Letters to the Editor: Will the Supreme Court give anti-LGBTQ employers a license to discriminate?

To the editor: There are at least three unassailable reasons that the Supreme Court should rule that LGBTQ employment discrimination cannot stand.

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act explicitly bars discrimination based on “sex.” The Trump administration would have the court interpret “sex” to mean one’s gender assigned at birth because, it reasons, in 1964 Congress could not possibly have intended “sex” to include LGBTQ.

Of course, if the law is interpreted by what the court divines the legislators might have meant at the time rather than the plain words of the law, then the 2nd Amendment would not apply to any of the firearms that the framers could not have dreamed of.

Further, the 14th Amendment’s requirement of “equal protection of the laws” does not have a clause excluding LGBTQ people. In addition, of course, discrimination based on sexual orientation (or anything else) is simply immoral.

The religious right would have us believe that the 1st Amendment allows its true believers to turn away anyone they find biblically unacceptable. The court must uphold the moral imperative that freedom of religion is not a license to discriminate.

Ken Goldman, Beverly Hills

The writer is an attorney.

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To the editor: When the Supreme Court justices weigh in on the issue of employment discrimination as it relates to sex, the 1st Amendment must be seriously considered.

For an employer to be punished for firing a worker who either violates what Moses and St. Paul clearly say about homosexuality or is dismissive of what Jesus says about people being created by God male or female, that is “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion by Bible-believing Americans.

What I am saying here may not change anyone’s mind, but it is important for people to know the reason why employers with strong religious beliefs are going before the Supreme Court.

Elizabeth Norling, Long Beach

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To the editor: Just as Trump’s own bigotry has provided a springboard for hate-based violence to proliferate, so too will homophobes take it as carte blanche to unleash campaigns of reinvigorated malevolence if the Supreme Court fails to afford the LGBTQ community equal protection under the law.

Bill Waxman, Simi Valley