– ‘Pure idiocy’ –
Rights activists hope the firestorm that erupted in March when Indiana enacted a religious freedom law seen to target homosexuals represents a major legislative shift.
Companies like Apple – whose chief executive Tim Cook is openly gay – Levi’s and Yelp threatened boycotts and issued strong rebukes, with the president of hotel giant Marriott, Arne Sorenson, blasting the law as “pure idiocy from a business perspective.”
The Republican-dominated Indiana legislature caved to the pressure and passed a second law specifically forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender.
There has also been progress at the federal level despite the lack of explicit protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began prosecuting the cases of people fired for being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender in 2012, using a convoluted argument that it falls under the recognized category of sex discrimination because they were targeted for failing to conform to gender stereotypes.
A lesbian fired from an Iowa casino after ten years as a marketing manager used that argument to sue for wrongful dismissal because her boss repeatedly told her to wear more feminine clothes.
The lack of explicit protection and a political climate in which homophobia is masked as religious expression encourages discrimination, said Jennifer Pizer, director of the law and policy at rights group Lambda Legal.
“People lose jobs because the manager or the boss believes they can fire the people with impunity,” she told AFP.
“Lots of people may find it impractical to litigate. That’s a reality.”
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