Gay Couples May Soon Have to Choose Between Getting Married and Not Getting Fired

[xchrom]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/07/03/gay_couples_may_soon_have_marriage_rights_but_still_face_discrimination.html


Same-sex marriage supporters Barbara Lawrence and Kimmy Denny chant outside the Miami-Dade County courthouse following a hearing seeking to strike down the state's de facto ban on gay marriage on July 2, 2014.


The U.S. Constitution protects gay people’s right to marry the person they love. It does not, however, protect them from getting fired for doing so. Throughout the first decade of marriage equality, most states that legalized gay marriage also proscribed anti-gay employment discrimination, rendering this legal dissonance moot. But as more and more states find marriage equality foisted upon them by a judicial mandate, this discordance in rights presents something of a ticking time bomb for the LGBT movement.

Currently, Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation with both gay marriage (thanks to a federal judge) and no employment protections for gay people. But as this dizzyingly polychromatic Guardian chart illustrates, several other states also boast same-sex marriage while lacking hospital visitation, adoption rights, or housing protections for sexual minorities. In New Mexico, a man can marry his male partner—but can be forbidden from visiting him in the hospital. In New York and New Hampshire, trans people can be evicted from their houses and fired from their jobs for being trans. In Hawaii, a gay student can legally be kicked out of school based solely on his orientation.

And when the Supreme Court almost inevitably legalizes marriage equality nationwide, the chasm between gay marriage and broader LGBT equality is going to expand rapidly in dozens of red states. Marriage equality was supposed to be an umbrella issue, pulling purportedly lesser gay rights into its sweep. To some extent, this strategy has succeeded: Most Americans now profess a generalized support for gay equality. But in direly reactionary states, it may take decades to convert this support into legislative action—even after the judiciary renders gay marriage a settled issue.

There are some stopgap solutions here. President Barack Obama has ordered most hospitals to provide visitation rights to gay couples, extended LGBT protections to federal employees and federal contractors, and forbidden gay and trans discrimination by HUD-assisted housing programs. But administrative regulations and executive orders can’t extend as far as a federal measure would, and a Republican president could swiftly reverse them on his first day in office. An ENDA-type federal law could permanently outlaw this kind of discrimination everywhere, but the Republican-controlled House refuses to pass one, and LGBT job discrimination remains legal (and common) in 29 states.

[HockeyMom]

1. The possible repercussion are frightening

when you start thinking about religious businesses firing employees for their personal behaviors. "Shacking up" without sacred, holy, matrimony? A female employee giving birth out of holy wedlock? Divorced, remarried and having children? All SINNERS! If they pay you wages with their money, they can tell you what to do with that money, and how to live your life outside of work based on THEIR religion?

My daughter married last year. Her wife works for an auto insurance company. My daughter works for a retail chain. What is their employers religion? We have absolutely no idea.

[MNBrewer]

2. I can see the ban on discrimination on the basis of marital status

going right out the window in this brave new world of Corporate Religious Identity.