Until laws on Gays Change, Virginia Will Lose Good People

I do not make any effort to hide the fact that but for the boyfriend's (soon to be husband's) successful salon, I'd be pushing to leave Virginia in a heartbeat - and I'd shake the dust off of my feet as I left.  In point of fact, we know a number of people who have left the state and moved to more gay friendly states taking their talents and assets with them.  Even within Virginia, gays routinely leave backward rural areas for more tolerant regions and cities.  The net impact is a lose for Virginia and, for the rural areas, they sink further into a "Deliverance" mindset which guarantees that much desired new businesses and corporations will avoid the areas.  And rightly so.  An op-ed in the Virginian Pilot bemoans the fact that because of the Christofascist/Virginia GOP maintained homophobia in this state, good and talented people continue to leave.  Here are excerpts:

The state's hostility toward gays and lesbians - both implicit and explicit - forced Laura Laing and her partner to leave Virginia nearly a decade ago.  It was the Commonwealth's loss.

Laing and Gina Foringer lived in Norfolk, and they had a daughter. Laing was the biological parent, but Foringer's rights were limited here - partly because of a 2004 state law that "put into question contracts that (same-sex) couples had together," Laing told me Wednesday.  The Affirmation of Marriage Act also prohibited same-sex unions. 

"We felt Virginia wasn't going to protect our family," said Laing, who formerly worked for Inside Business and PilotOnline.com.  In 2005, the couple and their 5-year-old daughter moved to Baltimore. The change has been dramatic.

They visited schools where same-sex parents weren't a big deal.  Then last year, Laing and Foringer got married. Maryland is one of several states that allow civil unions or gay marriages.

Their daughter is now 13 and in the eighth grade. And Foringer recently started an environmental contracting firm.   Virginia missed out on that, too," said Laing, who remains a writer.

Her views are worth noting, following a March poll on attitudes toward gays and lesbians in the commonwealth. Virginians might be more hospitable today, but we've lost folks who got tired of fighting for equality and simple common decency.

And what's behind Virginia's continued anti-gay legal climate?  The desire of folks like Victoria Cobb at The Family Foundation who seek to impose their beliefs on all and make a living peddling hatred.  People who have a sick need to feel superior to others whom they want to look down upon as "sinners" and who they want to keep inferior under the civil laws.  It is time that this end once and for all.