Couple weeks back, New Governor Bob McDonnell (Remember, the guy who gave the Republican response to the SOTU with a wonderful rainbow of ethnicities behind him?) kept one of his campaign promises that if elected Virginia's governor, he would not renew his predecessor's executive order banning discrimination against gays. True to his Christian extremist word (I say "extremist" because he's taking it to the point of allowing folks to be denied jobs based on their gender preference in the middle of a recession) he signed an executive order on 5 February that does just that. So what this means is that in the United States of America, in the state of our nation's capital in the year 2010, we made it perfectly legal for an employer to not only ask what a person's gender preference is on a job application or during an interview but to actually site that as the reason they were not hired. An employer can even fire you for being gay and thanks to the newly elected GOP rising star -- it would be perfectly legal to do so. You like?
Apparently Virginia likes. He was up front about doing exactly what he said he was going to do during the election cycle, so none of this should come as a surprise to anyone. He could probably re-institute slavery and nobody would care so long as he brought economic sanity back to Virginia. What lead you to believe voters were making decisions based on social issues this election cycle?
My question was simple. You like? Good points though. The problem comes when he actually doesn't bring back economic sanity and does the same thing the Republicans did when they were in power last time.
No, I don't. I do, however, like the fact he did away with affirmative action in the same executive order. Affirmative action is discrimination of the highest order. If it plays out that way(and I give it reasonably good odds), there may be a public burning. This economy will likely not come around for some time to come, and big government spenders are going to get the ax, regardless of what party they hail from. As I stated earlier, he could shag a goat and be popular with the religious right, so long as he gets Virginia's economy turned around.
It is not the governments right to tell me who I can and cannot hire. We need to take more rights away from the government and give them back to the people. If I want to hire only transsexual Persians, I should be able legally to hire only transsexual Persians. It's my money, not the taxpayers money.
I 100% agree, but I believe the rule he changed applied only to governmental hiring, and more specifically, hiring for the office of the Governor. Government offices should be, by default, agnostic to race, religion, and sexual preferences.
Ah... that's a horse of a different color. The government has no rights except the ones specifically granted to them by the people.
I live in Virginia and totally missed any news about this issue. I searched back for news and it wasn't widely reported. Having said that, I have no problems w/ govt identifying areas where there has been discrimination against various groups...confronting head on and leading the nation to tear down levels of discrimination that don't seem to have any benefit but to maintain old and inappropriate values. It appears this ruling is only about government hiring...but frankly again I didn't know about it before and only scanned info about it. Of interest relative to the comments above, Obamanation, in 2008 Jim Webb won the Senate over George Allen, a huge favorite, after Allen made a dumb racially insensitive comment calling a person of Indian descent (Asian Indian) Mccaw or some crappy racial insult. That comment turned a race where Allen was a HUGE HUGE favorite into a loss for Allen. Of interest, this past Dec, after working late I stopped at a local bar/restaurant to grab dinner, a drink, and watch one of the NFL playoff games. I was sitting at the bar next to a guy of Indian (Asian) descent. The guy had just moved to the area to start a medical career after his education and had just started working. He was new to the area. The guy had parents who were native Indian. He grew up in the States, has lived in several states, etc. We spoke a little about football, the area, and other things. While watching the game the guy said something about the newly appointed Redskin General Manager, Bruce Allen, brother of George Allen, the defeated politician, (former governor). His reference to Bruce Allen was "brother of McCaw guy" . Long memory, huh? People don't forget those racist comments. Frankly, I mostly don't have any time for this forum, nor do I give a rats ass about proclamations of that ilk. I definitely don't care how people tend to spin the political ruling by McConnell.....that it frees people from discrimination or alternatively how it encourages future discrimination. I personnally don't like discrimination. Think of all the amazingly talented people who have been denied the ability to use their skills because of stupid discrimination whether its because of skin color, sexual preference, sex or whatever. Its stupid. Of course it only resulted in the worst most damaging war in the history of the US. Virginia, is probably a lot like other states. It has very different elements. Where I live in Northern Virginia it is Urban and an employment engine. Even with a lot of government offices what totally drives the Northern Virginia economy are government contractors and businesses that do business virtually exclusively with the feds. Northern Virginia has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the Nation and has had that status for years. It is because of businesses that feed off the government. Its a simple function of taxpayer money being redirected into private businesses. Even with the employment engine, the Northern Va real estate market has been hit badly with foreclosures, losses of real estate values, etc. Big big big losses in all sorts of state and local tax revenues because of that. The other employment engine is in the Southeastern part of the state; Newport News/Norfolk/Virginia Beach. That area has tremendous employment again because of government contractors, primarily Navy contractors. Aside from Richmond, the state capital, the majority of the rest of the state is pretty rural, still very Southern in attitudes, and its taking an employment beating like much of the nation. McConnell is facing a serious budget issue right now. Virginia like so many states is facing a huge budget shortfall. He has been dramatically and unusually secretive in his budget planning recently, and approached it in a private way unlike any other recent governor. Of recent his approach has been leaked. He is planning enormous cuts and no tax increases. It will bring on dramatic battles into the near future as his budget faces the legislature and the public. While typing this one of my business partners stopped by. We are partners in some businesses and we do things independantly of one another. One thing he's been doing is buying up a lot of really cheap houses in one of the devastated markets in the US and reselling them for more money. Amazingly cheap prices. OTOH he is financing a lot of the purchases, so the long term payback is a function of how well the financing goes. Its called risk and reward. This guy is dramatically more conservative than me. He is conservative. While going over some stuff he made a comment about unions f*cking things up in that market. I responded...when things are good everyone tries to take their piece...and if money is good nobody complains. When things are bad everyone fights for their piece and the recriminations get crappy. That is life. One of our mutual businesses is getting f*cked in February. We are sure its a function of non-stop horrible weather. (hope our competition is suffering the same ). My partner kicks the sh!t out of our local managing partner. I'm the good guy. (sometimes we reverse rolls). Life moves on. Frankly I hope gays don't suffer from this reversal in policy by McConnell. It would be a shame if talented people can't provide good services because of some stupid purely political decision. Should McConnell make a bunch of policy decisions of that ilk he'll probably receive the same backlash as did George Allen.
Imaginative idea: Its his money he should keep it all.....Why not discriminate, the impulse is his and he should do as he pleases.
I feel like it would make a lot more sense to have a "don't ask" policy. It shouldn't matter what someone's sexuality is unless they're flaunting at their place of work, in which case they should probably be sacked, male, female, gay, straight, whatever.