Virginia's attorney general has recommended that state colleges <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2010/03/05/virginia-ag-school/">stop including "sexual orientation and the like" in its non discrimination policy</a>. Previously, he'd said the following.



So that's probably the rationale there. Discrimination against gays should be fine because this country is based on "natural laws", where "natural laws" equate to what this guy specifically finds icky.

Thoughts?

If memory serves and it most often doesn't, I believe state colleges and institutions of learning are protected in the Civil Rights Act and he's basically violating federal law.

Possibly, and probably based on receipt of federal funding, but Virginia's governor just took away the same protections for state employees. But doesn't the Civil Rights Act not include sexual orientation anyway?

Yes. It does.

Small companies are excluded, but I'm pretty sure state governments can't do that.

With or without federal funding.

Sexual orientation is included in the proposed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Non-Discrimination_Act">Employment Non-Discrimination Act</a>, and there's an interpretation of the Civil Service Reform act of 1978 that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, but I can't find anywhere that it's specifically stated in anti-discrimination legislation that's already on the books.

The following states' anti-discrimination legislation specifically does not include sexual orientation:

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware(1), Florida(2), Georgia, Hawaii (1), Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland(1), Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada(1), New Hampshire(1), North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah(3), Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin(1), Wyoming.

(1) - Sexual orientation is protected, gender identity is not.
(2) - Sexual orientation not protected; gender identity protected in some cases under disability protections
(3) - Both sexual orientation and gender identity are protected in Salt Lake City.

According to the news stories I've heard, his rationale is that the state does not guarantee these protections, therefore state-funded universities can't.

This seems incredibly dumb to me. He's arguing that state-funded schools can't have any sort of policy that goes above and beyond state law. Does this include school district policies against allowing weapons on school grounds? How about policies that say students who don't attend class can't participate in sports? Or a policy on only hiring teachers with degrees in the field they're going to teach? If that's not a state-wide policy but an individual school wants to implement it, is the AG going to tell them they have to stop? I highly doubt it.

ENDA notwithstanding, I believe subsequent Supreme Court cases have clarified the issue to include sexual orientation as far as state protection goes - Romer v. Evans specified that earlier instances where protected classes were enumerated should not be interpreted as fixed, comprehensive, and exclusive lists; and Lawrence v. Texas pointed out that attempting to criminalize homosexual acts was tantamount to a legal assault on homosexuals themselves.

Who has the authority to fire the AG?

If I were that person, his ass would be on the curb by now.

Well, he's an elected official, so the public? But given that he gave his "natural laws" speech (and his pledge to not endorse non-discrimination policies that included sexual orientation) <i>during</i> his 2009 election campaign, I'm not sure how likely it is that he's going anywhere immediately.

Also, he came in with McDonnell, who was AG under Tim Kaine when Kaine put protections for homosexual and transgender persons into state law. McDonnell fought against them at the time and then took them out once he was elected.

In a perhaps related story:

Republican California State Senator Ray Ashburn, who championed Prop 8 and consistently voted against civil rights for non-heterosexuals at every chance -

- has come out of the closet after being arrested for driving drunk while leaving a gay bar.

Un/surprisingly, articles covering this little revelation are harder to come by than you'd expect, and it's far from the scandal it probably should be - not because he's gay, but because he's gay and has fairly clearly been acting out of his deep personal conflict over that fact.

(For the record, he claims he was voting in line with what his constituents would have wanted. His district, however, at one point attempted to erect a statue in honor of Harvey Milk, which he shot down. And includes Fresno. So.)

That's odd that you say it's not in the press much because that just goes to show how out of proportion the articles posted on ontd_political are. I've seen quite a few articles about this story.