Why Recent Polling Proves That LGBT ‘Non-Discrimination’ Laws Are Completely Unnecessary

A new survey finds that an increasing number of Americans support a federal “non-discrimination” law that includes sexual orientation and gender identity provisions.

The “2016 Out & Equal Workplace Survey” — conducted by The Harris Poll in conjunction with Out & Equal Workplace Advocates and Witeck Communications — surveyed 2,223 adults about their views on LGBT issues in the workplace. The Harris Poll notes that there is an over-sample of gay and lesbian adults included in the sample.

What it found was that 67 percent of Americans support federal law that “prohibits discrimination in employment, public accommodations, housing and credit” on the basis of sexual attraction or perceived gender.

While some will see this and wonder why these laws don’t exist, the numbers actually show why Americans don’t need these so-called “SOGI [Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity] laws.”

Last week, in response to a grossly misleading video segment about North Carolina’s HB2 “bathroom bill” on “The Daily Show with Trever Noah” — where two guys rent a food truck in the Tarheel State to deny service to people just because they can — Reason.com’s Scott Shackford addressed the absurdity of some claims made by the Left in regard to the so-called “permission to discriminate,” and the misnomer that it represents:

The possibility of this kind of discrimination has been around all along because it hadn’t been forbidden. The segment also incorrectly states that discrimination against LGBT people in the state will be legal for as long as HB2 is on the books. It will remain legal even if HB2 is repealed (at least on the state level) because, again, sexual orientation and gender identity are not considered protected classes by the state.

With this reality, the two men in the “Daily Show” segment had to create their own scenario to prove what could happen — rather than an actual reflection of circumstances.

“If there were a serious, widespread problem with discrimination against gay people, they wouldn’t have had to set up a fake food truck, would they?” Schackford continues, arguing any actual discriminators would have been caught and shame-filmed.

“But they didn’t. They had to fabricate a Seinfeldian Soup Nazi-style environment to try to present an exaggerated possibility […] Yes, discrimination exists, but there is no widespread conspiracy to exclude gay and transgender people, and there is so much more cultural pressure that can resolve it positively without getting the state involved.”

And the same is true of the calls for federal non-discrimination orders. There is no majority effort or a massive cultural push to keep people out of jobs, housing or health care simply because of sexual orientation or issues of gender identity. If there were, you can guarantee that such instances would get just as much (if not more) hyped mainstream media coverage as police-involved shootings.

If a business were to actually fire someone for being gay anywhere in America, we need not try too hard to imagine the witch hunt that would ensue.

Take, for example, the case of Brendan Eich, who was effectively forced to resign from his Mozilla CEO post in 2014 for donating a paltry $1,000 to a pro-natural marriage cause six years before. Or Memories Pizza in Indiana that had to close down as its owners went into hiding during the RFRA fight last spring from arson and death threats. The pizza shop owners’ crime? Saying they hypothetically wouldn’t cater a same-sex wedding ceremony.

And, going back to North Carolina’s HB2, 72 percent of respondents in the 2016 Out & Equal Workplace Survey said they were more likely to buy from businesses that opposed the law.

Whether these trends are good for the wellbeing of American society, the natural family, or human ecology as a whole is one thing. What they do show is just how unnecessary government involvement is.

These kinds of SOGI laws that people say they’re in favor of are what Alliance Defending Freedom’s James Gottry calls “a subversive response to a nonexistent problem.”

Discrimination against these populations is not significant, Gottry says, because the vast majority of Americans already respect each other and “because anyone engaged in baseless discrimination faces the prospect of social and financial consequences brought on by public pressure and boycotts.”

“SOGI laws,” Gottry counters, “use the full force of the law to punish individuals who seek to live peacefully and to work in a way that is consistent with their consciences.” And we’ve seen this time and time again as these sorts of ordinances have endangered or destroyed the livelihoods of people across America — whether bakers in Oregon, a photographer in Arizona, or a florist in Washington, or countless others.

In light of these conditions, federal statutes like the Equality Act and both prior manifestations of Employment Non-Discrimination Act would function not as a seawall against widespread discrimination against gays and transgendered people, like their advocates would argue. Rather, they would function but as heavy mallets to crush whatever conscientious objection still remains to our hypersexualized, hyper-sensitized culture.

Using federal-government hammers to bash any and all dissenters out of the market and public square is not the habit of people in a truly free society. While most Americans have the best intentions in their support for SOGI laws, asking the government to mandate “equality” in this case is little more than further legitimizing anti-conscientious government tyranny. (For more from the author of “Why Recent Polling Proves That LGBT ‘Non-Discrimination’ Laws Are Completely Unnecessary” please click HERE)

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