Lean Left

And the drumbeat of Bush bigotry pounds on and on

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.

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.

(snip)

Bloch’s position is a marked departure from how the previous special counsel, Elaine Kaplan, enforced the law. “The legal position that he is taking, that there is some distinction between discrimination based on sexual orientation and discrimination based on conduct, is absurd,” Kaplan told Federal Times.

In the logic of the Bush Administration, you cannot be fired for attending a Gay pride event, but that attendance is evidence of homosexuality, and you can be fired for that. The distinction does not exist in any practical sense.

Bush needs to publicly say, right now, that he forbids the firing of an employee because they are gay, or his puts his seal of approval on firing people because of their orientation.