The U.S. is known as the richest country in the world because of its riches, diversity and its limitless opportunities. It’s a land where discrimination should have no place among its people in any aspect but obviously that is not as true as many have been led to believe.
Did you know that you could legally be denied employment, fired or discriminated against because of your sexual orientation? Yes, you heard me right. You can legally be treated unjustly for something that has nothing to do with the work or with the job that you are assigned to do.
While the federal government, and almost every state in the U.S., has laws that prohibit discrimination in employment on the bases of race, color, religion, sex and national origin, the federal government has no law banning private discrimination based on sexual orientation. In 2003, California became the third state to enact a law that made it illegal for employers to fire employees on the bases of sexual orientation.
There is more hope at the state level, as more than 20 states have laws that protect employees from being discriminated against based on their sexual orientation (see map). As you can see Mississippi does not fall in that group.
The United Kingdom faced this situation long ago and confronted it with the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975. This was an act passed by Parliament to protect men and women from discrimination on the grounds of sex or marriage. The act is mainly in relation to employment, training, education, harassment, the provision of goods and services and the disposal of premises.
There were two lesbians that visited my marriage and family class last week. Both were from Webster County, and have both gone on to pursue very successful careers. One is an architect for a contracting establishment, and the other is an engineer and entrepreneur. The architect was the one who told us about her experience with sexual orientation discrimination. She and her partner attended and spoke at a religious conference in Jackson. As you can imagine, this did not go over well with some of the people in attendance, and their story made its way to many major magazines and newspapers.
Many of the people she worked with didn’t know she was gay, but she knew that they probably did by now. She and her boss were about to bargain with a potential buyer and she told her boss that it was probably best if she just used her first name. She said that because she didn’t want to risk losing their business because of the media incident. Her boss told her if the client wouldn’t do business with them because of her sexual orientation, then the firm did not need their business.
As you can see, this is a tale that turned out for the best rather than for the worse, but many people are not so fortunate. This is a terrible situation but there is hope nonetheless. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act is a proposed bill in the United States Congress that would prohibit discrimination against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. This bill has been presented many times but has not gained enough votes to pass in the House of Representatives.
This fight, just like the ones with the many other forms of discrimination, is far from over. We can’t change people’s minds, but we can make it illegal for this type of injustice to continue.
Stedmond Ware is a sophomore majoring in biological sciences. He can be contacted at [email protected].