Recently, the U.S. House of Representatives has been considering different versions of a proposed “Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2007” (ENDA). Introduced by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), with a cast of mostly liberal and Democratic co-sponsors, all of these bills would drastically limit an employer’s ability to include an applicant’s sexual behavior among the factors considered in hiring decisions.
Surprisingly, the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society (GBCS) has joined homosexual and transgender activist groups in endorsing the broadest of these bills. If that bill were passed, business and charitable officials sharing the denomination’s own moral principles would be unable to reflect those principles in their employment policies.
H.R. 3685, the bill given the best chance of passage, does not deal with “transgender” issues. The proposed legislation would make it unlawful for any employer “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual … because of such individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation.” It defines “sexual orientation,” the behavior to be protected against “discrimination,” as “homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bisexuality.”
H.R. 2015, the measure endorsed by GBCS, is an earlier and broader version of essentially the same Barney Frank bill. H.R. 2015 would outlaw not only hiring decisions that took into account an individual’s “sexual orientation,” but also decisions based on “gender identity.” The bill defines “gender identity” as “gender-related characteristics of a person, with or without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.” In other words, it would cover self-proclaimed “transgender” persons who insist on being treated as if they were members of the sex that is biologically not their own. Persons making such demands should be protected against “discrimination,” according to H.R. 2015.
Of course, there are large areas of employment where sexual behavior has never been a major consideration in hiring decisions. But it has often been a factor in those jobs where employees are expected to provide moral guidance and set a moral example—especially jobs involving interaction with young people, especially in institutions with a strong religious influence.
Both ENDA bills offer an exemption to explicitly “religious organizations.” Thus churches and church-controlled institutions would not be required to hire homosexuals, bisexuals, or transgender persons. But other employers who had religious or moral objections to such behavior would be prevented from acting on their beliefs. For example, private, non-church boarding schools or summer camps would be forced to consider applicants whose “sexual orientation” those institutions regarded as morally inappropriate.
These ENDA proposals are neither new nor surprising. A similar version failed to pass in the Senate by one vote in 1996. The bill’s reappearance in some form was virtually inevitable considering the agenda and makeup of the new Congress. What may surprise some Christians is their churches’ activism in favor of the controversial Barney Frank legislation.
In particular, the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society allied itself with several homosexual and transgender activist groups and signed a letter arguing in favor of the broader version of ENDA. The GBCS claims to represent the social witness of some 8 million United Methodists domestically and internationally. The agency preferred H.R. 2015, as opposed to H.R. 3685, because the former more inclusively “worked to develop an employment non-discrimination bill that protects the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community,” according to the letter.
The board did not seem to have the same level of concern about the Christian consciences of its United Methodist constituents. The United Methodist Book of Discipline, which is supposed to guide GBCS, states that “sexual relations are only clearly affirmed in the marriage bond” of man and woman. A non-church summer camp that conducted its hiring in line with that same principle could be subject to prosecution under the GBCS-endorsed ENDA bill, for allegedly “discriminating” against active homosexuals.
The Book of Discipline recognizes that “[h]omosexual persons no less than heterosexual persons are individuals of sacred worth” and insists “that all persons, regardless of age, gender, marital status, or sexual orientation, are entitled to have their human and civil rights ensured.” But neither the Discipline nor any other current denominational policy demands special protection for all “sexual orientations” or “gender identities” under employment law. Thus the Board of Church and Society was acting on its own initiative in endorsing the broad ENDA bill.
The GBCS-endorsed letter was drafted by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a large secular interest group advocating gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender causes. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Unitarian Universalist Association, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition, the National Center for Transgender Equality, and various other homosexual or transgender lobbies were among the GBCS’s fellow signatories. The GBCS was the only agency of a mainline Protestant denomination to sign the letter.
Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN), the United Methodist pro-LGBT activist caucus, also issued a statement urging United Methodists to act in favor of the legislation to limit employer discretion in hiring, just as GBCS had done. In a recent Action Alert, RMN spokesperson Troy Plummer called on fellow activists to “download the bulletin insert” that contains talking points and lobbying strategies in favor of H.R. 2015, contact their members of Congress, and write letters to the editor.
The GBCS receives funding for its overwhelmingly progressive lobby work from the collection plate money of local United Methodists throughout the world. Many, if not most, local United Methodists are opposed to homosexual behavior or gender change, as the two practices do not conform to orthodox, biblical, Christian teaching. The United Methodist Book of Discipline declares, “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.”
The Discipline also directs that “no board, agency, committee, commission, or council shall give United Methodist funds to any gay caucus or group, or otherwise use such funds to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.” Yet the General Board of Church and Society, the agency charged with being the voice of faithful United Methodists, chose to advocate legislation which would compel employers, regardless of conviction or the nature of the available position, to open that position to homosexual or transgender applicants.
The board has come under scrutiny in the past for activities that seemed to “promote homosexuality.” For example, the United Methodist General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA) investigated the GBCS in 2000 for an edition of its Christian Social Action magazine focused on homosexuality. While that issue, entitled “Fan the Flame,” contained positive portrayals of many homosexual persons, GCFA ultimately exonerated the GBCS. The GBCS regularly brings petitions before the General Conference to soften or omit the Discipline’s disapproval of homosexual behavior, and is expected to do so again during the 2008 General Conference in Fort Worth.
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