Ken Cuccinelli on university anti-discrimination policies — it’s illegal to protect gays [Butthead Awards] [Welcome to the Republican Party]

The circus that is Virginia politics continues with its latest attraction – rampant homophobia.

So remember when Bob McDonnell went out of his way to take out protections based on sexual orientation in state employment with Executive Order 6?

Seems like it was only the start.

After many Virginia students, including yours truly, left for spring break, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, out of the kindness of his own heart, sent a letter to the administrations of Virginia’s public universities. Its content? “Legal advice” recommending that the universities, all of which have explicit policies against discrimination based on sexual orientation, rescind such language on the basis that they go against the law enacted by the General Assembly.

So, in short, it’s illegal for universities to try to prevent discrimination against students and employees for sexual orientation. Universities can’t protect more than what the state General Assembly has explicitly put into law.

….Huh.

It is my advice that the law and public policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia prohibit a college or university from including ‘sexual orientation,’ ‘gender identity,’ ‘gender expression,’ or like classification as a protected class within its non-discrimination policy absent specific authorization from the General Assembly

Virginia’s colleges and universities are public institutions. Each Board of Visitors is vested with broad rights and powers conferred by the provisions of the Code of Virginia. In addition, Boards have the authority to make needful rules and regulations and generally direct the affairs of the college. Beyond this statutory framework, the Commonwealth recognizes that a university “has not only the power expressly conferred upon it, but it also has the implied power to do whatever is reasonably necessary” to effectuate its granted powers…

This broad authority, however, is not without limits….The General Assembly has considered and define the protected classes for purposes of non-discrimination statutes. It has specifically defined unlawful discrimination at educational institutions. The Virginia Human Rights Act states that it is the policy of the Commonwealth to “safeguard all individuals within the Commonwealth from unlawful discrimination because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, age, marital status, or disability, in places of public accomodation, including educational institutions…” In addition to this affirmative statement, the General Assembly has on numerous occasions considered and rejected creating a protected class defined by “sexual orientation,” “gender identity” or “gender expression.” Lacking this clear authority, no state agency can reach the boundaries established by the General Assembly…

Cuccinelli is referring to Section 2.2-3900 of the Virginia Code, the above-mentioned Virginia Human Rights Act. And, like he said, the General Assembly has refused to include sexual orientation in the long list of protected classes on multiple occasions, the most recent example being in 2009. Currently, there is yet another amendment on the table.

So the argument goes that Cuccinelli is “suggesting” that the universities “fix” the violation of the law. He is merely performing his duties as Attorney General and upholding the Code of Virginia. This isn’t about homophobia, say supporters. This about respect for the law and we really shouldn’t get angry at poor Ken for doing his job. It’s the General Assembly who we should be focusing on.

Well, blind partisan, we agree that citizens concerned about civil rights need to lean on the legislature to make them actually follow the 14th amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

But you really expect me to believe that this was something the Attorney General had to do?

First, Cuccinelli gives himself a loophole – “Boards have the authority to make needful rules and regulations and generally direct the affairs of the college.” It appears that most of our previous attorney generals, except for McDonnell, taken that to mean “let the university administrations do their jobs.” It appears that Cuccinelli takes that to mean “Boards have the authority to make needful rules and regulations unless I personally have an issue with them.”

Secondly, Cuccinelli had no legal right to send them legal advice in the first place. Section 2.2-505 of the Virginia Code states:

The Attorney General shall give his advice and render official advisory opinions in writing only when requested in writing so to do by one of the following: the Governor; a member of the General Assembly; a judge of a court of record or a judge of a court not of record; the State Corporation Commission; an attorney for the Commonwealth; a county, city or town attorney in those localities in which such office has been created; a clerk of a court of record; a city or county sheriff; a city or county treasurer or similar officer; a commissioner of the revenue or similar officer; a chairman or secretary of an electoral board; or the head of a state department, division, bureau, institution or board.

Cuccinelli makes references to some vague “questions prompted” in his letter, but doesn’t actually say “I’m responding to an official inquiry by the following body.” No. Cuccinelli’s letter makes it sound like he’s taken it upon himself to clarify the situation. Certainly every Board of Visitors didn’t get together and draft a letter to Cuccinelli or appeal to the Governor to ask for a legal opinion. So why did Cuccinelli do it?

Because he’s a Butthead.

For the use of extremely bigoted reasoning in the campaign to remove equal rights from the citizens you were elected to Protect - The Butthead Award

During the campaign for attorney general, Cuccinelli said…

My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that. … They don’t comport with natural law. I happen to think that it represents (to put it politely; I need my thesaurus to be polite) behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to society.

Ken Cuccinelli is a bigot. It’s that simple. When an elected official, motivated by bigotry, goes out of his way and steps out of his jurisdiction to try to strip rights away from the citizens he was elected to protect, then. That’s. WRONG. And I’m tired of people trying to rationalize this with lawyerisms and legal loopholes – the office of the Attorney General should exist to protect its innocent citizens, not persecute them.

Stepping outside of the legal mumbo-jumbo, this whole conversation is ridiculous. Conservatives are essentially arguing over who we get to deny equal rights to and to them I ask, What is your fucking problem? “Well, we lost the battle to keep the blacks and the Muslims and the feminists out of jobs, but we’ll take a stand here to protect someone’s right to make someone else’s life miserable because they’re a Ghey.”

People who support this, using whatever twisted logic is necessary to make it politically viable, are god damn idiots. They’ll claim that their opponents don’t understand the law, when clearly, they don’t get how it works. We’ve gone years without interference of the state in discrimination policies and the state didn’t fucking collapse. Attorney Generals, prosecutors, lawmakers and citizens always turn a blind eye to certain parts of the law because it would be absurd to take a literalist approach on everything. Technically, if you’ve ever given a blowjob, you’re a felon in Virginia, but you don’t see the government demanding that you lose your job or civil rights.

That’s why it made sense to let universities enact their own discrimination policies, because they probably know more about what makes a good higher education environment than damn Ken Cuccinelli and the middle-aged representatives of the General Assembly. And now Cuccinellli is seizing upon his own legal interpretation to carry out a personal vendetta he has against homosexuals and transgenders. You’d have to be fucking crazy to claim you believe in the values of America and stand for this.

As a university student, I’m not standing by as some asshole puts pressure on my school and its sister institutions to violate the 14th amendment. So here are the next steps:

1. Send a message to our Board of Visitors and tell them that they have to publicly refuse to take Cuccinelli’s “advice.” We need to push back before McDonnell and his lackey make life insufferable for a group of innocent citizens who are simply trying to exist in this damn state. And we need to prevent the possibility, however slim, of our universities hanging our fellow students and faculty out to dry and allowing discrimination to take place in admissions and hiring practices.
2. Send letters to our representatives in the General Assembly to support an amendment to include sexual orientation and its related identities in the Virginia Human Rights Act. Without a legal leg to stand on, Cuccinelli would have to come up with an even more ridiculous way to attack citizens, further marginalizing his position.
3. Vote Cuccinelli out of the office in of Attorney General in 2013 and prevent anyone who has such a clear record of homophobia and disregard for civil liberties as he did from being put into office again. If Virginians want to avoid being considered backwards hicks that cripple public institutions, we have to root out this cancer.

The culture warriors of the right wing are on the losing side of history and most of them know it. In response, they’re pulling out desperate stops to make sure they inflict as much pain upon their “enemies” as possible. It really is time to stop this and have every reasonable citizen who believes in civil liberties to band together and give Buttheads like Ken Cuccinelli a clear message.

Shut the Fuck Up and Get the Fuck Out.