City urges gender ID, gay rights
The Charlottesville City Council could approve a resolution Tuesday that would implore the General Assembly to protect public-sector workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Equality Virginia, an advocacy group that seeks equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, authored the resolution that was brought to councilors’ attention last month.
While the Virginia Human Rights Act prevents workers from being discriminated against based on certain attributes — including race, gender, religion, age and marital status — there is no mention of sexual orientation or gender identity in the law.
“There’s nothing protecting LGBT people at all in Virginia,” said Brenda Lambert, a Charlottesville resident and an Equality Virginia member. “Sexual orientation and gender identity should be included in the nondiscrimination policy.”
Lambert and Andre Hakes, who works in Charlottesville, pushed for councilors to consider the resolution. The document makes no mention of private-sector employees.
When asked why the resolution only applies to public employees, Lambert said, “These are my employees. They are employees of the citizens of Virginia.” Lambert added that she wants those jobs to be available to everyone.
“It’s important for people in the gay community to be teachers, firemen, etc.,” she said. The next step, she added, would be to get a law preventing that type of discrimination for all Virginia residents.
The council has passed other proclamations that are similar in nature. In 2006, the body passed a resolution that condemned Virginia’s one man-one woman marriage amendment that eventually passed that November, and councilors took a similar action against a 2004 law prohibiting civil unions.
“It was overreaching, it was mean spirited,” Mayor Dave Norris said of the 2006 marriage amendment. Norris has expressed support for the resolution that will be taken up Tuesday, and he said that passing a law protecting gay workers has support throughout the state.
“Hopefully, next year is the year,” he said.
Councilor Julian Taliaferro said he also supports the resolution, but in terms of General Assembly passage, he said, “I would like to think it would, but I don’t know if it’ll happen or not.”
“I don’t have a crystal ball for that,” he said.
Lambert said that other localities, such as Arlington County and Blacksburg, have passed the Equality Virginia resolution. Passage is pending in seven other places, including Charlottesville.
The city government already has policies that prevent discrimination of its own employees based on sexual orientation, city spokesman Ric Barrick said. The city’s schools also have a separate nondiscrimination policy that includes sexual orientation, but neither includes gender identity in their rules.
The city government provides other benefits — like families, domestic partners of city workers can get discounted gym memberships from ACAC. Yet it is illegal to incorporate other measures.
For example, domestic partners of city government workers cannot sign onto their health insurance plans, a restriction that does not exist for opposite-sex married couples.
“We’ve been proactive in doing almost everything we can,” Barrick said.
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Reader Reactions
I’ll take that as a very awkward “No thanks.“
You don’t think liberals can be closed-minded? That says a lot about your insularity.
Likening the possible sexual behavior of gays to an act of murder is quite an achievement. The usual chicken-stuff approach of people of your ilk
Yes, I completely eviscerated your facially idiotic belief that “civil rights are not linked to moral behavior” and all you can do is imply the obvious (homosexual acts are not equivalent to murder) while disregarding the relevant point that observing certain civil rights is contingent on certain moral behaviors. You don’t even try to make an argument. You simply resort to ad hominem because you have nothing more intelligent to offer than your sneers.
Sexual acts between consenting adults in a same-sex relationship are not inherently immoral—certainly not because you deem that so.
Are you so illiterate that you somehow believe I think homosexual acts are immoral on the grounds that I happen to deem them so? Where exactly did I write “homosexual acts are immoral because I have deemed them so,“ as if if I had not deemed them so, they would not be immoral.
But beyond that, even if they were, does one forfeit equal protection under the law? Get real.
I already addressed the point, and again, you don’t even have an argument to make. “Get real” is just another sneer, not an intelligent argument.
I’d be glad to enlighten you in a discussion (if I thought you capable) over a cup of coffee—we could cover the whole fallacy of a so-called Biblical and/or Christian perspective that gay discrimination is acceptable and justified. Just like slavery, and war, etc.
Fact is, civil liberties are a conservative issue. Right-to-life is a conservative issue.
I’m still waiting for an actual argument rather than you making random, irrelevant assertions back up with no arguments.
I’m reaching here: You’d like to treat this as some sort of [blah blah blah blah blah still no arguments only speculation, ad hominem attacks, random irrelevant thoughts, insults that don’t hit because they don’t apply, blah blah blah still no argument blah blah still nothing but random speculation blah blah You haven’t addressed my argument concerning the link between moral behavior and civil rights]
Here’s another one for you that maybe your liberal mind can understand. A felon, by virtue of his immoral behavior, loses the civil right to vote and must apply for it to be restored. Immoral behavior linked to forfeiture of civil right.
Of course, the ironic thing is that same-sex “marriage” has nothing to do with equal rights at all. But, the more basic point is that civil rights are completely dependent upon moral behavior, and that you’re absolutely, obviously and completely wrong to suggest there is no link between moral behavior and civil rights.
Foehammer,
I know that you like to speak for me, but until you do so with some level of competency, I’d prefer that you refrain. I can speak for myself.
A toilet in your home that is clogged with excement and overflowing is disgusting, but quite honestly, if you continue to be at home living in those conditions, it is no concern of mine. The Chesapeake Bay, unfotunately, is a publically accesable, shared resource. That it resembles conditions you find satisfying, does concern me.
