Quote from: TiffanyT on November 11, 2013, 09:24:34 PM
I do not need, require or want a law to make me more equal. These divisive politics based on race, age, gender, orientation, etc. have little to do with anything but securing more life long voters and driving a further wedge between our society. [. . . ] I am an individual and I would prefer the government to be as unobtrusive as possible in my life.
My problem with having anti-discriminatory employment laws is that it's so hard to actually prove you were discriminated against at work. I know right now if I came out as trans at work, they wouldn't just say "ah, disgusting! you're fired!" Employers are smarter about this stuff now, and not many would actually do that. What would happen to me is that I'd just basically get laid off, or they'd find something I legitimately did screw up and use that on me. How would I prove I was fired for being trans, enough to satisfy a court of law or mediator ? Ugh, it'd be extremely difficult since I do screw up sometimes and work does get really slow in the winter. . . they'd have a good argument.
However, I'd be fine having lgbt protections that actually help those who can prove discrimination.
Someone above (or maybe it was in a related thread) said that these types of laws make employers not want to hire groups with protected status. But, what about someone who transitioned and passes 100% ? Employers wouldn't be able to tell when hiring the person (assuming nothing in his/her past work or school history gives it away), but they could still use protection if he/she gets outed somehow after being hired. Also, if any links to reputable cites are available to show that employers don't hire protected groups, I'd like to see the statistics so I can be better informed about this. Just in casual glances at society, it seems like protected groups are getting more and more hires in the workplaces and colleges/universities are becoming more diverse; I am sure some of this is just societal acceptance of different groups, but I am sure the laws didn't hurt. For people with disabilities, after the ADA was passed there was more hires of disabled people (although their employment rates are still extremely low and many only work part-time or are self-employed) if I remember correctly from an employment law class I had to take a few years back and said briefly
here near the top under the Employment Opportunities heading. Also, from that same employment law class, racial protections have helped a lot of African Americans who were discriminated against by employers for their race, there's plenty of case law to support this, but A-Americans are still being hired. And, there's also the case (can't remember the name right now, but the movie North Country was based on it) about female discrimination, and yet women are still being hired more often in "men's work".
I could see how the ACA can be obtrusive in your personal life, but I don't really see how ENDA is obtrusive to your personal life (unless perhaps you own a business and hire/fire people yourself).
As for credibility, all politicians lie so I am not surprised when any politician does. It's not right, but it's kind of expected. I also don't vote for someone and expect to like everything they do or say, and I figure they'll either flip flop or legitimately change their minds on some issues. For Obama's statement on insurance policies not changing/being discontinued, I am slightly confused on why some people depended so much on that in the first place; the law isn't going to make policies NOT change, I figured all along that policies would either change or get cancelled if the insurance company didn't think it was financially viable or in compliance with the ACA after it's implementation. It's not up to the President to say: "If you like your health-care plan, you'll be able to keep your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what" because of course the insurance company can take away what they sell, and change it and offer something else. When I first heard that, I just kind of assumed he was saying something more along the lines of "we the government aren't going to take away private insurance", but any plan would need to comply with the new ACA rules. As for ENDA, like the first few sentences of this paragraph here, I also expect politicans to use distractors to take away from actions that would make them unpopular among their base. I can still support these distractors if they're something I agree with, but I (and other voters) just need to remember the ugliness and not get blinded by the distractors when it comes time for the next election.
Edit: to fix typo
