In an executive directive issued late Wednesday, Gov. Bob McDonnell seemed to contradict a letter sent by the state attorney general to public colleges and universities last week directing them to strip protections for gays and lesbians from their nondiscrimination policies.

“I hereby direct that the hiring, promotion, compensation, treatment, discipline, and termination of state employees shall be based on an individual’s job qualifications, merit and performance,” McDonnell’s directive stated.

A companion letter sent to all state employees went further, stating that “independent agencies and state supported colleges and universities should likewise adopt a similar standard of conduct.”

Sullivan highlights a truly remarkable sentence in the new executive directive:

Discrimination based on factors such as one’s sexual orientation or parental status violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.

Isn’t that the gist of Boies and Olsen’s argument in Perry? What the heck going on in Virginia?

There are a few places in Virginia where there are city or county ordinances that ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.

I’ll bet Cuccinelli goes after them next.

1) Virginia is a “Dillon’s rule” state
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forrest_Dillon#Dillon.27s_Rule) – which does limit what local governments can do without authorization from the Virginia General Assembly (state legislature). Even so, ACLU Legal Director Rebecca Glenberg said, as reported by the Associated Press news story out of Richmond, VA “that state institutions are bound by U.S. Supreme Court decisions not to discriminate based on sexual orientation.”

2) The second issue here hypocrisy, and neither Gov. McDonnell nor A.G. Cuccinelli have been called on it yet:

I doubt that Cuccinelli has written a similar letter to his Republican Governor Robert McDonnell (graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University), demanding that he revise his recently issued executive order. McDonnell left “sexual orientation” out of his executive order banning some forms of discrimination against state employees (rescinding what was the policy of the two previous Democratic governors, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine) – using the same logic as Cuccinelli to exclude sexual orientation. However, McDonnell included “political affiliation” and “veterans” in his executive order – neither of which (according to Cuccinelli’s statement in the same AP article referenced above that Virginia state law bans discrimination only based on “race, color, religion, national origin, sex, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, age, marital status, or disability.”

Governor McDonnell and Attorney General Cuccinelli, your animus is apparent to everyone. Shame on you.

Uhm. No. Wrong. From my personal experience, Institutes of Higher Education–or at least the ones that are not affiliated with a religious organization–teach deductive reasoning and thoughtful exploration, terms not normally associated with ‘mindlessly politically correct’. On our campus we embrace the diversity of opinion and welcome the discussion of opposing views, all of which make us stronger.

And Quo, you may mock anyone for any reason you choose, but you do so at your own peril. However, I doubt you have the chutzpah to do so in person.

What experience do you have to say that American higher education has become so PC? Have you studied in the US? Have you even visited the US? or Virginia in particular?

In previous posts you have made it very clear that you are not an American and do not live in the US. Like “dman,” you live in South Africa.

By the way, for all of Virginia’s faults, they aren’t so warped as to agree with your impassioned arguements that parents should be able to have their children subjected to sexual abuse. No state government anywhere in the US is that twisted and disturbed.

However would a Virginia Court agree with the Attorney General in practice? Suppose a public institution were to fire someone for breaching their non-discrimination policy, and to did so in a fair and reasonable manner. Suppose also, that had the discriminating act(s) in question been on the grounds of race that the institution’s actions would have been legally sound. If, however, the discriminating act(s) were on the grounds of sexual orientation, would the Court find that the institution had broken the law in firing this person?