![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
disneydream06Walker Appointee: It Should Be Legal To Harass Gays In the Workplace
by Robin Marty
If organizers manage to get the 560,000 plus registered voters to sign the petitions, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will be up for recall and could possibly be replaced with a new governor sometime next year. But that doesn’t stop the damage already done to the state by Walker’s appointees, conservatives who have made it a mission to dismantle union rights, roll back reproductive health, sex education and birth control access, and even fight against basic civil rights.
One such appointee? Commissioner Laurie McCallum, who believes that gays cannot be harassed in the workplace, because sexual orientation is not a protected category in the workplace. According to the Wisconsin Gazette, “…McCallum, the politically connected wife of former GOP Gov. Scott McCallum, defied nearly 30 years of precedent in state law by asserting that sexual ‘preference,’ as she put it, is not a protected category in workplace discrimination cases. McCallum’s stance alarmed civil rights advocates as well as her fellow commissioners, who warned that her view could upend legal tradition and ‘make it permissible to harass an employee based upon race, national origin, religion, age or disability,’ as well as sexual orientation.”
McCallum was outvoted, but as opponents noted, Walker can continue to appoint commissioners with the same anti-homosexual views for as long as he is in office.
Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/walker-appointee-it-should-be-legal-to-harass-gays-in-the-workplace.html#ixzz1fWk8SOkJ
by Robin Marty
If organizers manage to get the 560,000 plus registered voters to sign the petitions, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will be up for recall and could possibly be replaced with a new governor sometime next year. But that doesn’t stop the damage already done to the state by Walker’s appointees, conservatives who have made it a mission to dismantle union rights, roll back reproductive health, sex education and birth control access, and even fight against basic civil rights.
One such appointee? Commissioner Laurie McCallum, who believes that gays cannot be harassed in the workplace, because sexual orientation is not a protected category in the workplace. According to the Wisconsin Gazette, “…McCallum, the politically connected wife of former GOP Gov. Scott McCallum, defied nearly 30 years of precedent in state law by asserting that sexual ‘preference,’ as she put it, is not a protected category in workplace discrimination cases. McCallum’s stance alarmed civil rights advocates as well as her fellow commissioners, who warned that her view could upend legal tradition and ‘make it permissible to harass an employee based upon race, national origin, religion, age or disability,’ as well as sexual orientation.”
McCallum was outvoted, but as opponents noted, Walker can continue to appoint commissioners with the same anti-homosexual views for as long as he is in office.
Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/walker-appointee-it-should-be-legal-to-harass-gays-in-the-workplace.html#ixzz1fWk8SOkJ
