Richmond – For the third consecutive day on the floor of the House of Delegates, Virginia Democrats stood against the anti-gay efforts of Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who issued a letter to Virginia’s public colleges and universities March 4 advising them to repeal nondiscrimination policies protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender faculty, staff, and students.
Urging Republicans to join their effort, Delegate David Englin (D-45) offered the following remarks:
Mr. Speaker, Ladies and Gentlemen, as you just heard from the Gentleman from Henrico, Delegate Morrissey, at public colleges across Virginia, students, faculty, and tuition-paying parents share the outrage you have heard expressed on this floor about Attorney General Cuccinelli’s demand that Virginia’s colleges remove sexual orientation from their nondiscrimination rules. They share our outrage, and they want action. We have tried multiple times in this House and on the floor to fix this problem. Sadly, the General Laws committee chose to cancel its Monday meeting rather than work to move forward with the Senate nondiscrimination bill. That’s especially unfortunate, because I believe there are good people on both sides of the aisle in that committee who should be willing to do what’s right on this issue. Yesterday, we tried the extraordinary measure of a discharge motion to bring up that bill, but that, too, was defeated. Now, our last chance to protect the quality, reputation, and accreditation of Virginia’s public colleges and universities, and to protect Virginia’s pro-business climate, is for us to join together and urge Governor McDonnell to send down his own higher education nondiscrimination bill.
Even if one is willing to set aside the moral outrage that is an Attorney General wasting taxpayer money by seeking to hinder equal protection under the law, we need Governor McDonnell to act now because his Attorney General’s actions are destructive to higher education and destructive to our economic future.
Virginia’s public colleges and universities have nondiscrimination policies in place not only because judging faculty, staff, and students on merit is the right thing to do, but also because their accreditation requires it. For example, the national accrediting bodies that govern medical schools, teacher training programs, and schools of social work require nondiscrimination policies as part of their accreditation standards. After all, do you really think a conservative institution like Liberty University would include sexual orientation in its nondiscrimination policies unless it absolutely had to? Ask yourself, do you really want to let Ken Cuccinelli’s anti-gay crusade risk the accreditation of our schools?
Moreover, the quality of higher education in Virginia is a key factor in our continued ranking by Forbes.com and others as the Best State for Business. By sullying the reputation of our system of higher learning and hindering the ability of our top universities to recruit and retain the very best faculty and staff, the Attorney General is risking our future status as Best State for Business. Ask yourself, do you really want to let Ken Cuccinelli’s anti-gay crusade risk Virginia’s status as Best State for Business?
And speaking of business, businesses throughout Virginia understand that employees should be judged solely on their merit and not on other unrelated factors. The ten largest corporate employers in Virginia have active nondiscrimination policies. Northrop Grumman, whose corporate headquarters we are trying to lure here from California, wins perfect marks from the Human Rights Campaign for equal treatment of its gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workers. Do you really want to let Ken Cuccinelli’s anti-gay crusade risk thousands of good-paying jobs in Virginia?
Mr. Speaker, this issue is not going away.
I recognize that it takes no special courage for a Northern Virginia liberal to stand up — every day if necessary — to demand fair and equal treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workers.
But I remind you that conservative Republican icon, Barry Goldwater, said of gays in the military, “I don’t care if they are straight, as long as they shoot straight.” In other words, the father of the modern American conservative movement urged that we judge workers not on their sexual orientation, but on their merit.
What we need in this case are more Barry Goldwaters. We need men and women of courage from across the aisle to stand up and say that — even if you are uncomfortable with the idea of somebody being gay — even if your faith or your personal beliefs cause you to oppose same-sex relationships — you still believe that workers should be judged on merit — on the job they do.
We need men and women of courage from across the aisle who know in their heart of hearts that, decades from now, standing up for policies that treat workers fairly and based on merit will put them on the right side of history — men and women who will someday be revered for standing up for the rights of all people, and not painted with the same brush as bigots and segregationists.
Ladies and Gentlemen, based on yesterday’s vote, Delegates Albo, Rust, LeMunyon, Tata, and Villanueva are Republicans who are on the right side of history. But what about the rest of you?
I ask my other Republican friends: “Are there any Barry Goldwaters among you?” Or are you content to stand idly by, in silent complicity, and let Ken Cuccinelli destroy what we have worked to build.
Join us — urge Governor McDonnell to send down a bill that will protect the quality and reputation of higher education in Virginia, so together we can let the world know that Virginia is a place where employees will be judged on the job they do, not on the family they go home to.
Additionally, Delegate Ken Plum (D-36), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, yesterday attempted an extraordinary procedural effort to bring to the House floor an employment nondiscrimination bill that passed the Senate on Feb. 8. During debate on that motion, Englin offered the following:
Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen, when my grandparents and great parents came to these shores decades ago from a shtetl in Poland and a village in Italy, they were poor, hardworking people, seeking freedom and grateful for the opportunity to put in a hard days work to put food on the table and roof over their heads. But in those days, prospective employers would put up signs that read things like “Jews Need Not Apply” and “Italians Not Welcome.” Mr Speaker, maybe Governor McDonnell’s forbearers were met with signs reading “No Irish Allowed.” We have moved beyond that as a country, and today most employers would no sooner discriminate against Jews, Italians, or Irish than they would against their own family. But let there be no mistake, Ken Cuccinelli wants to hang a sign in front of Virginia’s public colleges and universities that reads “Gays Need Not Apply.”
Unfortunately, these efforts have yet to be successful, but these pro-equality legislators remain committed to working to advance equal rights for all Virginians.
Delegate David Englin is Vice Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and is serving his third term in the Virginia House of Delegates, where he represents the 45th District, which includes parts of the City of Alexandria, Fairfax County, and Arlington County. He serves on the Finance Committee, the Health, Welfare, and Institutions Committee, and the Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural Resources Committee. For more information, visit http://www.davidenglin.org.
