By now many people have heard of the letter from Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli attempting to end the practice of state universities having explicit non-discrimination policies against gays. There have been a series of pushbacks, including by Republicans who were embarrassed (they should be) and worried about the impact.
The story breaking today, as you can read in this Richmond Times-Dispatch piece (which is getting updated as more details become available), Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell
this afternoon issued an Executive Directive against employment discrimination.
I now have some more below the fold.
Let me add some more
One thing having an impact is that Northrup Grumman is looking to relocate its headquarters to the DC metro area. The company has a clear non-discrimination policy and offers benefits to domestic partners. People in Maryland were using Cuccinelli's approach on the issue to try to get the company to disqualify Virginia as a location.
What is of perhaps greater interest is that Gov. Kaine, McDonnell's predecessor, had issued a non-discrimination executive order that McDonnell as Attorney General had said the Governor had no authority to issue, and yet now he has issued a similar order (although I have not yet found the text of McDonnell's order).
More than a 1,000 turned out at Virginia Commonwealth U in Richmond to protest what Cuccinelli had done.
The Virginia House, dominated by Republicans, had refused to add sexual orientation as a protected class under the state code.
It is looking like even in Virginia, with a Governor who got his law and masters degrees under Pat Robertson, anti-gay bias and homophobia simply is not a tenable political position to support.
We'll see.
As a resident of Virginia whose jurisdiction - Arlington County, is represented in part or in whole by open gays on County Board (Jay Fisette), School Board (Sally Baird) and House of Delegates (Adam Ebben) I think it is long past time that we act statewide to end discrimination and protect all of our citizens.