I have no idea as to why its that polluted, maybe its a function of the proximity to Washington DC, and being downstream—maybe its the military bases making an out-sized contribution. But, regardless, it is an open sewer—I don’t plan on visiting again any time soon.
As far as what mutually consenting adults do behind closed doors, I don’t really think about it, or concern myself with, or even remotely worry about. It strikes me that those willing to judge others are the most adament about privacy rights.
It may even surprise you to know that there are queers who are not into it for the sex.
*****
Al,
A beer? How would I know if you were coming onto me or not? Seriously, you could be dangerous.
I am now both “liberal” and “closed-minded”. Gee, even in a vacuum that would be one heck of an achievement.
Likening the possible sexual behavior of gays to an act of murder is quite an achievement. The usual chicken-stuff approach of people of your ilk is to link homosexuality to beastiality, predatory sexual behavior and abuse, and other deviancies.
Sexual acts between consenting adults in a same-sex relationship are not inherently immoral—certainly not because you deem that so. But beyond that, even if they were, does one forfeit equal protection under the law? Get real.
I’d be glad to enlighten you in a discussion (if I thought you capable) over a cup of coffee—we could cover the whole fallacy of a so-called Biblical and/or Christian perspective that gay discrimination is acceptable and justified. Just like slavery, and war, etc.
Fact is, civil liberties are a conservative issue. Right-to-life is a conservative issue.
I’m reaching here: You’d like to treat this as some sort of pick and choose, ala-carte proposition—only folks who think and act like me are right—this applies, except where it doesn’t suit me—that justifies the status quo, no matter how off track or corrupt.
So, we get things like arbortion is wrong, but torture is OK, and war is justifiable.
God forbid that two gay men or two lesbians choose to have a long-lasting, loving relationship, and expect equal protection under the law; but, behind closed doors, its OK for a man or wife to beat or mentally abuse their spouse and/or children while exerting the authority so vested by the state under the presumption of fidelity and equality.
Ne-cons (aka political neanderthals) seem convinced they alone see the light, even though it is most often a faux-conservatism refracted by selective reading and application of long-standing truths.
Yeah, I’d love to have that talk. name the place and time, Ginger.
So antiboyd, you find the water at the bay to be more disgusting than two men packin’ fudge….You certainly are not mainstream.
lyndelevs, heterosexual acts are moral and good; that’s why most civilized societies in history have recognized them as such. In the context of marriage, they lead to families that can sustain societies. This is not difficult to understand and we can start there. We can continue on by understanding marital acts as intrinsically ordered. I already answered the “with whom” question. “How often” is immaterial. For the purpose of marital union is the moral end of the marital act.
Sheesh. You have, sadly, confirmed my expectation of the low quality of argumentation on comments boards. Like I said, not a big deal. But the City Council should do better.
antiboyd, civil rights have always been linked to moral behavior. That’s why you lose the right to liberty if you murder someone. Typical liberal vacuity. Likewise, sexual acts between consenting adults in a same-sex relationship never “became” immoral. They are.
And no, I don’t really want to have this discussion on the comments section of an online newspaper. I can already tell how close-minded you are with your hilarious quip about a slip. Maybe in real life over a beer or something.
“disgust”, eh?
I can think of a very long list of things that disgust me a whole lot more than “what goes on behind closed doors” between two consenting adults; moreover, the visual image of the rutting that likely occured before your own conception is quite disturbing, if one were at all preoccupied with such an image/thought. Stuff like war, pestilence, starvation, torture, homelessness… to name a few… I mean, I was even down by the bay along the Nothern Neck, and that water, now that was disgusting.
Fear, and paranoia, and a whole lot of prejudice.
Bookloverva, I think you are mistaking the word “fear” with the word “disgust”.
We need to start paying more attention to whom we elect to our city council….geeez
Hello, Tom,
You said that the “Virginia Human Rights Act provides protection for all workers from discrimination, and does not need to be modified to call out a particular class of citizens”.
Does this mean that you believe that the Act already covers ALL workers in Virginia? If so, you may be surprised to learn that it does *not* protect all tax-paying, employed, contributing to society workers. In fact, some workers are still discriminated against.
Because this Act is poorly worded, a number of people still lack basic protection from discrimination.
No one is asking you to embrace anyone’s personal beliefs, actions, gender, color, religious beliefs or anything else. I certainly wouldn’t want to know what you do behind closed doors - nor would I dream of trying to keep you from enjoying health insurance coverage because of it.
People are simply asking - quite reasonably - to be assured that they enjoy the same basic rights that everyone else enjoys.
Really, where does all this fear come from?
The Virginia Human Rights Act provides protection for all workers from discrimination, and does not need to be modified to call out a particular class of citizens. The group supposedly seeks equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual (which is a choice, and not the “way a person is born”) and transgender people, but in actuality seeks to force the rest of us to not only refrain from discrimination, but to embrace their sexual orientation. Charlottesville has bigger issues to deal with than this political pandering.
Al,
When were civil rights ever linked to “moral” behavior. Who determines the “morality”? When did engaging in sexual “acts” between consenting adults in a same-sex relationship by itself become “immoral”?
Your slip is showing.
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