The Washington Times is the daily newspaper you can recommend to friends who think of the Dallas Morning News as “the liberal media.”
Until a year or two ago, they refused to use the word gay. They still don’t use transgender. Gender identity goes in quotes as does marriage when it refers to a same-sex couple.
Last week, they ran an editorial entitled, “Discrimination is Necessary.”
Had the paper been around 50 years ago, the first sentence would have been similar:
“First-graders should not be forced into the classrooms of teachers undergoing sex changes” would have read, “First-graders should not be forced into the classrooms of teachers of other races.”
But for those who are worried about “she-male” (their word for transgender, used repeatedly) teachers, ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that is the target of their rant, addresses such concerns.
To make their point, they make ridiculous comparisons. They say that ENDA “purports” and then quote from the bill. It doesn’t “purport.” It does it. Except among people who refuse to comply and will discriminate anyway. But then they compare it to something else:
ENDA purports to “prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.” Clever politically correct wording aside, this is a direct attack on common sense. On some matters, it is good to be discriminating. It is right to discriminate between honesty and dishonesty, between politeness and impoliteness, between right and wrong.
They compare being gay to dishonesty, impoliteness and being wrong. The first difference is that sexual orientation and gender identity have nothing to do with work. Dishonesty does. If I steal from my employer, I put him out of business. If I’m gay and good at my job, I keep him in business. But according to the Washington Times editorial board, it’s better to be straight, a thief and crappy at your job than gay and good at it.
You see, the majority has rights too, according to the Washington Times. If the majority doesn’t want to put up with black people, they shouldn’t have to. If the majority doesn’t like Jews, get rid of them. If the majority doesn’t like gays, fire them. If the majority doesn’t like transgender people … well you get the idea.
A big concern of the paper is that transgender people have a psychological disorder. However, the transgender people I know have been through counseling and are a lot less disturbed than the paranoid writer of the Washington Times editorial.
I love the last sentence of this diatribe.
“Our children and our co-workers should not be forced by law to be held hostage to such disorders, nor should employers be forced to have psychologically troubled persons as the public face of their businesses.”
That’s right. The minority should be “held hostage” to the whims of the majority. And employers should be free to hire dumb blondes with big boobs to be the public face of their businesses. Not that there’s anything wrong with dumb blondes or big boobs. If they do their jobs, they have a right to work too.
Not surprising since this paper is owned by Sun Myung Moon. His hyper-conservative views and his slightly odd version of Christianity makes the WT a predecessor of Fox News.
This is the same argument the Traditional Values Coalition make and it is faulty logic. Of course as Henry Louis Mencken once said, “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American Public.”