The Legal Code "If Christians are Terrorists, they Have NO RIGHTS" SectoMah haz some NEWZ 4 U Prez Yahweh Email: [email protected] UNDERSTANDING DISCRIMINATION =============================== EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION The common law doctrine of "employment at will" has been around for a long time. Sure, there are specific government protections, but the whole thrust of law in the area of hiring and firing is one of "hands off" - an employer should be able to hire or fire anybody whenever it wanted and for whatever reason. Private businesses have to voluntarily adopt policies of nondiscrimination. The best way to sum up employment law is that a worker can be fired for any reason other than a federally prohibited reason. Although Congress has outlawed discrimination on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin", it has not yet seen fit to include "sexual orientation". A handful of states (Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, NJ, and Wisconsin) and cities (NY, LA, Chicago) have, however, outlawed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or "affectional preference". Employees who get fired on account of health reasons (AIDS or HIV) have to file disability discrimination suits. Gay and lesbian employees are presently unable to have their "partners" covered under group health insurance plans or other employee benefits (Learning exercise: role play personnel dept. scene). Gays and lesbians are not a protected class of people. Federal guidelines prohibit employment discrimination on the supposed characteristics of an entire class of people. Hence, federal supervisors must determine, on an individual basis, if the person would bring contempt to public service, manifest behavior that affects job fitness, or imply possible embarrassment to the government. During the cold-war McCarthy era (1943-1953), at least 1,700 federal workers were fired for allegations of homosexuality. All branches of the military allege that homosexuality is incompatible with military service, and estimates are that about 100 soldiers are discharged every year from the military for homosexuality. The FBI and CIA claim to treat each case individually, but usually deny homosexuals from jobs on the basis of national security. In addition, about 3 million people in America hold various security clearances of one sort or another. No gays or lesbians hold the most top secret (SCI) clearances. Gay applicants are subjected to excessive background checks, and the presumption is that they are a security risk through "indirect blackmail" - via their friends and lovers. Another problem area is in occupational licenses. Because of the myth that gays prey on children, there's a lot of discrimination in applying for licenses to run and operate day care centers, and indeed, any occupation involving children. HOUSING DISCRIMINATION Except in the handful of states and cities with sexual orientation laws, a landlord can refuse to rent and a homeowner can refuse to sell to a gay or lesbian in most parts of the country. Many leases contain clauses that strictly prohibit certain "immoral" activities and/or restrict occupancy to those related "by blood or marriage". Places that operate under rent control laws, like NYC, are especially strict, in some cases calling for eviction if the tenant or anyone living with the tenant contracts AIDS. Condominium, coops, and homeowner associations also tend to reserve the right to review prospective tenants for appropriateness. Gay and lesbian couples who live together and seek public housing find themselves at the bottom of the eligibility list because they are not considered a "family" which gets first crack at any vacancies. Gays and lesbians often report being treated differently in public accommodations, like stores, motels, and restaurants. Doctors, dentists, and other professional services, like insurance companies, are not deemed places of public accommodation, and service quality varies widely. Some newspapers have refused to accept advertisements from gay people or gay organizations. Disneyland (not Disneyworld) banned same-couple dancing a few years ago. Lack of acceptance in private clubs has led to the establishment of gay bars, which offer inviting targets for anti-gay sentiment. GAY FAMILY DISCRIMINATION This is the area of the most gay activism today (two big Internet sources: The Guide to Same-Sex Marriage http://www.eskimo.com/~demian/toc.html , Gay Parent Magazine Online http://www.gayparentmag.com/ ). The law has always harshly discriminated against unmarried cohabitating couples (almost a majority or soon to be majority in America) in the form of income taxes, wills, inheritance, insurance rates, employment benefits, adoption, survivor benefits, etc. Banks, finance companies, and credit card companies also discriminate in favor of married couples. No state legally recognizes gay or lesbian marriage, and in some states, it is expressly prohibited. Nevertheless, various gay churches will perform the ceremony in most places where the ceremony is not expressly prohibited, and even in places where it is, there have been no prosecutions. Some other countries, like Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, have always recognized same-sex marriages, and even adoption and artificial insemination. American groups have shown an interest in test-tube babies and even cloning (???). The issue is