P E R S P E C T I V E : M e d i a C i r c u s
Fair and “Balanced” Always on the Job
Aimee Stephens, whose workplace discrimination case went before the Supreme Court this week, with James
Esseks, the director of the LGBT & HIV Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, in Washington on Tuesday.
BY ED SIKOV
This week, ABC News had,
on its website, a piece on
the employment-related legal
matters before the Supreme
Court this weel. Titled “LGBT
Americans look to Supreme Court after
being fi red ‘because of sex,’” and
written by Devin Dwyer, the article is
scrupulously “balanced.”
I put balanced in scare quotes because
Dwyer, while devoting the lede
to our side, nevertheless undercuts
its positive message by qualifying an
adjective that scarcely needs qualifi
cation: “When Anthony Stephens
decided to come to work as Aimee
Stephens — a gutsy but liberating
decision to reveal her true self — she
lost her job” emphasis mine. I think
most if not all of my readers would
agree that personally liberating decisions
are always gutsy. Why Dwyer
chose to make the distinction is unclear.
In any event, Dwyer continues,
“The Supreme Court on Tuesday will
consider whether Stephens and thousands
of transgender Americans are
protected from employment discrimination
under the Title VII of the 1964
Civil Rights Act, which bars employers
from terminating workers because
of sex. The court will also hear cases
involving a Georgia child welfare services
offi cial and a New York skydiving
instructor who each allege they
were fi red because they are gay.”
“‘The stakes could not be higher,’
said Ria Mar, an attorney with the
ACLU’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
Transgender project. ‘The potential
upside, however, is that the court
could send a very powerful message
about the status of LGBT people in
this country and by not relegating us
to second-class status.’
DONNA ACETO
“‘It would be nice to have our rights
fi nally protected, that we have the
same basic human rights as everyone
else does,’ said Stephens, a transgender
Michigan woman who was fi red
from R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral
Homes, where she had worked as a
funeral director for nearly six years,
after coming out. Dwyer evidently
means transitioning. The funeral
home says Stephens was fi red for not
complying with the dress code for
men, even though she was dressed
professionally as a woman.”
Naturally (or unnaturally as it happens
to be), Dwyer feels compelled to
give the fascist point of view for the
sake of (here come the scare quotes
again) “balance”: “‘If Stephens had
wanted to dress in a different way not
on company time, that was fi ne. But
as long as anybody was at work, this
company dress code applied to all
employees — male or female,’” said
John Bursch, attorney for Alliance
Defending wait for it Freedom, a
faith-based advocacy group that has
opposed LGBT legal protections and
represents Harris Funeral Home.”
This is nothing but willful ignorance.
Stephens is no longer male.
Period. To treat transgender folks as
if they were simply playing dress-up
makes a mockery of basic science, let
alone psychology, sociology and reason,
not to mention justice. There’s a
simple (as in simpleton) quality to the
reasoning, a fake clarity echoed by
— and rooted in — the most corrupt
presidential administration in American
history:
“Two lower federal courts sided
with Stephens, calling her fi ring
‘impermissible discrimination.’ The
Trump administration, which is not a
party in the case, took the step of asking
the Supreme Court to reverse the
decision emphasis mine. ‘Proving
discrimination because of sex under
Title VII requires showing that
an employer treated members of one
sex less favorably than similarly situated
members of the other sex,’ Solicitor
General Noel Francisco argues in
court documents. ‘Treating all transgender
persons less favorably than
non-transgender persons does not
violate that rule,’ Francisco wrote.”
Yes, you read that correctly. Our
government has taken the active position
that it’s perfectly fi ne to treat
transgender folks worse than cisgender
people. Open discrimination is, in
fact, encouraged.
“More than three dozen high-profi
le Republicans urged the court in
a friend-of-the-court fi ling to take a
“common sense, textualist approach,”
arguing that sexual orientation and
gender identity — at their core —
hinge on sex and should be protected.
Dozens of American business giants,
including Amazon.com, Microsoft,
Macy’s, Nike, and American Airlines
have also weighed in, asking the justices
to affi rm discrimination protections
for LGBTQ workers because it’s
good for the US economy. The Walt
Disney Company, parent company
of ABC News, also signed on to the
brief, which was joined by more than
200 companies representing more
than 7 million employees.
Meanwhile, Reason.com is, in a
word, irrational on the subject. Reason
is libertarian in bent, a fact that
one needs to keep in mind when its
writer Scott Shackford informs us
that “there’s something of a disconnect
here, in that the same people
looking for the Supreme Court to
expand the law’s scope are also going
through the legislative process to
have the Civil Rights Act amended
to resolve the very confl ict they’re
bringing before the court.” No, not
at all. “The same people,” by which
Shackford evidently means the entire
LGBTQ community, are forced
by circumstance to cover all bases,
given the hostility of the Rump Administration
to anything resembling
civil rights. If there’s any disconnect,
it’s between the genuine liberty represented
by a law that forbids discrimination
on the basis of sex and the
fascist right’s efforts to gut that law
in the name of “religious” “freedom.”
Follow @EdSikov on Twitter and Facebook
.
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