By Michael Felsen in the The Progressive Magazine 

The Frances Perkins Building in Washington, D.C., serves as the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor. Its dedicated employees implement and enforce labor laws passed by Congress. It’s not a church, or a synagogue, and its mission is not to serve or praise any religious deity. But if you stopped in at the Cesar Chavez auditorium on Wednesday, December 10, you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

---

 
The sole Jewish speaker, a right-wing orthodox rabbi leader in the pro-Trump Coalition for Jewish Values named Yaakov Menken, is reported to have disparaged gay marriage, transgender people, and people’s use of gender pronouns. It’s worth noting that these views, which are widely promoted by the Trump Administration, are held by only a small sliver of American Jews.

One Labor Department employee condemned Menken’s remarks as “despicable” and “purposeful cruelty meted out for no reason whatsoever on a very small portion of the population.” Another, who identified as queer, professed to be “appalled” to hear such things said at a federal workplace event.

Of course, Chavez-DeRemer, Calimano, and Menken all have a fundamental right to their religious beliefs, worship, and expression. That’s what the First Amendment is about. But it is also, for very good reason, about keeping the government from endorsing religion.

---

 
Rabbi Menken comments: It is amazing to see the inversion of reality and projection used in cases like this, where it is described as “despicable” and “purposeful cruelty” to say that people should not be forced to violate their religious beliefs to recognize a gay marriage or gender dysphoria. There was “no reason whatsoever” to characterize what I said as hateful towards anyone, because I didn’t speak about anyone except those being forced to violate their conscience.

Read the full article in The Progressive Magazine by Michael Felsen

Cover image: Department of Labor by NC in DC on Flickr with CC BY-ND 2.0 deed