Bush Allows Gays to Be Fired for Being Gay

March 20, 2004 | Dai­ly Mis­lead Archive

Despite Pres­i­dent Bush’s pledge that homo­sex­u­als “ought to have the same rights“¹Debates, 10/11/2000. as all oth­er peo­ple, his Admin­is­tra­tion this week ruled that homo­sex­u­als can now be fired from the fed­er­al work­force because of their sex­u­al orientation.

Accord­ing to the Fed­er­al Times, the pres­i­den­t’s appointee at the Office of Spe­cial Coun­sel ruled that fed­er­al employ­ees will now “have no recourse if they are fired or demot­ed sim­ply for being gay.“²“OSC to study whether bias law cov­ers gays”, Fed­er­al Times, 03/15/2004. While the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion says it is legal­ly pro­hib­it­ed from fir­ing a per­son for their con­duct, they have the legal right to fire or demote some­one based on their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. To car­ry out the direc­tive, the White House has begun remov­ing infor­ma­tion from gov­ern­ment web­sites about sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion dis­crim­i­na­tion in the work­place.³“Gay Rights Infor­ma­tion Tak­en Off Site”, Wash­ing­ton Post, 02/18/2004.

Not only does the new direc­tive con­tra­dict the pres­i­den­t’s own promise to treat homo­sex­u­als as equals under the law, but it also con­tra­dicts what the Admin­is­tra­tion told Con­gress. As not­ed in a bipar­ti­san let­ter from four Sen­a­tors to the Admin­is­tra­tion, “Dur­ing the con­fir­ma­tion process [of the pres­i­den­t’s appointee], you assured us that you were com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing fed­er­al employ­ees against unlaw­ful dis­crim­i­na­tion relat­ed to their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.“⁴“Spe­cial Coun­sel Under Scruti­ny”, Wash­ing­ton Post, 02/23/2004.