The Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Virginia is doing a two part story on the difficulties of LGBT employees in Virginia and the issues universities and other employers face when seeking to recruit desired faculty and staff. As noted before, I get calls regularly from individuals who have received job offers in Virginia who want to know the status of the law for LGBT citizens. Typically, after learning that they would have no employment non-discrimination protections whatsoever under Virginia law and that their committed life relationships receive zero recognition, many opt to decline the job offers. Virginia is increasingly at a competitive disadvantage because of the Republican Party of Virginia's puppet role to the toxic puppeteers at The Family Foundation who seek to inflict their "biblical world view" on all Virginians. Here are some highlights from part 1 of the story:
When Ellen Bass, an associate professor in the department of Systems and Information Engineering, came to the Charlottesville in 2002 with her partner and son, she had to overcome a huge financial hurdle. “It cost me thousands of dollars to be a gay person,” Bass said, recounting, “I didn’t get moving benefits for my partner, I didn’t get help to find my partner a job, I couldn’t insure her or her son with my health benefits” — options that a heterosexual employee of the University would enjoy.
The University’s current equal opportunity and affirmative action statement, which was updated as recently as January 6, 2011, includes sexual orientation on a long list of traits that the University disregards while administrating its programs, procedures and practices. However, same-sex couples have yet to receive the equal benefits described by Bass.
Article 1, section 15-A of the Virginia Constitution, which was amended after a statewide vote in 2006, not only bans same-sex marriages and unions, but also prohibits the commonwealth and its political subdivisions from recognizing “another union, partnership, or other legal status to which is assigned the rights, benefits, obligations, qualities, or effects of marriage.” This code prohibits the University and other state-affiliated organizations from offering its same-sex employees partnership benefits, said Susan Carkeek, the University’s chief Human Resources officer.
The University’s inability to extend benefits to the partners of same-sex employees not only raises questions about equality, but also creates additional institutional problems.
The lack of such benefits makes the University less competitive when attracting new faculty and staff who may identify as gay or lesbian. Carkeek admitted that the University’s current policies make it less attractive to certain potential employees. “Not being able to offer benefits to domestic partners makes the U.Va. benefits package less competitive than that of other universities we compete with for the best faculty and staff,” she said.
“A lot of people don’t come here in the first place,” Bass, the University professor, said in regard to potential gay faculty and staff. “People leave, we don’t have a large number. If you identify a great LGBT person, it’s very difficult to bring that person’s partner in because it won’t help them get a job.”
There are outlets of support for the University’s LGBT employees. Both Bass and Strickler are co-conveners for U.Va. Pride, an organization that serves the needs of the University’s LGBT faculty, staff and graduate students. Founded in 1992, the organization has been key to bringing LGBT issues to the forefront of University politics, as well as creating a supportive and social environment for the University’s LGBT community.
But the lack of health benefits for same-sex partners still remains a pertinent issue. Apart from creating a tremendous financial hurdle for the University’s LGBT employees, the absence of such benefits “adds to the environment of stigma and bias,” Strickler said, adding that the University’s current policy says to its LGBT employees, “Your health doesn’t matter like other people’s matters.”
Multiply this situation across all of Virginia's public colleges and universities and municipalities and the numbers of people discriminated against mushrooms. All because unconstitutional religious based discrimination has been written into the state's laws to stroke the theocrats who ultimately control the Republican Party of Virginia. As noted before, once the boyfriend's parents pass on, I have no desire whatsoever to remain in Virginia.
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