The Missouri Commission on Human Rights is supposed to confront discrimination. So what was the commission's chairman, the Rev. Timothy Faber, doing testifying last week against state legislation that would prohibit discrimination against Missourians based on sexual orientation or gender identity? Faber, testifying in his capacity as a lobbyist for the Missouri Baptist Convention, specified that he believes landlords, employers and others should be able to legally discriminate against those populations.

He certainly has the right to that opinion, but that doesn't make him the logical choice to lead a commission that is supposed to work against discrimination. Gov. Mike Parson, who appointed Faber to the commission in 2021 — and who himself has supported expanding anti-discrimination protections — should heed Democrats' calls to replace Faber.

The Missouri Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on race, gender, religion, disability and more, but it doesn't extend such protections based on sexual orientation or gender identity. As the Post-Dispatch's Jack Suntrup reports, the pending Missouri Nondiscrimination Act would change that, extending legal protection to those populations.

Among supporters of earlier attempts at that reform was Parson himself, in 2013, when he served in the state Senate. "Do I think people should be discriminated on in the workforce? No I don't," Parson told The Kansas City Star in 2018. "I never have felt that way."

But Parson's appointee to the human rights commission, Faber, clearly does. An "employer or a landlord should also have rights in how they conduct their business," Faber told the Senate General Laws Committee last week, as quoted by the Missouri Independent. "They can discriminate against someone based on a number of factors. That's their right."

That may be true under current Missouri law, but it shouldn't be. What's most concerning is that, should the nondiscrimination act pass and extend those protections to the LGBTQ community, it would fall to staff under the Missouri Commission on Human Rights — Chairman Faber presiding — to enforce those protections.

Among the issues raised by 10 Democrats who signed a letter demanding Faber's removal was that he didn't mention until he was directly asked that he was a member, let alone chairman, of the commission.

Even in arguing that the commission was too overloaded to take on the additional cases that expanded rights would bring, he referred to the commission as "they" rather than "we." Faber said later he wasn't trying to mislead anyone and that his opposition to the bill expanding anti-discrimination rights wasn't voiced in his capacity as leader of the state's anti-discrimination panel. That, at least, is good to know.

That a state commission chairman would appear with his role unrecognized by a roomful of senators may speak to a neglect of this important panel by Parson, who has left seven of its 11 seats unfilled. He should remedy that — after appointing a new chairman.

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