Outside Covington, Lexington, and Louisville, Kentuckians can be fired for their “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” with no legal recourse. You might hear from those who don’t support fairness that passing a Statewide Fairness Law is a new concept and not in keeping with Kentucky’s values. They’re wrong. Expanding Kentucky’s civil rights code to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” is simply an expansion of existing laws that protect people from being fired for reasons other than job performance. And, fairness really is a Kentucky value!
In 1999, Kentucky Fairness Alliance (KFA) hired Decision Research to poll Kentuckians on their feelings about protections in the workplace for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals. 74% OF KENTUCKIANS RESPONDING SAID NO TO DISCRIMINATION AND YES TO PROTECTIONS!
In 2007, Gallup found that the number of AMERICANS SUPPORTING FAIRNESS IN THE WORKPLACE HAS CLIMBED TO AN ALL TIME HIGH OF 89%. 98% of the Fortune 1000 companies prohibit employment discrimination against gay employees; 58% include transgender employees.
Support for employment protections is clear! Unfortunately, sexual orientation and gender identity are not included in existing federal non-discrimination laws. Twenty states have expanded their non-discrimination laws to include sexual orientation; thirteen of those states include gender identity.
In 2008, Kentucky State Senators Harper-Angel, Neal, Scorsone, and Shaughnessy filed legislation with State Representatives Burch, Marzian, Meeks, Palumbo, Stein, and Westrom to expand employment protections in Kentucky to include sexual orientation and gender identity. That leaves us at least 60 legislators short of the majority we need to pass a law. We need your help!
HOMEWORK: Do you have a personal story of discrimination in the workplace? Share it with us by posting a response here. Personal stories are the best way we can share the importance of employment protections with our elected officials.
That’s all for now. We’ll see you next week when we discuss inclusive hate crime laws.
In fairness,
Your KFA Team.
Sources: http://www.lgbtmap.org/, http://www.gallup.com/, http://www.thetaskforce.org/ and http://www.hrc.org/.
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1 comment:
Protect, or Don't protect
I worked at a non-profit, that was primarily backed by religious support. The exemptions to all anti-discrimination clauses on the books today is that non-profits and religious-based organizations/companies can discriminated based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression. I may be mistaken, but did they give the racist buisness owners a pass on equality?
This backward organization, of which I was a part, decided to promote the supervisor who made numerous derrogatory remarks about the sexuality and gender expression of fellow exployees. We must have protection. There should be no exemptions.
They need to make a decision, preferably the correct one.
PROTECTION FOR ALL!
andY?
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