Respected Members of the Senate and House:
— 2/1/2019
As lawmakers, you carry a special burden to protect freedoms of religion, speech, free association and conscience as you exercise your authority. These concepts are fundamental and predate our country’s founding. They are embedded in the US and Wyoming constitutions.
The concept of equality before the law for each of us is just as fundamental as these freedoms. Your burden of protection here is just as great.
HB230 is described as an “anti-discrimination law”. But the fact is that any anti-discrimination law discriminates against somebody or some group in favor of someone else or another group. Special protections for any group diminish the rights of everyone else not in that group.
Supporters of HB230 bill want to extend special employment rights to people with non-heterosexual inclinations and confused sexual identities. Once these special rights are Wyoming law, which new groups will demand special rights tomorrow? Polygamists? Relatives attracted to relatives? Adults attracted to children? Fathers wanting to marry daughters? These are all “sexual orientations”.
Where do you draw the lines? How do you reconcile the inevitable conflicts? Why aren’t heterosexuals with normal inclinations specially protected too?
People who disagree significantly in important areas like sexual predilections generally choose not to associate with one another. I’m not interested in commercially hosting a same-sex wedding. If I own the local Hooters restaurant, should I be forced under threat of a discrimination charge to hire a trans-gender male who has remade himself into a woman? If my customers who want to be waited on by sexy, buxom women don’t come back, who compensates me and my family for loss of my business?
This proposed change in law holds every potential to force association on those who are uninterested in associating. An accusation of discrimination against a business, whether justified or not, will ruin reputations and lives and bankrupt families. To what agency does a wrongly accused employer turn in order to restore a ruined reputation or recover legal costs of defense?
Would the supporters of this law support expanding special group protections to Christian, Jewish, or Muslim employers whose beliefs govern their behavior in matters of sex? Of course not. They would say “ there is no discrimination against Christian employers”. To the contrary, I would reply that passing this law will assure discrimination against people with traditional religious views about sexuality and sexual behavior.
Why seek to divide us instead of unite us? There’s not 1% of the population of Wyoming that holds animus toward others with different sexual orientation. That doesn’t mean all of us want to associate with everybody else. We should remain free to choose those associations without fear of persecution or prosecution.
The wise course is to live and let live, not to force feed associations of neighbor to neighbor under threat of law. Please vote wisely and defeat this bill.
HB0230: THE BEAST IS DEAD! 2/4/2019 — H – Did Not Consider in CoW
Thanks for all who testified, emailed and called in opposition to this ugly piece of legislation.