First Amendment Outdated? Obama Nominates Homosexual Equivalency Advocate to EEOC

By Deacon Keith Fournier
10/1/2009
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

As I watch the appointment of radical social activists such as Chai Feldblum to significant positions I grow increasingly concerned.

'As a general matter, once a religious person or institution enters the stream of commerce by operating an enterprise such as a doctor�s office, hospital, bookstore, hotel, treatment center and so on, I believe the enterprise must adhere to a norm of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.'(Chai Feldblum)

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) � The White House Press Secretary issued this release: Chai R. Feldblum, Nominee for Commissioner, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. �Chai Feldblum is a Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center where she has taught since 1991. She also founded the Law Center�s Federal Legislation and Administrative Clinic, a program designed to train students to become legislative lawyers. Feldblum previously served as Legislative Counsel to the AIDS Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. In this role, she developed legislation, analyzed policy on various AIDS-related issues, and played a leading role in the drafting of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and, later as a law professor, in the passage of the ADA Amendments Act of 2008. She has also worked on advancing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights and has been a leading expert on the Employment Nondiscrimination Act.�

Ms. Feldman�s work to, in the words of the announcement, advance �lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights�, places marriage and religious freedom in America at grave risk. She is prolific and has written extensively about her legal views concerning the Bill of Rights and its protection of religious freedom. The Administration had to have known about her radical views. In a scholarly article entitled Moral Conflict and Liberty: Gay Rights and Religion Chai Feldman discussed her novel legal theory concerning how what she calls �religious belief liberty� and �sexual orientation liberty� should interface in America. She proposes nothing less than a radical restructuring of American Constitutional Law. She does so with the seemingly innocuous language so often used in scholarly legal writing, when it is intended to advance a radical agenda. In fact, her style can make the dangerous impact of her proposal somewhat elusive to the casual reader.

Ms. Feldblum is a practicing Lesbian and an advocate for the Homosexual Equivalency agenda. She sees a conflict between the Religious "Free Exercise" constitutional claims of Christians and the �equal rights� claims of practicing homosexuals, at least as they are viewed by the Homosexual Equivalency movement. She writes in this article: �I want to suggest that the best framework for dealing with this conflict is to analyze religious people�s claims as belief liberty interests under the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, rather than as free exercise claims under the First Amendment�.

As a constitutional lawyer, let me clarify what she is saying for my readers. This homosexual activist lawyer - who will soon have a significant role as an enforcer of �Equal Rights� at the Federal level - actually believes that the protections provided under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution have become outdated. She does not think that the Free Speech, Free Association and Free Exercise Clauses are the best safeguard for the religious person or for religious institutions any longer. She wants the legal analysis of their claims in her new America to proceed through the application of the �Due Process� clauses under the 5th Amendment and the 14th Amendment as "belief liberty" interests and be balanced against what she calls "sexual liberty" interests. That seems to include an apparent right to choose your own gender and engage in almost any sexual activity or arrangement and have it recognized as a "right".

For example, an analysis of her legal writing makes it crystal clear that she believes that homosexual paramours should be granted legally equivalent status to married heterosexual couples. As a story below reveals she sees no place for a recognition of marriage as between a man and a woman, intended for life, as the first cell of society. In fact, she supporst polygamous arrangements and homosexual pairings as equally valid "families".Further, she believes that failure to recognize an equivalency between homosexual paramours and married couples constitutes a violation of their fundamental constitutional rights. If she is able to make this new analysis the prevailing policy of the EEOC, it will have a dangerous effect on Catholic and other Christian institutions which enter into the stream of commerce. Basically,that means engage in any business.

Think about this in light of the recent example of Government hostility to the Catholic Church in the United States, the threatened action of the EEOC (the very Institution she will soon lead), against Belmont Abbey College. Belmont Abbey College is an unabashedly and heroically faithful Catholic College in North Carolina which refused to include abortion, sterilization and contraception in the Health care coverage it offers to its employees. They expected that they would be exempt under State and Federal Laws when they received notice from the State EEOC that a claim of discrimination had been ...

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1 - 10 of 40 Comments

R, King
2 years ago
Great Artcle.

Please keep shining the light of truth on those who insist on performing their works behind closed doors and in the dead of night. I firmly beleive we need to start addressing these people as they are as opposed to allowing the opsition to frame this debate.

These folks are nothing more then Perversion Activists.
Bulbajer
3 years ago
Michael, good comment. I probably disagree with your underlying message, but that was the best argument against the current gay rights movement I've seen.
Michael
3 years ago
What she is talking about is not freedom but license; to do whatever you want to do, as in "if it feels good do it." Regarding the First Amendment Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof (which is where my hackles go up with all this Hate Crime talk); or abridging the freedom of speech (including my right to disagree with Feldblum & the LGBT lobby), or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble (which we need to do now), and to petition the Governmenr for a redress of grievances (which is happening now!).

