Last year the Minnesota Human Rights Act was amended to include gender identity as one of the protected classes, meaning that it is illegal to discriminate based on gender identity.
Human rights laws in Minnesota have always allowed religious exemptions for such classifications for obvious reasons. Requiring a Mosque or a Catholic Church to employ flamboyantly gay people as teachers or prayer leaders is incompatible with religious freedom, and hence the First Amendment.
A group of left-wing Democrats lambasted people of faith Thursday in a Minnesota House of Representatives committee hearing. Blocking an amendment that would continue longstanding protections for religious institutions, Democrats rejected pleas from Minnesota’s religious community.
For decades, Minnesota statute has allowed religious organizations and associations to refrain from hiring individuals who do not match their faith traditions. For example, current state law ensures that private Christian schools cannot be forced to hire teachers who are gay, lesbian, Muslim, etc. However, Democrats in the Minnesota Legislature put a new term in state law during the 2023 session which complicates that: “gender identity.”
When Democrats introduced this term, state law was not adjusted to make sure religious institutions can still decline to hire someone whose “gender identity” is in opposition to their faith.
My friend and State Representative Harry Niska assumed that this was an oversight that could be rectified with a simple amendment.
Yeah, well, no. It turns out that the Democrats intended to force religious institutions to hire people from all 198,098 genders, or whatever the count is now, and they were happy to insult all the people who came to testify in favor of the amendment.
The Democrats have a simple explanation for why they chose not to include an exemption for religious communities: anybody who doesn’t accept alphabet ideology is an awful bigot, totally wrong, and can go to hell.
It was no wild-eyed group of religious nuts who came to testify. They were representatives of the Archdiocese, the Islamic Center of Minnesota, the Missouri Synod of the Lutherans, the Jewish community, and others.
Representatives from Catholic, Protestant, Lutheran, and Islamic institutions testified in favor of Rep. Niska’s amendment. Expressing a desire to retain their autonomy as religious groups, the testifiers asked legislators to support their fundamental rights to religious liberty.
“Parents naturally desire to have their children taught in an environment that aligns with their values and convictions,” said Dan Beckering, a school official with Southwest Christian High School in Chaska. “Faith-based institutions like my school cannot accomplish their mission if they do not have the autonomy to make governance and hiring decisions that are firmly aligned with their religious beliefs.”
Reverend Frederick Hinz, representing hundreds of congregations and schools aligned with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, said, “the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has always considered it crucial that our leaders be deeply and personally committed to the mission and values of our church, living them out in their personal lives, including matters of sexual identity.”
The Democrats ridiculed them, calling them hateful bigots. The chair of the committee was quite open about her intent to force these religious schools and places of worship to employ people who openly mock their religious principles, and to ensure that if they don’t they will get what is coming to them.
People of faith want to hire people who align with their beliefs. Minnesota Democrat Brion Curran lashes out, attacking testifiers who showed up for a committee hearing: “This is a direct attack against the trans and non-binary communities.” pic.twitter.com/NErBGYVsGC
— Alpha News (@AlphaNewsMN) February 29, 2024
Another friend, Walter Hudson, is also a State Representative, and he has been leading the charge for sanity in the state legislature on this and other issues.
He is also one of the clearest thinkers I know. He put together a mini-documentary that is a must-watch for anybody interested in religious freedom and how it is under threat in Minnesota and, indeed, around the country.
We keep on hearing words like “diversity” and “inclusion,” but they mean exactly the opposite of what you think they do when coming of the mouths of the Leftists.
What they mean is actually quite simple: do exactly what we say, employ exactly who we want you to, or else we will come after you and destroy you.
Lawsuits are already being filed. The alphabet crowd wants to invade every religious school in Minnesota. The legislature is already considering several bills having to do with LGBTQ flags in schools and in government buildings, setting standards on where they shall be placed.
This will not stop any time soon. Put the Democrats in charge of government, and you put them in charge of every aspect of our lives.
Obey. Or else.
Read the full article here
