(Community Matters) Here’s a note from Joe Solmonese, President of the Human Rights Foundation, the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights organization.
How would you expect top officials in the administration to prepare for a Senate hearing? By reviewing studies and data, or going to the movies?
If you picked the latter, apparently, you’d be right.
Last week at a Senate hearing on equal family benefits for LGBT federal workers, the Bush Administration’s Howard Weizmann cited the plot of Adam Sandler Movie, “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry,” about two men who pretended to be gay, as evidence the program would be scammed.
What next? Education policy drawn on the wisdom of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?”
Tell Mr. Weizmann pubic policy shouldn’t be based on Hollywood comedies.
56% of Fortune 500 companies and 16 state governments already provide family benefits to LGBT employees, and there is zero evidence these workers are any more likely than heterosexuals to perpetrate fraud.
The American people deserve policies based on facts, fairness, and logic, not fictional scenarios designed to sell a ticket and get a laugh. Using a Hollywood comedy to justify opposing fair compensation is a new low even for this administration.
Weizmann went into the hearing with a neutral position on the equal compensation bill, which HRC has long championed. But when a colleague passed him a note he changed his tune.
The day after the hearing, Weizmann was still at it, telling the Washington Post his “Chuck and Larry” example is not farfetched.
LGBT Americans demand no more for their families than the basic benefits and protections afforded to different-sex spouses. Let’s remind Washington what’s really at stake here – not box office receipts, but real American lives.
Hat Tip: Stud Muffin
Community Matters 