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One of President Ronald Reagan’s most famous quips was that
the nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the
government and I’m here to help you.”
It is indeed sad that America today is plagued, indeed threatened, by
the very institution it invented to protect its own citizens.
Government.
And there’s no better example of today’s distortions of what government
is supposed to be about than the EEOC – The Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission.
The EEOC was established in the wave of idealism of the 1960s as part of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The agency was set up to enforce federal
laws established to protect against discrimination in the workplace.
What’s discrimination? It started out to be discrimination on the basis
of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, disability, and
genetic information.
In 2011 the EEOC included “sex stereotyping” of lesbian, gay, and
bi-sexual individuals as a form of sex discrimination. In 2012, the
definition of discrimination warranting protection was again expanded to
include transgender status and gender identity.
Once we decide that right and wrong is a political problem rather than a
religious/moral problem, our lives get turned over to politicians and
bureaucrats who, with great relish and enthusiasm, exercise their power
to control us and define right, wrong, and justice for us.
Two Obama nominees for the EEOC were just confirmed by the US Senate and
both, warriors for the LGTB cause, are getting their due celebration
from groups that support this agenda.
It’s worth recalling again the case of Crystal Dixon, a Christian black
woman, who, in 2008, in the midst of a successful career at the
University of Toledo, was fired from her job as Associate Vice President
for Human Resources because of a politically incorrect op-ed piece she
wrote, as a private citizen, in the local newspaper.
Dixon’s op-ed, published in the Toledo Free Press, challenged an earlier
op-ed which equated the movement for gay rights to the civil rights
movement of the 1960’s. Dixon’s op-ed included the fatal phrase “….I
take great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual
lifestyle are civil rights victims.”
Dixon was shown the door, informed that her career at the University of Toledo was over.
Moral relativism does not neutralize the moral marketplace. It replaces one set of values with another.
As Christians are forced to hide in the shadows of today’s America, it is clear which set of values now define the day.
Absurdities abound as we increasingly relinquish our lives, and our freedom, to Washington political power brokers.
Honeywell Corporation is now being sued by the EEOC because the firm
insists that employees covered by the firm’s health insurance plan take a
health survey as part of the corporate wellness program. According to
the EEOC, requiring the survey, and penalizing those who don’t take it,
violates the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Genetic Information
Nondiscrimination Act.
Maybe, as Americans enter this Advent season, approaching Christmas, we
all should dedicate special thought time this year to what it means to
be free and to live in a free country.
Perhaps a useful point of focus might be on the most famous
antidiscrimination employment act in American history – the breaking of
the racial barrier in major league baseball.
It didn’t happen because of a government dictate. It happened because of
the free choice and courage of two deeply Christian men – Brooklyn
Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson.
Maybe Christmas season 2015 will be the year Americans re-find their way
and realize that a country controlled by politicians cannot be a
country that is free.
The great invention of the American founders, becoming so lost today,
was the idea that government protects its citizens so they can take
personal responsibility for their own lives and make those moral
choices.
