Will ENDA Harm Children?

The Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) would prohibit discrimination against employees on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation and is one of the key pieces of LGBT-related legislation pending this year. ENDA applies broadly across the LGBT community, and isn’t specific to those of us with children (as are, say, adoption rights), but some on the ultra-right are using scare tactics to equate opposition to ENDA with protecting children.

Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the “Traditional Values Coalition”—named a hate group by the a Southern Poverty Law Center—appeared on CBS News’ Washington Unplugged to explain why ENDA would endanger children. She said that because ENDA would prohibit school districts from firing or reassigning transgender teachers, it puts children at risk. A teacher transitioning from one gender to another “would be very confusing to children,” she stated, and “children need a safe environment” in which to learn.

Luckily, Allyson Robinson, Associate Director of Diversity for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) was there to counter Lafferty’s distortions. Robinson, who is also an ordained Christian minister, shows more poise in the situation than I think I could have mustered. She pointed out that her own four children—and their friends and neighbors—are not “confused” because she is transgender, and they certainly aren’t unsafe.

Lafferty fails to show how “confused” children equates to “unsafe” children. Let’s face it: if everything that “confused” kids was unsafe for them, we’d have a national crisis on our hands. As I wrote in my post on challenged books, good parenting doesn’t mean ensuring that everything we consider inappropriate is kept away from our children. That’s an unrealistic expectation. Good parenting means helping our children understand what confuses them.

That, I believe, is what scares the ultra-right the most—the fact that they don’t understand LGBT people themselves and don’t have the language to talk about LGBT people with their children. Rather than admit their lack of knowledge and seek advice from others, they simply try to avoid the issue by banning books, teachers, and anything else that scares them.

Kudos to Robinson for taking on the hate face to face.

(And if you think CBS News shouldn’t be giving air time to hate groups, you can go sign the petition at Change.org asking them to stop.)

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