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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (1477)	1/18/2001 5:07:04 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

This provision is part of a gay rights bill passed about ten years ago. Ah, I see. Ticklish problem. One of my projects at work has been the development and management of a policy to enable and manage employee groups. These are interest groups established by employees around issues or networking or common interests. Most minorities have one or more groups and there's a GLOBE chapter (gay/lesbian/bi). In addition to the employee groups there are also unions, which legally have the sole bargaining rights for employees in the bargaining unit and what are called special emphasis program managers, whose work is official business and who speak for the interests of the various minority groups. There cannot be a special emphasis program for gays because they do not have legal minority status. The employee group policy balances the interests of the employee groups with the other employee representatives. It authorizes the groups, for example, to use email to communicate their members but not to advertise. I apologize for the length of the background for this anecdote. I'm gonna get to the point now. The groups continuously hound me about the limitations on advertising, particularly GLOBE. It took me a while but I finally came to understand that GLOBE was in a bit of a different situation than the other groups. If you're a new employee and Asian-American, you can go up to the nearest employee with Asian features and ask if there's an employee group for Asian-Americans. Or someone will walk up to you. If you're gay it may be more awkward to make contact. It may not even occur to you that there might be a group. So I arranged for a flyer to be added to the handouts for new employees which provided a list of the groups and their points of contact. It lists all the groups, but it was done for the gays. I think this is much like the apartment rental problem. Without the law there might be bunches and bunches of landlords who would assume that all gay couples would be "party animals" to the point that they wouldn't be able to find someplace to live. Balancing the interests of the landlords, the hetero couples, the gay couples, and the party animals of all varieties is tricky. I don't see your state law as an example of special rights for gays, but rather a clumsy way to assure they don't suffer discrimination in housing. Karen