even more complicated with regard to separation, divorce, palimony, and child custody involving gay and lesbian couples. Palimony (Marvin v. Marvin 1976) establishes a legal recognition of continued financial support where the relationship was founded on purely sexual grounds, and some courts have been willing to extend gays and lesbians some rights under this precedent. Community property states (Texas, California, Washington, Arizona, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, and Idaho) also hold that married or unmarried, each party to a dissolution earns half of assets and shares half of debts. Even with palimony and community property laws, gay and lesbians will often find their wills challenged by family members if they try to leave anything to their surviving partner. The courts have also been reluctant to grant gays and lesbians their child custody and visitation rights, although these areas are changing rapidly. Adoptions and foster care arrangements are not uncommon among gay couples. Gay and lesbian couples also usually qualify as a "household" under some safety-net, anti-poverty programs, like food stamps and AFDC. CRIMINAL JUSTICE DISCRIMINATION There are three major areas (since raids are a thing of the past) where police today justify their attention toward gays and lesbians -- sodomy, solicitation, and loitering. Although repeals are taking place fast, sodomy statutes exist (or have recently existed) in places like Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia, outlawing anal and oral sex between same-sex partners (and often different sex partners as well). The typical offense is a Class B misdemeanor, carrying about 3 months in jail and a $500 fine. Sodomy laws are notoriously difficult to enforce and prosecute. Statutory wording is usually vague, police action often requires entrapment, and prosecution doesn't make good press. Solicitation is when someone makes an offer in public to commit, perform, request, or invite a criminal, improper, lewd or immoral act. To be enforced, these laws also usually require entrapment or sting operations, and they exist on questionable constitutional grounds to begin with. Loitering, or what was once called vagrancy, and what is more commonly today called disorderly conduct, criminalize being or remaining in a public place for no apparent purpose, or a criminal or improper purpose. These behaviors are more readily discerned as reasonable suspicion than with the probable cause standard for arrest, and include such things as driving around suspiciously, frequenting gay bar establishments, etc. In addition, gays and lesbians are often the victims of hate crime http://www.ngltf.org/main.html , either at the hands of those with anti-gay sentiments or by the partners in their relationships. We've already talked about hate crime measures, but it should be noted here that access to victim compensation and victim assistance programs may be areas of needed improvement. DISCRIMINATION AGAINST GAY ACTIVISM & EXPRESSION Freedom of expression is a difficult area for gay activists because even if the law recognizes their right to form organizations, even tax-exempt associations, a district attorney or other official may demand disclosure of membership lists. This occurs in two or three situations: (1) when the association charters itself as a corporation or nonprofit, it often has to reveal the names of its members or at least its officers; (2) when the association tries to financially support the campaign of some politician, it often has to reveal its membership as its sources of income; and/or (3) when gays join certain occupations, like teaching, military, or national service careers, there may be demands to reveal membership in gay organizations. In fact, at least one federal appeals court case, Acanfora v. Board of Education of Montgomery County, upheld the firing/transfer of a gay school teacher on grounds that he failed to reveal his membership in a gay rights group while in college. Oklahoma and West Virginia have laws which mandate the firing of any gay school teachers. The case of Morrison v. State Board of Education also allows revoking the teaching license on the grounds of unfitness to teach. There's a lot of discrimination against gay school teachers, and associated with the whole school context. Witness the problem of getting gay and lesbian student organizations approved in high schools and colleges (Learning exercise: role play approval process), especially ones that don't receive public funds or are religiously affiliated (since Constitutional protections don't apply, and antidiscrimination policies are rarely in place). Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy even proclaimed once that gays should be fired from government jobs if they are "publicly flaunting and broadcasting their homosexual activities". Another problem area is the parade permit controversy. The police are allowed to limit parades in terms of time, place, and manner of demonstration, and any kind of planned outrageous dress, mannerisms, or "coming out" speeches might result in a parade permit denial or police interruption of activities. Cities across America have halted gay parades because naked men were seen walking on stilts or two women were in bed together on a float, and these acts were deemed outrageous by community standards. Also, most gay parades turn out a lot of protest, and require too much police protection. Witness also the problems associated with gay parades coinciding with St. Patrick's Day parades in towns like Boston and NYC. The word "gay" came into being following the 1969 NYC Stonewall Riots http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/events/sw25/index.html where a group calling itself the Gay Liberation Front promoted the word "gay" as preferred to "homosexual" because of its self-affirming message, non-medical origins, and association with a civil rights movement. The word "homosexual" had been around for about 100 years, and is most closely associated with Havelock Ellis, who in 1897 wrote a book claiming that homosexuality has been practiced throughout history as is associated with finer artistic and intellectual achievement. Today's gay and lesbian organizations, who prefer the word "queer" to encompass gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered, promote a variety of reasons for why same-sex relationships and intercourse are preferential, from it being more hygenic http://www.sfweekly.com/1999/current/savage1.html , to it being a freely-chosen lifestyle http://www.glaad.org/ , to the 1993 scientific discovery of a "gay gene http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dh93ge.html " explaining sexual orientation, to the extremely controversial interpretation of the Bible http://www.postfun.com/pfp/homosexual.html , or just the idea that "gay rights" are an indicator of social progress http://www.aclu.org/issues/gay/hmgl.html for politically-persecuted minorities in society (the ACLU position). There's a lot to be said for the social progress idea. The law and criminal justice system have been downright inconsistent and weird when it comes to issues of sexuality (See my essay on Weird Law & Order ../weird.htm ). Also, when you examine the antigay backlash, you see a lot of overreaction. For example, the whole sex education program in schools is currently at a standstill because Congress refuses to provide federal funds for anything that might describe homosexuality as normal or healthy. Support for the arts from the National Endowment for the Arts practically disappeared overnight after the 1990 outcry over Robert Mapplethorpe's display of homoerotic art http://www.ocaiw.com/mapple.htm in Cincinatti. Finally, the current status of obscenity law (see my overview of Freedom of Speech ../410/410lect06.htm ) is in a mess, with three-prong tests and with states and municipalities coming up with local definitions that overreact in the name of community norms. INTERNET RESOURCES ACLU Gay/Lesbian Rights Page http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/index.html Human Rights Campaign http://www.hrc.org International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission http://www.iglhrc.org/site/iglhrc National Gay and Lesbian Task Force http://www.thetaskforce.org Wikipedia Entry on Gay Rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_rights AFA Report says homosexual U.S. attorneys complicit in arrest of Christians. Resource for Court Cases and information about the Lawsuits being Filed and WON against Christian Organizations. Hate Crime examples. Tools you may need to Procedure the Wrongs committed against HomoSexuals. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GayFatMenInLOVE http://www.afa.net/clp/ReleaseDetail.asp?id=81 GayLAW As a free service to the community, GAYLAW maintains a list of its members who have indicated a willingness to receive referrals from individuals who have contacted GAYLAW seeking legal services. GAYLAW is not a law firm, has no staff attorneys, does not represent clients and does not provide legal advice. The list is open to GAYLAW attorneys who have completed informational forms for the purpose of receiving referrals. In compiling the information contained in the list, GAYLAW relies exclusively on the application form completed by the attorneys and does not independently verify any information. From each listed attorney, GAYLAW receives an annual $50 listing fee to defray GAYLAW's cost of providing this list to the community. GAYLAW does not receive any referral or legal fees from attorneys or from individuals seeking a referral. Any terms for taking a case or providing legal advice, including fees, are to be negotiated between an individual seeking a referral and the attorney to whom they are referred. http://www.gaylaw.org/attorneyreferral.html HOSPITAL HORROR: Do NOT go to these HOSPITALS NO MORE. Did Cialis'sss give you dick cancer... YET? Then go masturbate for a while and just die on your own. These privately owned christian Hospitals are NIGHTMARES! Have you talked to the nice man without any legs YET? Have you talked to the decent husband who's WIFE fucked the DOC and PENIS REMOVED the MATE... YET? Have you enjoyed your Diabetes, Your Spaced out "depression", YOUR addicted to pain killers LIFE.... YET? DO NOT GO TO THE DOCTOR, no more, cuz... they are "Staff" workers wrapped in SNAKES, havent you noticed.... YET! WOW! You WANT.... "Jesus"... You GOT "it". You want the Data on What is Going ON? then you LOOK at the FAT belly, along with Johnny Depp... and Scott F. Kennedy... and you READ ALL the PRESIDENTIAL DATA in the Message Section. Dont Want Porn? Then Dont Look at it: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GayFatMenInLOVE Yahweh --------------------------------- Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs.Try it free.