Is Virginia's Homophobia Hurting Its Economy?

The Washington Post reports in Saturday's edition that a bidding war in the DC Metro area to attract aerospace and defense manufacturing giant Northrop Grumman has taken an interesting turn of events with a queer twist. In January the world's fourth largest defense contractor announced plans to relocate from the Los Angeles area to the Washington, DC area by the end of 2011. Naturally both Maryland and Virginia would love to be the new home state of the company that ranked 76 on the Fortune 500 in 2008.

According to The Post, LGBT rights groups and the state of Maryland are pressuring Northrop Grumman not to choose Virginia based on the commonwealth's anti-gay Marriage Amendment and Gov. Bob McDonnell's failure to include LGBT state workers in the executive order he signed earlier this month banning workplace discrimination.

The Post reports: In a letter sent Thursday to the company's CEO, Maryland State Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D-Montgomery) argued his state's stand on gay rights better mirrors the company's own longstanding commitment to gay and lesbian employees.

"Here in Maryland, we value our gay and lesbian citizens as part of a diverse population that makes the state strong," Madaleno wrote. "Virginia is doing the opposite and letting its LGBT citizens -- and those considering whether to move and work there -- know that they and their families are unwelcome second-class citizens. And they are counting on corporations like yours not to care."

The Los Angeles-based company is currently deciding between Virginia, Maryland and the District as a new home for its 300 top executives, running an unusually public contest among the three.

Both Madaleno and Equality Virginia have written letters to Northrop Grumman CEO, Wesley Bush urging the defense contractor to pick Maryland and accusing Virginia Governor McDonnell and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli of turning back the clock on civil rights, while Maryland's attorney general announced this week that the state will recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions. Northrop Grumman has consistently received a perfect score from the Human Rights Campaign for its workplace protections of LGBT employees.

The Post article contiues, Tucker Martin, a spokesman for McDonnell, responded that companies can enact the same corporate policies for their own employees in Virginia as in other states. He jabbed back at the Maryland rhetoric, insisting Virginia has been winning jobs because it doesn't have the "high taxes and excessive government interference and regulations found in some neighboring states."

"This Maryland legislator isn't really interested in job-creation," Martin said. "If he was, he would spend his time trying to enact Virginia's model of low taxes, limited regulation and strong right-to-work laws."

In other words, the governor of Virginia is abdicating his responsibility to protect the citizens of his own state because private employers are free to choose whether or not to discriminate against their employees. Write that down and remember it every election day (because we have them every year), including the one that will give you the opportunity to replace Bob McDonnell and Ken Cuccinelli.

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• States Vie To Be Northrop's New Home (NOC, CBG) (benzinga.com)
• Square Feet: D.C. Area Primps as Northrop Shops for a Home (nytimes.com)
• Maryland AG: State could recognize same-sex marriages (cnn.com)
• Northrop Grumman To Move Corporate Office To DC (huffingtonpost.com)
• Maryland's Marriage Recognition Opinion (lezgetreal.com)

McDonnell's Exec Order Does Not Protect Virginia's LGBT Statehouse Workers

During his '09 campaign for governor, Bob McDonnell said he would not sign an executive order protecting gay and lesbian employees from workplace discrimination as his predecessors Warner and Kaine had done. McDonnell said that anti-discrimination policies were the purview of the legislature and that he didn't believe that such protections were needed. He added that no one would face discrimination in the workplace on his watch.

The problem is that signing the workplace non-discrimination order is a tradition going back 36 years in the commonwealth and has been the first or second executive order signed by each new governor. McDonnell would have been really hard pressed to justify not doing the same. So, on February 5, 2010, Gov. McDonnell did sign Executive Order 6  which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, sex, color, national origin, religion, age, political affiliation, or against otherwise qualified persons with disabilities, but not sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.

But as recent history shows, the executive order carries no legal weight. The scope of Executive Order 1 (2006) was tested last year in the case of Moore vs. Virginia Museum of Natural History. Micheal Moore had worked at the museum in Martinsville for several years until being forced to resign in November 14, 2006. Moore had received glowing performance reviews throughout his tenure, but left after enduring months of anti-gay harassment.

Moore filed suite against the museum, represented by attorney/blogger/activist Michael Hamar (Michael in Norfolk). Hamar posted the court's ruling in the case last July:

The Circuit Court for the City of Martinsville has ruled in Michael Ware Moore v. Virginia Museum of Natural History that Executive Order 1 (2006) signed by Virginia Governor (and DNC Chair) Tim Kaine provides no cause of action to gay Virginians fired for discrimination based on sexual orientation nor does it waive the Commonwealth of Virginia’s defense of sovereign immunity against fired gay employees seeking redress.

When asked by the Washington Blade to comment on the ruling, Gov. Kaine's office had this to say:

Gordon Hickey, a Kaine spokesperson, said the governor “feels very strongly” about non-discrimination in the state workforce, but that the executive order would be enforced within the executive branch of government as opposed to the court system.“The executive order remains in place, and it will be enforced as an internal policy,” he said. “If anybody is found to have been fired or discriminated against based on sexual orientation, they can be dealt with through personnel procedures of the state.”

In other words, the previous Executive Orders were only personnel policies that only applied to Statehouse employees, not state employees in general, and had no legal standing. 

The bottom line is that LGBT Virginians have never had any real protection from workplace discrimination and never will until we demand it. While McDonnell's position on LGBT rights has always been blatantly bigoted, at least he has been honest about it. We knew what we were getting with him and as LGBT Virginians we chose to stay home on election day and let the homophobes have their way. We have only ourselves to blame.  

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• New GOP VA Governor Rescinds Equal Protecton Order For Gays (alan.com)
• Governor McDonnell (R-VA) eliminates non-discrimination for LGBT state workers (dailykos.com)
• Bob McDonnell Strips Non-Discrimination Protections For Gay State Workers (huffingtonpost.com)
• Virginia's Gov Doesn't Want Gay State Workers Protected. So He Removed Their Protections (queerty.com)