Gay Activists to Corporations: Feel the Pain

[w8liftinglady]

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/daily-brief/2011/05/20/corporations-back-anti-gay-employment-measure-in-tennessee



In Tennessee, the legislature has given final approval to to repeal anti-discrimination regulations enacted by local governments that are stricter than the state's laws. The push is specifically targeted at a Nashville ordinance which includes sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of groups who are protected from discrimination. The Nashville measure prohibits companies that discriminate from receiving city contracts.

Republicans in the state House and Senate have succeeded in passing legislation to turn back Nashville's ordinance. The final bill now goes to Governor Bill Haslam, a Republican.

The bill had the strong backing of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, which argued that those kind of anti-discrimination laws pose a hardship to businesses. On the Chamber's board sit representatives of some big companies: Nissan, FedEx, AT&T, Comcast, DuPont, Pfizer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Caterpillar, KPMG, Whirlpool, Embraer, Alcoa, and United HealthCare.

That kind of corporate involvement has some bloggers and gay activists launching a campaign to pressure Haslam to veto the bill and to punish the companies involved. That effort is being led by John Aravosis, the founder of AmericaBlog. Aravosis writes in a blog post that he doesn't buy the chamber's argument that this is about business and not prejudice, and he vows to show the "meaning of pain" to the corporations involved.

Don't think that this is only about Tennessee. If the religious right, and their new corporate henchmen, are successful in repealing current, and banning future, gay rights law in Tennessee, they'll do the same thing in every single state until only a handful of states protect our community.

After all, if the state of Texas were to pass a gay rights law and Tennessee didn't have such a law, then it would be oh so confusing for these poor corporations, having one law in TX and another in TN, and they'd simply have to lobby the Texas legislature to repeal statewide civil rights protections too—right?

According to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay and lesbian lobby, three of every five citizens live in jurisdictions that don't have anti-discrimination protections. Federal legislation to include those protections nationally, known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, remains stuck in Congress.

[mitchtv]

1. Tennesee, it's the new Alabama

[RKP5637]

2. Turning back the hands of time. These asses would like to live perpetually in the

Age of Stupidity. Another WTF moment.

[fiberlady]

3. 200 years behind the times

I agree it's the age of stupidity in Tennessee. I live in TN and see it.

[RKP5637]

4. So sad. It's like this whole country is drinking water laced with stupidity! n/t