I am bracing for possible gay bashing today in depositions. I will be truly glad when this whole divorce war is over. The nastiest part of yesterday was after the hearing adjourned when the estranged wife stalked over and said "Your daughter Lauren has melanoma and needs surgery" and then walked off. I, of course, knew nothing about any of it since neither of my two oldest children have been talking to me for months thanks to mommy dearest's constant poison campaign against me. Moreover, my youngest (age 18), who spoke to me twice on Saturday, never mention anything about it to me.
I was stunned and terribly upset and had horrible flash backs to when my oldest had nearly died of bacteria meningitis in 1999. Finally, about 6 hours later I reached her by telephone and learned that her doctors and others did not believe there was any need for panic. I was incredibly relieved, needless to say. The whole episode, however, demonstrates what an evil person the ex-wife has become.
As for the depositions, I am prepared if they try to get any law firms or attorneys to testify that my sexual orientation makes me unemployable. I have printed out the non-discrimination policies of all of Virginia's reputable law schools (that, of course does not include Pat Robertson's Regent University), and confirmed that ALL of them bar firms from recruiting if they discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. If they proffer evidence based on statements of local firms or attorneys, I will (1) post their names and contact information in a future post - hopefully, you all will have at them and blow up their e-mails and phone lines - and (2) immediately forward their information to every one of these law schools.
Truth be told, I am not aware of a single client that has stopped using my law firm because I am gay. In contrast, I have actually picked up dozens of LGBT clients because I am not in the closet, and I suspect a number of my black clients use me because they feel neither I nor my staff will be discriminatory towards them.
2 comments:
Wow. Dude...um...I feel I should have great words here. Afterall, I'm a writer. But really all I've got for you is TTG (Thank the Goddess) your daughter is more or less okay. Keep hanging in, Michael.
Hold on! Character assassination by employers is outside most state's laws. Since the mid-1970s, the corporate, partnership, and proprietor ethos with respect to shared "employment" information is almost always limited to dates of service, title/position, and, perhaps, whether separation was voluntary or involuntary (in most cases, the involuntary is used, and only used if criminal conduct was prosecuted).
The problem of slander and/or libel in mischaracterizing anyone's employment, even unintentionally, which might affect a former employee, stopped employers from sharing any more information due to the enormous economic consequences should such event occur.
When separated employees desired subsequent, future employers to know more from their previous employers, the common practice is for individual employees to solicit their managers' recommendations on the manager's "personal" stationary (never corporate) with a business card attached. I trust that ethos has not evaporated entirely, nor the logic behind it.
When, alas, it comes to extrinsic factors of employment, such as race, religion, creed, color, etc., no company I know would DARE to mention any such factor (and most train their employees to follow suit). First, it violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act for protected classes, and many courts have held that it can apply to GLBT, even if not a protected class of the Act, inasmuch as one's GLBT status is irrelevant to merit and/or performance in the workplace. ENDA would finally codify these and other practices in many jurisdictions to apply nationally.
Second, even statements of known, unquestioned facts without relevance to the factors involved, such as a GLBT in the workforce, have been known to become causes of action on the basis that dissemination of irrelevant information often is intentionally harmful in some areas of society, and thus, serves no other function or purpose than that of slander/libel by "other" means. That's not to prohibit anyone from verbally "observing" such facts, but if that observation could be used/received in a harmful manner, the courts have held those who should (and did know) the possible adverse effects of the irrelevant information it/they shared had, and could only have, the sole intent of deliberately inflicting harm in an irrelevant context, e.g., a former employee's future employment.
As an attorney, you must be aware of these cases. All these cases beg for national conformity by ENDA, but if my sense of things is still timely, (the Old South is obviously not my sense of things), even the threat of irrelevant factual information for the purposes of damaging another often wins at most bars. Usually, a stern look when anyone broaches the subject inappropriately conveys to most adults it's best not to cross that line unless one has deep pockets.
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