Metro is playing catch-up, say supporters of gay protections

The argument that protecting Metro government’s gay employees would force the private sector to follow suit is all backward, supporters of a new anti-discrimination measure say.

Around the country, 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies’ anti-discrimination policies include sexual orientation or gender identity. In Nashville, some of the city’s largest private employers — http://www.vanderbilt.edu/“>Vanderbilt University and http://www.hcahealthcare.com/“>Hospital Corporation of America — put similar policies into place.

Against that landscape, the new measure’s supporters say, it should have a better chance of passage than a similar one proposed in 2003. But opponents say following the private-sector pack isn’t the way to go.

“Just because someone else does something doesn’t mean it’s right, and we learned that when we all took off from kindergarten,” said David Fowler, a former state senator and president of the http://www.factn.org/“>Family Action Council of Tennessee. “So unless we are going to act like lemmings and just blindly do what everybody else is doing, we need to stop and think before we make this a law.”

The city already has protections based on race, sex, religious affiliation and national origin in place, Fowler said, and protection based on sexuality is incongruous. He also said such a law could expose the city to lawsuits by people who feel it was broken.

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The Tennessean

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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/metro-is-play…

ACLU demands schools allow access to gay Websites In Tennessee

Students and parents are demanding Metro Nashville’s public schools stop blocking access to Web sites about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. They complained to the American Civil Liberties Union, which on Wednesday gave Metro and Knox County schools an April 29 deadline to announce plans to open access to the non-sexual sites. A letter to the districts threatened lawsuits if they don’t comply.
Metro parents previously complained to the school district about the lack of support for gay and lesbian students, the teasing and the fatal results.
Clare Sullivan, a parent of a lesbian daughter who attended Metro schools, cited recent news reports of students who committed suicide after constant harassment for being gay.
“You have students struggling with these issues,” she said. “If you cut off avenues for discussion, and it’s taboo in schools, where else can they go?”
Sullivan is a member of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, one of the groups whose Web site Metro blocks. Others include the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
Metro uses an outside company that filters Internet access, district spokeswoman Noelle Mashburn said. See ACLU demands schools allow access to gay Websites The Tennessean * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual