Just As I Thought

Huh? Wha?

I could have sworn I just heard NPR’s Bob Edwards tell me that some moron in a southern county wants to outlaw homosexuality and not allow any gay people to live in that county. Evidently this is the same county where the Scopes trial took place.
Anyone else hear this? Or was a having a waking nightmare?
What the HELL is happening in our country???

The lovely and talented Irish Paperboy found it at: http://www.wkrn.com/Global/story.asp?S=1718183&nav=1ugFLb9D

The fact that this is happening in Rhea County makes me want to quote one of my favorite lines from “Inherit The Wind:”
I do not think about things that I do not think about.
Do you ever think about things you do think about?

And as if that’s not enough, Go Fish notes that the gay and lesbian workforce in the federal government just lost their protections.

Gay and lesbians in the entire federal workforce have had their job protections officially removed by the office of Special Counsel. The new Special Counsel, Scott Bloch, says his interpretation of a 1978 law intended to protect employees and job applicants from adverse personnel actions is that gay and lesbian workers are not covered.

Bloch said that the while a gay employee would have no recourse for being fired or demoted for being gay, that same worker could not be fired for attending a gay Pride event.

Is the legacy of the Bush administration going to be the official institution of discrimination against an entire class of the American people?
This guy Bloch insists that he is making a distinction between a class and a behavior.

In his interpretation, Bloch is making a distinction between one�s conduct as a gay or lesbian and one�s status as a gay or lesbian.

�People confuse conduct and sexual orientation as the same thing, and I don�t think they are,� Bloch said in an interview with Federal Times, a publication for government employees.

Well, I guess it’s lucky that I’m neither dating (nor seem to have any possibilities thereof) nor engaging in any soft of sexual activity. Being a celibate gay guy seems to be OK with this administration… for now. But heaven forbid — pun intended — that I should meet someone and actually want to have a committed relationship, eh?

6 comments

  • You had to listen to NPR to tell you that Southern people feel that way?
    Not all of them however, we here in the South still love Micheal Stipe, Truman Capote and the Tennessee Lady Volunteer’s basketball team.

  • I have a post planned for this a little later. It’s like the land that time forgot down there. The South is a strange place.

  • Gene,
    You’ve actually got Bloch’s position backwards, which is even scarier. He actually said that behavior is protected but that orientation itself is not. So you can be fired merely for being gay, though you can’t be fired for gay behavior.

  • Holy cow — you’re right, Thom.
    I guess that protects those drunk college guys who claim that they are not gay, but just “curious”.
    So this is the opposite tack than the fundamentalists. He’s basically saying that it’s not the sex act that’s the problem, it’s just the fact that a person is gay.
    WHOA.

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