Perhaps fearing that its pandering to the religious
conservatives' anti-gay agenda has gone too far (or been perceived
as such), the White House declared this week that gay federal
employees should not face workplace discrimination. The
San Francisco Chronicle reports:
"Long-standing federal policy prohibits discrimination against federal employees based on sexual orientation," said White House spokesman Ken Lisaius. "President Bush expects federal agencies to enforce this policy and to ensure that all federal employees are protected from unfair discrimination at work."
The surprise announcement came on the heels of mounting controversy over actions last month by a Bush appointee that appeared to reverse part of that policy. Social conservative Scott Bloch -- new head of the office charged with protecting federal workers from discrimination (!) -- in early February removed references to sexual orientation from his agency's website, complaint forms, brochures and training documents. Reports the Chronicle:
The Bloch controversy has threatened to undermine Bush's repeated efforts to emphasize his tolerance for gays and lesbians even as he backs a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. It may also cement perceptions that the president is hostile to the gay community"
It's unclear, however, whether Bloch himself will now be pressured to reverse his "gay removal" policy, as the administration tries to find just the right balance between appearing too tolerant and too intolerant.
More on Massachusetts.
A correspondent writes:
In fairness to Kerry, the proposed MA "civil unions" are marriage in all but name. So, of course, the religious right is dead set against them and the constitutional amendment [in Massachusetts, which bans gay marriage but puts in place civil unions]. This issue boils down to how important you think a name is.
Ok, let me try this again. Kerry is better than Bush on gay
issues, but not to the extent that justifies the free pass from gay
supporters he's been getting. If Massachusetts had simply passed a
Kerry-backed civil unions bill, that would be one thing. But once
the state's Supreme Judicial Court put access to "real" marriage on
the table, the bar for what's acceptable was permanently raised.
Now, it would be a large step backwards to tie civil unions to a
constitutional amendment that enshrines the concept that:
It being the public policy of this commonwealth to protect the unique relationship of marriage, only the union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as marriage in the commonwealth.
In other words, they're saying that they'll never let us have full marriage equality -- not now, not down the road, no how.
This is more than just a matter of names, in my opinion, or even
of whether civil unions might, under other circumstances, have been
prudent as an intermediate step.