Despite regular messages from the business community that anti-gay discrimination is bad for business, the Republican controlled General Assembly continues to rebuff all efforts to end anti-gay discrimination be it at the workplace even for state employees to other aspects of daily life. The Christofascists at The Family Foundation want the lives of LGBT Virginians to be as miserable as possible. The result? Virginia is increasingly non-competitive when it comes to attracting top talent in both the private and public realms. The Virginian Pilot says it is time for this failed approach to end. Here are editorial highlights:
Virginia law has left its public agencies at a clear competitive disadvantage when it comes to hiring the best employees.
Efforts to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace have been repeatedly scuttled by Republicans in the House of Delegates. An amendment to the state constitution that restricts marriage - unconstitutionally - to a man and a woman has prevented public employers from offering benefits to same-sex and domestic partners.
Such policies would be uniformly bad for businesses, which is why so many private enterprises have ignored the 2006 vote and extended benefits to employees in same-sex couples. That amendment to Virginia's constitution was ruled unconstitutional this year by a federal judge.
It remains inexplicable that members of the GOP - which fancies itself as pro-business and insists government should operate more like a business - would protect practices that few good businesses follow.
About two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies provide health benefits to same-sex and domestic partners of their employees, including the nation's largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores, and Virginia's biggest electric utility, Dominion Resources. They also prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.
A letter petitioning state leaders to expand the state's employee health benefits coverage to gay couples has drawn support from high-profile names at the University of Virginia, including President Teresa Sullivan, former President John T. Casteen III, and constitutional law professors A.E. Dick Howard and Douglas Laycock, the Charlottesville Daily Progress has reported.
Sullivan has previously noted that the state's existing policy has hurt the university's ability to recruit and retain faculty. Which means that one of the nation's greatest public universities, along with state universities and colleges and agencies across Virginia, has been put at a competitive disadvantage because of state policy that discourages some of the brightest scholars, researchers and professionals from working there.
Gay marriage is a reality in many states, and will soon be reality in many more. The business case for withholding benefits from gay couples has long since passed. The marketplace already demands change; courts soon will, too.
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