mexico City policy, which had prevented federal money from flowing to foreign organizations that promote and / or perform abortion as a method of family planning. (We might think of the Boxer Amendment, then, as a big-money sop to a powerful corporate special interest, i.e., Planned Parenthood. One suspects, of course, that this is not how the Amendment will be cast in the press.)
Here is the roll-call vote. Only one Democrat -- Ben Nelson, not Robert Casey -- voted to preserve the policy. Also, the Senate rejected the Brownback Amendment, which would have prohibited contributions to organizations that promote and / or perform abortions as a method of family planning. Two Democrats -- Ben Nelson and Robert Casey -- voted in support of the Amendment. The Senate agreed, however -- just barely (!!) -- to another Brownback Amendment, which denies federal money to groups that "support coercive abortion." Only two Democrats -- Ben Nelson and Robert Casey -- supported the Amendment.
