VA: Court rules against fired gay employee, exposes limits of Gov. Kaine’s exec order protections<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nMichael Moore, a former resident of Martinsville, VA said he was forced to resign from the Virginia Museum of Natural History because he is gay. The state has no anti-discrimination law, just Governor Tim Kaine’s (who is also the DNC chair) 2006 executive order. The courts have ruled that without legislation on the books, Moore has no recourse there.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Well of course the Governor’s executive order wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. It dared to suggest that gay people are something other then human garbage. You can bet your ass that if Kaine had ordered an anti-gay witch hunt the Virigina courts would have backed him a thousand percent, legislation or not. People think Texas is the most anti-gay state in the union, but it just gets noticed more when it does dumbshit things like raid a gay bar and crack some gay heads on the anniversary of Stonewall.\n<\/p>\n
Tell me please, what this man did to deserve loosing his job. Oh…right…he was gay and it was Virginia. By all appearances it was an act of pure anti-gay animus on the part of the executive director of the museum, Tim Gette, who probably thinks Moore should be grateful he didn’t call the police and have him arrested for being a sodomite. Moore had been given an employee evaluation at the time of his getting the boot, that had entitled him to a pay raise. And then Tim was told the horrible news by someone. Hey Tim…you have a gay guy working for you. Imagine that…a gay guy working in a museum…<\/em>\n<\/p>\n\nAccording to Moore, during his evaluation in October 2006, the museum’s executive director, Tim Gette said, “Michael, there are board members that are aware you are gay, and I do not appreciate you hiding that from me.” <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I can’t imagine why he’d have wanted to hide that fact from you Tim, considering you gave him the boot the moment you found out. Homophobe much?<\/em> You find yourself wondering if the board members who didn’t alert Tim to the presence of a homosexual on the staff are going to get the axe next. I do not appreciate your failure to inform me there was a homosexual on our staff… <\/em>Hey Tim…are you sure<\/em> you’re the executive director and not an exhibit somewhere over in the Neanderthal section? <\/p>\nMeanwhile, the Roanoke Times is wagging its finger at a statehouse that wishes its sodomy law was still enforceable…\n<\/p>\n
\nThe decision by the Martinsville court should be a convincing sign to the General Assembly that protection against such discrimination must be written into Virginia’s code. Only a law will offer genuine confidence to Virginia’s gay employees that they won’t face irrational threats to their employment based on their sexual orientation.<\/p>\n
It would be better if such protection were guaranteed to all workers in Virginia, not just state employees, but a law making it official state policy not to discriminate against public employees because of their sexual orientation would at least be a start.<\/p>\n
Editorial – The Roanoke Times<\/em>, July 7, 2009.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI’d like to know what planet the editorial board of the Roanoke Times is living on. An anti-discrimination law? They expect the Virginia statehouse, which passed an anti same-sex marriage amendment so draconian, so breathtaking in its sweep that some legal experts say it could even be used to break a same-sex couple’s joint checking account…they expect That<\/em> legislature to pass an anti-discrimination law? Earlier this year the statehouse gutted an anti-bullying bill of its LGBT protections practically the instant that bill hit the floor. You expect a state that thinks there is nothing wrong with beating up gay kids to pass an anti-discrimination law? There something funny in the tobacco down there lately?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Via Pam’s House Blend… Remember the bad old days when a person could loose their job, simply for being gay? Like they were only yesterday? VA: Court rules against fired gay employee, exposes limits of Gov. Kaine’s exec order protections Michael Moore, a former resident of Martinsville, VA said he was forced to resign from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-3901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-civil-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}