In California, you don't have to show an ID to vote, but boy-oh-boy do they have a rigorous vetting process to prove that you're gay enough to receive taxpayer money as part of the state's affirmative action for "gay-owned business".
Back in the 80s, California started an affirmative action program to
distribute tax money to assist woman- and minority-owned businesses.
It has since been expanded to include gay-owned businesses. But unlike women and racial minorities, people who are not actually gay can claim to be so in order to dip their snouts in the never-ending trough of tax money, and short
of asking them to prove it by having sex in the presence of a state auditor, it's very difficult to prove their veracity.
So the state that collectively recoils in horror at the idea of a voter presenting a simple ID at a polling place has come up with a labyrinthine system for business to prove they're gay enough to partake in the affirmative action tax money grift.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/california-gay-business-contracts-utilities
This scheme raises an obvious question: How does a business qualify as officially gay? Paperwork. Supplier Clearinghouse, a group that certifies
firms for the CPUC program, features a list of qualifications linked on its website. Applicants can secure certification by providing a letter from an "LGBT organization" attesting to their sexual preferences; proof that a newspaper identified them as "LGBT"; or three letters from "personal contact written on company letterhead" attesting to their homosexual orientation.
Supplier Clearinghouse also accepts gay-certification letters from the
National LGBTQ+ & Allied Chamber of Commerce. The chamber has its own list of accepted documents, including human resources complaints or police records claiming LGBT discrimination. As NGLCC states on its website, "Certification
is a journey, not a destination."
[Of course what's left unclear is how gay do you have to be to be endorsed by the state as a full-blown homo? I mean, there are plenty of bisexual people
out there. If you're a guy and you apply for a pot of money and say you're
gay, does that mean you can never sleep with a woman ever again? What if you like both? Is my tax money only available to guys who exclusively like dick
and never cross over to the other side?]
Such is their concern that people might engage in "gayface" in order to reap the spoils of their fellow taxpayer, that a state which bends over backward to free child rapists and child murderers has imposed relatively draconian penalties on corporate officials who falsely represent their sexual
orientation as gay. They can face up to a year in county jail and thousands of dollars in fines.
We've reached the point where the state is playing Mr. Roper in the plot of THREE'S COMPANY.
In California, preferential public contracting is technically illegal. In
1996, voters approved Prop 209, which banned the state from granting preferential treatment based on race, sex, or ethnicity in public employment, education, and contracting. More than two decades later, in 2020, they also rejected an effort to repeal the ban.
CPUC's arm-twisting regulations certainly violate the spirit of the law. The commission lists several specific goals for utilities' contracting rates: 15% to minority-owned firms; 5% to women-owned firms; 1.5% to disabled-veteran-owned firms; and, most recently, 1.5% to LGBT-owned firms. It claims that these goals are not a requirement or quota. In practice, however, the agency cajoles utilities into compliance by requiring them to collect extensive demographic data, submit detailed annual reports, list their plans for increasing procurement from favored groups, and explain "any circumstances that may have resulted in not meeting their procurement goals."
The state imposed these rules based on the view that government spending
should not merely purchase goods and services, but should also engineer social outcomes. Under this framework, buying a hammer from a firm owned by a black transgender lesbian has more social value than buying the same hammer from a firm owned by a straight white man.
But Californians don't need an energy system delivered by gay contractors;
they need an energy system that works. Utility regulators should be in the business of regulating utilities, not verifying contractors' sexual preferences. Companies should award contracts based on competence, quality,
and cost-- not the sexuality of the business owners.
[How, in this day of transformers who can switch genders just by announcing
how they identify, does one even qualify as a woman under state law, let alone gay? 'Progressive' leftists famously struggle with answering the basic question, "What is a woman?" In California, they've codified the idea that a woman is anyone who says they're a woman into law, so how does the idea of set-asides for "woman-owned businesses" even work in that legal milieu?]
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