GOP Senator: Employers Have the Right to Fire Workers Because They Are Gay

Echoing the attitude of Republican members of the Virginia General Assembly - who killed legislation that would have prevented the Commonwealth of Virginia and its agencies from firing LGBT employees based on their sexual orientation - Utah GOP Senator Mike Lee says that employers are well within their constitutional rights to fire gay employees. It's apparently one of the few rights that lee finds constitutional. Among the many things that lee finds unconstitutional are child labor laws, unemployment assistance, food safety protections, etc. Apparently, Lee was behind the door when eBay was advising Utah law makers that it might move 3,000 jobs out of Utah if that state did not enact employment non-discrimination protections for LGBT workers. Lee was spouting his batshitery at CPAC. Here are highlights from Think Progress:

Lee’s version of the Constitution protects employers’ rights to fire workers just because they are gay.

Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), ThinkProgress asked Lee if he supported the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), legislation that would prohibit discrimination against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Lee explained that he didn’t, saying that the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause was only intended to protect against racial discrimination:

KEYES: ENDA is something that rumbles every now and then in Congress. What’s your take, do you think it should be legal to fire someone just because they’re gay or transgender, or do you think that’s not in the purview of the Constitution?

LEE: Look, I think employers ought not make their hiring decisions based on categories like that, and I don’t think most of them do.

KEYES: But whether or not it should be a crime.

LEE: Whether it should be a federal crime, specific to federal law? No.

KEYES: Is there any difference between firing someone for being gay rather than firing someone because of their race?

LEE: Yes, yes. The 14th Amendment — in fact the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments — were adopted specifically around th erace issue. So, yeah, there is a difference.

Why does part of me suspect that Lee's not really all that fond of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments either?