Virginia AG Instructs State Colleges To Rescind Policies That Protect Gays And Lesbians From Discrimination

Just weeks after Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) refused to renew an executive order that would have protected gay and lesbian state workers from discrimination, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is asking the state’s colleges and universities “to rescind policies that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, arguing in a letter sent to each school Thursday that their boards of visitors have no legal authority to adopt such statements.”

In a letter sent to all of the state’s public colleges and universities, Cuccinelli wrote, “only the General Assembly can extend legal protections to gay state employees — a move the legislature has repeatedly declined to take, including as recently as this week“:

“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,” he wrote. Colleges that have included such language in their policies — which include all of Virginia’s leading schools — have done so “without proper authority” and should “take appropriate actions to bring their policies in conformance with the law and public policy of Virginia,” Cuccinelli wrote.

It’s incredible that Cuccinelli found time to deal with the growing menace of schools protecting their gay students from discrimination in the midst of the state’s economic woes, and his decision will certainly outrage Virginia students and faculty members across the country. In fact, the practice of protecting gays from violence is so widespread that earlier this month, students at John Carroll University, a Jesuit college in Cleveland Ohio, staged a sit-in to protest “the university’s decisions not to include the protection of sexual orientation of in its anti-discrimination statement.” Other Jesuit universities, like “Canisius College, College of the Holy Cross, Georgetown University, Gonzaga University, Le Moyne College, and St. Louis University” all include “sexual orientation in their anti-discrimination policies.” Even conservative schools like Texas Christian University and its divinity school, both protect “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” in their policies. This almost universal adoption of sexual orientation “as a protected class” suggests that violence against gay people is a problem at college campuses and Cuccinelli’s decision to rescind Virginia’s policies could lead to more crime against homosexuals.

This won’t be Cuccinelli’s first brush with controversy. Last month, Cuccinelli joined Texas and right-wing industry groups in challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public.