ALABAMA: House Kills LGBT Rights Bill

Via the Montgomery Advertiser:

A House committee Wednesday killed a bill that would have banned discrimination against individuals based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Christopher England, D-Tuscaloosa [PHOTO], would have added the classes to state protections against discrimination in employment, housing, accommodations, financial transactions and voting. “I believe in order to protect those classifications, they need to be enumerated,” England told the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday afternoon. “There is some case history that if it’s not enumerated, it’s not protected.” The committee voted to carry it over, killing it for the remainder of the session. Rep. David Faulkner, R-Mountain Brook, who moved to have it carried over, said he “did not want anyone discriminated against,” but said that he had concerns about how the legislation would interact with existing statutes in Alabama. “It’s creating a new protected class that our nation does not recognize, much less Alabama,” he said. “When you are talking about those types of issues, this is much larger than marriage. This is far broader than that.”

Rep. Patricia Todd, the state's only openly gay legislator, reacted: "We haven’t passed any bad legislation, and that’s great. Alabama is further ahead than Arkansas, Texas and other states. But now it’s time to move forward with some positive legislation that protects people in the workplace, and that’s what this bill would do."

Matt Baume: Marriage News Watch

Clip recap:

Marriage could be starting next week in Alabama. Anti-gay officials are saying that they don’t have to let gay couples get married, but their reasoning isn’t exactly what you would call true. Oklahoma’s marriage equality backlash is getting dangerous, with a proposed law that would hand new victims to ex-gay predators. And the National Organization for Marriage thinks they’ll have an impact on the 2016 presidential election.

ALABAMA: Gay Lawmaker Threatens To Reveal Colleagues' Adulterous Affairs

"I will not stand by and allow legislators to talk about ‘family values’ when they have affairs, and I know of many who are and have. I will call our elected officials who want to hide in the closet out. It is pretty well known that we have people in Montgomery who are or have had affairs. I just want them to be careful what they’re saying, some of it might come back to stick on them." - Openly gay Alabama state Rep. Patricia Todd, speaking today to the Montgomery Times-Daily.

ALABAMA: Lesbian Lawmaker Renames LGBT Rights Bill For Apple CEO Tim Cook

In 2011 openly lesbian Alabama state Rep. Patricia Todd introduced a bill to protect LGBT citizens from employment discrimination. The bill failed, but Todd is trying again and this time she has renamed the bill the "Tim Cook Economic Development Act." According to the governor, state employees are already protected.

In October, Cook — an Alabama native and CEO of one of America’s best-known tech companies — criticized the state’s employment laws in a speech before the Alabama Academy of Honor, where he was being inducted as a member. “Under the law, citizens of Alabama can still be fired for their sexual orientation,” Cook said. A few days after the speech, Cook came out as gay in an opinion piece published in Bloomberg Businessweek. On the day of Cook’s speech, Gov. Robert Bentley told The Anniston Star he wasn’t sure it was, in fact, legal to fire someone based on sexual orientation. He said he’d look into the issue. This week, Bentley’s office released a short statement saying that state agencies, at least, can’t fire people solely because they’re gay. “As it relates to state agencies in Alabama, it would be a violation of Title VII and Sections 1981, 1983 and 1985 of the Civil Rights Act to terminate a person based solely on sexual orientation,” Bentley’s press secretary, Yasamie August, wrote in an emailed statement. August’s statement didn’t address discrimination in private workplaces, and attempts to reach her for further comment Thursday were not successful.

Rep. Todd: "If you ask people on the street, they’ll say of course you can’t get fired. They think we’re a protected class, but we’re not." (Tipped by JMG reader Jeremy)