NEWSEMPLOYMENT NON-DISCRIMINATION ACT

After a couple of delays and an epic Midwestern blizzard, the Manhattan, Kansas City Commission is set to vote next week on a non-discrimination ordinance, of which I have written here and here. We are on the eve of something that, frankly, is far too long in coming, and it’s very exciting.

But lo! Opposition appears on the horizon in the form of Bishop Paul Coakley and the Catholic Diocese of Salina. Big fracking surprise.

In a letter to the City Commission, attorneys for Coakley and the diocese claim that passing the ordinance will undermine the religious freedom of people trying to live within the guidelines of the faith.

University of Minnesota has quite a problem on its hands: an associate women's golf coach named Kathryn Brenny has filed a lawsuit that alleges her superior, golf director John Harris, discriminated against her and fired her for being a lesbian.

Though Brenny signed a $44,000 contract just last August, director Harris soon demanded she stay on campus, focusing on "humiliating" clerical duties, rather than on tour with the team. According to Brenny's lawsuit, officially filed today, Harris told her that if she didn't cooperate, she would be out of a job.

It wasn't until later, Brenny says, that she heard Harris and other officials were uncomfortable having a lesbian travel with the all women's team, allegedly concerned about LGBT people's mythical predatory habits.

Brenny soon resigned, citing a "hostile work environment, discrimination, retaliation and harassment, and discrimination concerning sexual preference" in her suit, filed under Minnesota's Human Rights Act.

"Almost as soon as I arrived in Minnesota, I was not permitted to carry out the duties of the position, and I was denied the opportunity to coach the team,” Brenny said in a statement. “This included my not being permitted to travel with the team to the four tournaments scheduled for the fall. The atmosphere that was created became more and more hostile, to the point where it made it intolerable for me to even perform the limited administrative duties that had been reassigned to me.”

The University's legal team insists nothing improper went down, yes, but if Brenny was indeed discriminated against, the school and Harris have a responsibility to come clean; not just for justice, but for the good of their entire state.

Professor, firefighter, journalist, parent, social worker, interfaith leader, professional musician, and accountant. These are just some of the professions seen in a new multimedia campaign, "I AM: Trans People Speak," from the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC). The campaign, launched in connection with Transgender Awareness Week 2010, November 13 to 21, aims to raise awareness "about the diverse communities of trans individuals, families, and allies."

The video after the jump below is only one of several from MTPC's Transpeoplespeak.org site, profiling transgender people in our communities. (Visit the site to learn how to contribute your own video, audio, or text stories.) Even if you are transgender yourself or already consider yourself a trans ally, the stories will inspire you.

It's 2010, and most people know that gay men are more than just hairdressers and florists; that lesbians are more than just gym teachers and womyn's bookstore owners. Transgender people still have much less visibility, however. I imagine when the uninformed think about what transgender people do for a living, they think of drag performers -- a gross misunderstanding of what being transgender really is. (Drag is by definition a performance; being transgender is an identity.) The MTPC campaign hopes to remedy the misconceptions and highlight the realities of transgender people's experiences.

One unfortunate reality is that transgender people are widely discriminated against. Up to 56 percent of transgender people report having been fired and up to 47 percent report having been denied employment, says MTPC. Up to 21 percent report having been verbally or physically harassed in the workplace.

Many transgender people are also the victims of hate crimes. Fifteen percent of the nearly 1,700 anti-LGBT hate crimes in 2006 were against people who self-identified as transgender -- but MTPC says the number is underreported. And this Saturday, November 20, marks the twelfth annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to remember those killed because of anti-transgender hatred or prejudice.

Many of us hit up fast-food chains on our lunch breaks — perhaps even Subway. But one man’s trip to a Subway in Iceland made a turn for the worse when a Subway employee refused to serve him because the employee thought he was gay. The customer was wearing pink, which was enough to make the employee think he was gay.

It looks a little like this in a math equation: Pink = gay = no service from this Subway employee.

The customer and the group he was with left, outraged over the discriminatory treatment. They took their message to the Subway corporation in Iceland, and in a stroke of solid activism, they got a response. The head of Subway in Iceland apologized, and promptly fired the employee.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was the guest of honor at the 10th Annual Victory Fund's Gay & Lesbian Leadership Awards on Wednesday, where she stated that 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' will be gone by the end of the year.

"It will just be a sad memory," she said.

Quite the bold statement given the recent ruling and the failure of the U.S. Senate to successfully repeal the outmoded and discriminatory rule. Pelosi followed with an even more vague explanation that, "some are here tonight who served in our military. ... Because of the courage of some of them, this will be gone by the end of the year."

Am I the only one getting déjà vu here?

An outrageously important election is rapidly approaching and many voters are completely disenchanted. The discourse is uncivil, distracted, hyperbolic and impossibly divisive. Reasonable people are rendered speechless in a media atmosphere that rewards the loudest and the most outlandish.  The current political climate is disheartening and energy-sucking and it will only get worse after November 2.

For a good amount of time now, one of the only public voices that has made any sense is that of The Daily Show's Jon Stewart, so it isn't surprising that his upcoming "Rally To Restore Sanity" is the first aspect of this election season to inspire me. Stewart is calling for reasonable people to stand up and be counted in an effort to reclaim common sense and civil discourse.

Perhaps it's time to resoundingly echo this call to restore sanity -- especially on the gay rights front.

Ours is a movement plagued by a vocal and penetrating fringe opposition. It is imperative that we appeal to the hearts and minds of the reasonable people who have been poisoned by said opposition. We need to encourage people to step back from the situation and to look at LGBT equality from a common sense level.

The goals of our journey are not unreasonable and they are not dissimilar from the basic human desires of our opposition.

"Enough with the mock outrage, already. It's the Catholic Church!" So wrote a reader upon hearing about Christine Judd, the long-serving and beloved Dean who was ousted from Springfield, Massachusetts' Cathedral High School for marrying her longtime lesbian lover last summer. She was given a decision: resign or be fired. She chose the former.

The aforementioned reader's reaction wasn't the only exhibition of anger of the infuriating news, nor does it come out of the blue: there has been a spate of gay-related discrimination at Catholic Schools in the recent past, and the church has led the way in damning same-sex love.

It's only natural that LGBT people would feel a bit bitter about the church and other prejudiced religious institutions. The fact of the matter is, however, that this knee-jerk reaction does a disservice to pious people who fight for gay rights with the same gusto as the most progressive atheist.

There's not much super fun about a job interview. Uncomfortable suit, explaining that six month gap on your resumé, having to say, "I think my biggest fault is that I'm a perfectionist" with a straight face. And, for some, waiting for that moment when you may have to address the fact that you're not heterosexual.

After law school I had an interview with a high-powered attorney. Everything was going really well, and then he started reading over my resumé. And I knew what was coming. "What's OUTlaw?" Here we go. "OUTlaw is an on-campus organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students." Pause. "Oh."

I can't say with any shred of conviction that the man interviewing me was anti-gay. (Although his current stance as a candidate for California State Attorney General gives me a clue...) But personally, I felt a heaviness for the rest of the interview, as though where he used to see smart, accomplished law student he now only saw lesbian. I didn't want it to be a factor, but I didn't want to leave OUTlaw off of my resumé, either. In any case, I got the job.

I thought of that yesterday, when I walked into the career fair at Lavender Law, the annual LGBT Bar Association legal conference, which was a sight to behold. A huge room, packed table after table with law firms, legal companies, non-profits, the Department of Justice, all companies with non-discrimination policies firmly in place, all seeking to interview the best and brightest LGBT law students this country has to offer.

Homophobia has many faces, many forms and many nameless companions.

What looks like purely anti-gay activity may in fact be something far more insidious and complex, a fact made crystal clear by the murky case of openly gay police officer Michael Verdugo, who's currently fighting to keep his police certification after being booted for appearing in a gay porn.

Verdugo maintains that his peers at the Hollywood, Florida Police Department were motivated by gay hate. Hollywood officials insist they felt misled by Verdugo's secrecy. Either way you cut it, however, we're seeing how sexual policing remains alive and well in the United States, and often arises on its own accord.

Thirty-six year old Verdugo's woes began in 2008, when his stint on a realit

The American Family Association (AFA) and other social conservatives have been hounding Home Depot for months over the company's support for LGBT employees and pride events. The protests didn't get too far, and it looked like the AFA's cries had been in vain. Luckily for them, the right has found a new case to help bolster their crusade: Home Depot's firing of employee Trevor Keezor for wearing a "One Nation Under God" button.

Now Keezor has filed a lawsuit on grounds of religious discrimination and joined the AFA's cause. "If you're a Christian or a patriot and you want to wear a patriotic button, that violates the corporate policy," he claimed. "But if you're a homosexual and you want to wear an apron with pro-gay buttons and homosexual messages, and wear them in pride parades and gay and lesbian film festivals, those are approved by the Home Depot."

Home Depot defended themselves by insisting that corporate policy prohibits unapproved pins. This associate chose to wear a button that expressed his religious beliefs. The issue is not whether or not we agree with the message on the button," said a spokesman. "Only company-provided pins and badges can be worn on our aprons." Despite all the conservative the outcry, Home Depot refuses to buckle to conservative pressure, thereby earning some LGBT love for their unyielding support of same-sex acceptance.

Before we celebrate Home Depot too much, however, let's consider their PAC's campaign contributions: like Target and Best Buy before it, Home Depot's politics are not as LGBT-friendly as the company lets on.