More anti-gay discrimination in Virginia

Virginia state flag

Employers who are seeking applications always need to be careful in posting their job ads to make sure to note that anyone and everyone who is capable of performing the task(s) at hand may apply safely, and this certainly includes mentioning one’s commitment to preserving equality and civil/social rights between all groups and minorities, regardless of ethnicity, gender, religious beliefs, age, and so on – including, of course, sexual orientation. Face it – being revealed as an anti-gay discriminator tends to do horrors for one’s PR in these modern times (or so I like to believe and assume to be true), so even bigots are careful to cover their asses, at least legally. These standards apply to all workplaces, of course, including schools and campuses.

That is, except in Virginia. In fact, in the Old Dominion State (Virginia’s nickname, for the unknowing), not only is it not required that anti-gay discrimination be penalized – it’s actually prohibited.

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli says Virginia’s colleges and universities cannot prohibit discrimination against gays because the General Assembly has not authorized them to do so.

In a letter Thursday to the presidents, rectors and boards of visitors of Virginia public colleges, Cuccinelli said: the law and public policy of Virginia “prohibit a college or university from including ‘sexual orientation’, ‘gender identity’, ‘gender expression’ or like classification, as a protected class within its non-discrimination policy, absent specific authorization from the General Assembly.“

This also means that any and all currently existing school rules and policies that ban anti-gay discrimination are invalidated, seeing as they are superseded by state laws that, themselves, prohibit this very protection.

Of course, as you may remember from a recent story, Virginia has for governor the sneaky Bob McDonnell, who made it one of his first imperatives upon taking office to rework the state’s anti-discrimination laws into removing protections for sexual orientation, previously granted by previous governor Tim Kaine in early 2006. You’ll notice how Governor McDonnell isn’t exactly hurrying to fix any of this. (Which would only be uncharacteristic, considering he’s the one who removed the sexual orientation protection.)

The law is currently worded so that any discrimination is “expressly [forbidden] […] on any basis other than qualification and merit”. While this may sound good enough on the surface, the fact that sexual orientation protections were expressly and specifically taken out of the anti-discrimination bill is quite telling: the governor and his party are just trying to cover their asses without actually making any real efforts to ensure that homosexuals won’t be discriminated against – and, in fact, are writing (and rewriting) the laws to ensure that they actually will be.

In all, this just comes to show how Virginia’s homophobic history is still carrying itself quite well into our modern times.

(via Pharyngula)