Meanwhile, I find the use of the 5th and 14th Amendments interesting. The due process part is clever, but people need to get a handle on "life, liberty, or property" definitions - especially liberty: it goes back to the freedom v. license argument. And I believe that the citizenship rights that this community of people desire is already covered in this Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The 14th also talks about people in rebellion - fascinating...

We have the right to protect our identity as Catholic. Just as the homosexual minority of less than 4% has the right to be protected BY us. But in no ways does this minority - and I support their right to be who they are - have the right to dictate its license to me. And if it is in conflict with the Constitution, we have the right to pursue, agressively, redress from this government.
Bulbajer
3 years ago
JeanCatherine, I agree that if a citizen thinks something is wrong with the law, then they have every right to speak up and vote whichever way they want. This includes religious beliefs. I do believe that certain religious beliefs (I'm not referring to religions here, but beliefs, e.g. doctrines) have no place in American law due to separation of church and state (which, I know, is not mentioned in the constitution, but it is an important part of our country). I, persoanlly, do not believe homosexuality is a big enough offense to be considered universally wrong by the law. That is why I said what I said. Thanks for being respectful, I hope I was.
JeanCatherine
3 years ago
Bulbajer

It is a civic duty of a Catholic to change a law if it is wrong.
A Catholic is an American citizen just for the record.
We are not do so but only to protect religious liberty which has nothing to do with our Catholic Docrtrine and under religious liberty we have a right to practice but when the law starts reflect that what we are teaching is against the law and hate speech then we have a right to speak out as long as we are just in doing so.
Just as anyone in this country has the right to do so.
The church has the right to defend herself in justice as well.

I say this to you peacefully of course.
Chris
3 years ago
What is a "practicing lesbian"? Does being a lesbian take practice?
Joanne
3 years ago
Marlene, what do you mean by the phrase "dictate civil rights" when you say the Catholic Church has no right to dictate civil rights? In what way is she "dictating" to anyone? Are the cardinals holding guns to legislators' heads and demanding Church dogma be written into law? I hardly think so. She does speak on moral issues and ask the electorate to consider what she proposes as they make and promulgate laws. That is quite legal and in full compliance with the spirit and letter of our constitution. Every individual and organization has the right to do that in a free and open society such as this. I consider this important, because if the Church has no right to participate in public debate over (say)the nature of marriage, what right do you have to do so?
Bulbajer
3 years ago
Marlene - to make a long story short, I agree with the points you make about some Catholics feeling that they can change the law to reflect Catholic doctrine and that some Catholics seem to think LGBT people do not belong in the church. The Catholic Church teaches that homosexual ACTS, not people, are sinful (this applies to transgender and bisexual acts as well). In my opinion, there is no difference between a homosexual act that does not mean to offend God and a heterosexual act that does not mean to offend God but does (such as fornication or adultery).
Marlene
3 years ago
First -- This is *secular* law we're talking about here. The Catholic Church, the clergy, and especially the cardinals and bishops have no right to dictate civil rights! Have they all forgotten the prejudice, hate and bigotry leveled at Catholics in the early days of the Colonial period and just after independence?

Second -- The Catholic Church will not be forced to perform a marriage between two men or two women -- period! It does however need to get rid of the myth of the gender dichotomy.

Transsexuals ARE that way from birth (as well as intersexuals), and we identify as the other gender. Nothing your Pope can stupidly claim otherwise can alter that! I am as much a female as anyone born female. There are women born 'XY' and men born 'XX'. The Church needs to become a little more modern in their thought and accept transsexuals as part of all areas of the Church.

Gays and lesbians are also part of the Church. They were *never* the cause of the child sexual abuse scandal! It was abusing individuals, and those who assisted in the cover-up need to be sitting in jail somewhere. Gay priests have been the convenient scapegoat, when in fact those using that excuse are hiding their own bigotry behind the Church.

Gay marriage is a fact in many European countries, and they haven't slid into depravity, have they? Their economies didn't crash and haven't slid into barbarity because gay and lesbian couples can marry, have they?

This is the same exact excuses bigots made when trying to justify denying interracial couples the right to marry in all 50 states, and their excuses are just as pathetic and baseless as the excuses given to deny same-sex couples the right to marry too!
Jean
3 years ago
KC, Mike and anyone else interested:

Im not going to make up your minds for you but before you do decide what you said above check out this book:

Homosexuality and the Catholic Church Clear Answers to Difficult Questions

Father John Harvey wrote it and I find it helpful understanding Same Sex Unions and how they will impact our society on several levels.

God Bless and Im not here to fight with you. Just proposing and making a suggestion to both of you.

Peace. Anyone else interested its worth looking at Father John built up the Courage Apostolate for our Same Sex brothers and sisters based out of NYC some years ago.

It is sanctioned by the Church along with Church teaching.

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