DR Robin: I was shocked (as in
) to read your post about the Bush Administration's attempts to reinstate discrimination in the workplace against gay men and lesbians. Since you weren't able to post the article in question (working from another source), I decided to track down the
Federal Times Online piece myself.
On the one hand, I have to consider the following quote from the article:
(Scott) Bloch, who began a five-year term as special counsel in January, said he does not believe the list of prohibited personnel actions outlined in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act covers discrimination based on sexual orientation.
It is a marked departure from how the previous special counsel, Elaine Kaplan, enforced the law and appears to contradict the Office of Personnel Management’s guidance to agencies and employees regarding workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. OPM has held since 1980 that discrimination based on sexual orientation is covered as a prohibited personnel practice under the 1978 reform act and can be appealed to OSC. The act covers all conduct “which does not adversely affect” performance, although it doesn’t specifically list sexual orientation.Technically, Bloch is correct. In 1978, references to sexual orientation would not have been written into such things as the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. This doesn't make his opinion any the less odious; it just lines it up with the "Hate the sin and not the sinner" attitude some churches have taken and spins it into reverse.
But, consider this as well:
Bloch said a senior OSC staff member first raised the issue shortly after Bloch took office in January by questioning a slide show presentation, used in training sessions with employees at federal agencies, that referred to OSC’s enforcement of sexual orientation discrimination. A couple of weeks later, Bloch said he decided to remove references to sexual orientation from the slide show and all other OSC materials posted online after reviewing the law and discovering that sexual orientation isn’t mentioned.From my reading of the article, it is not the Bush administration that is removing the references (as the posting from the
In These Times missive you received suggests), but only those references
within the Office of Special Council, directly under Bloch's management, that have been removed. Indeed, the
Federal Times article includes the following:
Bloch’s predecessor, Washington attorney Kaplan, called his reading of the law “dead wrong.”
“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 said. “It is a distinction that has not been made by OPM, the Justice Department or anybody else in the executive branch.”Thus, this is the action of one man, imposing his viewpoint on those working for him but as yet without support from other offices.
Finally, it's worth reading the final paragraph:
Bloch earned his law degree from the University of Kansas and was a partner in a Kansas law firm, where he specialized in civil rights law, employment law and legal ethics, according to the White House. Before he was nominated as special counsel, Bloch was deputy director of the Justice Department’s Task Force for Faith-based and Community Initiatives.Hmmmm. While some of us aren't in Kansas any more, it appears somebody got left behind.
