I have argued here a number of times that the experience of watching the civil rights movment abandon colorblind equal protection in favor of racial preference not long after the colorblind standard was enacted into law in the 1964 Civil Rights Act has stiffened the resistance to what are now demands for equal rights for gays.
Additional evidence for this conclusion can be found in Arkansas, where legislation to add sexual preference to Arkansas’s 1993 civil rights act has stalled.
Evan Breedlove of Fort Smith, a longtime personnel manager representing Arkansas self-insured businesses, said the change would make his job more difficult. “I would see an increase in litigation. As an employer, I don’t care what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom, even if I don’t agree with it. With this I will have to become concerned,” he said.
Breedlove said the change would make gays and lesbians a protected group under the law, and employers would have to take steps to ensure they are not discriminated against. “I have to keep records on females and on race now, and I have to recruit [based on that] now,” he said.
….
Democratic representative Bob Adams of Sheridan suggested the law could open the door to affirmative action laws requiring companies to hire gays and lesbians.
the additional evidence is that someone suggested it?
Pardon me. I assumed, mistakenly, that it would be clear that the reason I have made this claim here before is that many people have “suggested’ that they favor equal rights but not “special rights.” The examples from Arkansas were intended to be merely, well, examples. Sorry, actus. I’ll try to be clearer in the future.
What I don’t get is why so many people feel obliged to flaunt their sexual activities in public. I don’t care what people do in private, as long as it is between consenting adults. But I do find these overt public displays to be crass and rude; I don’t have any particular desire to be treated to a public display of someone’s personal proclivities, be they hetero, homo, or multi. Whatever, they don’t belong in the workplace.
Claire, I agree that lines of acceptable behavior must be drawn somewhere, but gays often seem to be held to much higher standards than are straights.
Are two boyfriends flaunting their sexuality when they kiss upon reuniting in an airport terminal? Is a woman flaunting her sexuality when she emails co-workers that she must leave early to care for her sick wife? Is a man flaunting his sexuality by keeping on his desk a photograph of his husband and daughter, and to anyone who asks replying truthfully as to who they are? Is a girl flaunting her sexuality by bringing a girlfriend to a high school dance and slow dancing with her?
1. I have never seen two boyfriends (or girlfriends) kissing in an airport, although I have seen obvious gay couples at airports.
2. I have never received an email stating any reason for leaving early, other than “I’m flying out at 3:00”. Being absent, yes. Leaving early, no.
3. I have seen pictures of gay lovers in cubicles. Nobody cared. Granted, I have probably never worked with one of the 95 gay custodial fathers in this country.
4. OK, slow dancing could be an issue. Is this law for them?
My point being, this nation has made a hell of a lot of progress on gay rights in the last few decades, and we did it without civil rights laws. The only upside to this bill will be to clean up what many consider trite examples of hardships for gays.
Now what I have experienced was an employee who made a habit of photographing the butts of other male employees without their consent. He was eventually demoted and then fired because his work performance was o.k., but not good enough to justify the annoyance he caused every other male employee. Under such a law he could sue for a big ass settlement (no pun), just for being a pain in the ass himself (again no pun).
Similarly, I could get myself in serious trouble for making puns out of the word “ass”, intended or otherwise. Remember Southwest Airlines and “eeny-meeny-miny-moe”? All of this so that a gay woman will feel safe telling everyone on her email list that she’s leaving work early to care for her wife.
p.s. – I could not submit this using the word “lesb***”. I get the “questionable content” error. John, there ought to be a way to sue you for this!
John (from OK), I was straying from the original topic to address Claire’s post, and asking semi-rhetorical questions to try to better understand her position, as she wrote that she is bothered equally by displays of sexuality from gays and straights. She may be consistent in this but my experience is that “flaunting their sexuality” and “I don’t care what goes on behind closed doors” is the language of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” standard for gays that is not applied to straights.
I don’t support the Arkansas legislation (though I would if it covered only the public sector), nor did I believe it would apply to gay couples at airports and school dances.
Re filtering out lest****:
As I’ve explained before: The problem is that when I first got my comment spam blocker (comment spam is an enormous problem — not bad comments, etc., but massive attacks of sales of viagra, etc.) I went overboard with wildcards in my filter strings, thinking that the filter applied only to URLs and not to the content of the comment. As a result I have blocked some entirely legitimate comments. When I discover those I try to find the offending line in a massive amount of code, but this time it was easy.
Sorry Nels, I misunderstood your point, to which I might even reluctantly agree.
p.s. Lesbian!
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