Barack Obama still has to answer serious questions about his plan to institute a Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The idea of federal funds being given to FBOs for secular programs to service at-risk populations is one that pre-dates Bush’s politicized iteration.
However, any plan, given the state of civil rights protections, has serious reality-based problems—there is nothing to prevent a religious organization from firing LGBT employees if there are no state or local protections on the books. Look at this case in Kentucky. No amount of oversight, monitoring, or, at this point, spin control, can make this kind of discrimination go away. (ACLU):
The American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a brief today in a federal appeals court urging the court to allow a discrimination lawsuit to go forward on behalf of a lesbian who was fired from her job at a publicly-funded Baptist group home in Kentucky. The home for vulnerable children required the woman to observe its religious belief that being a lesbian is sinful. The brief also charges that taxpayers should be able to challenge the state of Kentucky’s decision to give public funds to a home that imposes its religious beliefs upon the children in its care.
“I put my heart and soul into helping the children who were under the care of Baptist Homes and was making a difference in their lives,” said Alicia Pedreira. “It was unfair to be fired for being a lesbian. It’s not right that an organization that is funded by state and federal dollars to do work for the state can get away with this.”
The ACLU and Americans United filed the lawsuit on April 17, 2000, on behalf of Pedreira charging that it was unlawful for the publicly-funded Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children (since renamed Sunrise Children’s Services) to fire Pedreira because she did not observe her employer’s religious beliefs about sexual orientation. The complaint also charges that it was unconstitutional for the state to spend taxpayer dollars to fund a religious organization that attempts to indoctrinate children placed under state care with its religious beliefs. After years of litigation, the district court dismissed the case on March 31, 2008. The legal groups appealed that decision to the Federal Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and are urging the court to allow the case to proceed.
Pedreira told her story to WBUR’s Anthony Brooks:
She flips through a large, red notebook, full of documents that chronicle her experience, including her first evaluation - where she received excellent feedback from her supervisor.
The red notebook also contains a copy of a picture that changed her life. A photographer snapped the photo of Pedreira and her partner after an AIDS walk in 1998. In the picture, the two women lean against each other affectionately. Pedreira wears a tee shirt with a map of the “Isle of Lesbos.”
The trouble began when the photographer entered the photo in a contest at the Kentucky State Fair, and thousands of people saw it, including her co-workers.
She said she didn’t think anything of it until someone at work mentioned the shirt she was wearing. Pedreira says, “At that point I went, oh no, and at that moment I pretty much thought that I was going to be fired.”
She was right. A week later the President of Kentucky Baptist Homes asked her to resign. A letter explained that her ”homosexual lifestyle is contrary to the Home’s core values.”
More below the fold.