The 365 Gay news site carried an interesting article yesterday on the extra burden that the economic downturn poses for many LGBT citizens (www.365gay.com/news/mounting-job-losses-pose-additional-problems-for-gays). As this article notes, when gay workers lose jobs, they often face challenges in addition to those that many other unemployed workers face.Like other workers given pink slips, LGBT citizens who lose jobs must deal with the search for a new position in a tight job market and declining economy. Like others who are terminated, they often cope with excruciating questions about relocating and starting over in a place new to them, without familiar support networks.
But, as the 365 Gay article also notes, gay workers who lose jobs face as well the question of discrimination. In particular, in a tight job market, gay persons seeking employment have to scrutinize job leads to see if the new employer has any policies in place to protect gay workers from discrimination, or if partner benefits are offered.
This story is a reminder to me that many LGBT citizens of this country live in places that have no state-level protection against discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. As my recent posting about the situation in Florida notes, a majority of our states permit employers to fire an employee simply because he or she is gay; they also permit someone to be turned away from renting a place to live merely because of his or her sexual orientation (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2009/01/florida-continuing-struggle-for-rights.html). In a majority of our states a partner of a gay person who is hospitalized may be barred from visitation of his or her partner or from making decisions about the partner's medical treatment solely because he or she is gay.
And for some of us, there's still the added burden of overt discrimination, of black-balling. This is particularly the case for gay employees who have run afoul of those who control church-based institutions.
Those of us who have worked for Catholic institutions, for instance, and who have chosen to acknowledge our sexual orientation and relationships openly, quite commonly find ourselves black-balled by all Catholic institutions after we lose a job in a Catholic institution. We also often discover that the institution that fired us and/or key Catholic leaders do everything in their power to interfere with our ability to find employment at church-related institutions that do not even belong to the Catholic communion.
I was reminded of these ugly dynamics that I have seen close up in my years as a Catholic theologian, but which are too little known to the public at large, when I read recently what has happened to Rev. Geoff Farrow, about whom I blogged several times last October (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/10/flawed-in-pottery-god.html and
http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/10/end-of-week-reflections-christian.html). He’s the Catholic priest of the Fresno diocese who stated in a homily that his conscience forbade him to support the initiative of the California bishops to promote proposition 8 in California.
As those postings noted, Geoff Farrow lost his job, his livelihood, his health insurance, as a result of his act of conscience. Recently, several blogs have updated Geoff Farrow's story (http://progressivemamablogger.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/the-latest-on-father-geoff and www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9225). These report that when he applied for a position with the Los Angeles branch of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), he found himself mysteriously blocked after an initial positive interview.
To his credit, Rev. James Conn, a United Methodist minister involved in the interview process, has been willing to go public about what happened. Conn indicates that the Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles threatened to cut its funding to CLUE, if Farrow were hired. Geoff Farrow remains unemployed and without medical benefits at the age of 51, due to the intervention of church authorities who evidently want to prevent him from obtaining any employment, even in a non-Catholic institution.
I am deeply saddened but not surprised to read this story. It is a sorry series of events I have seen with my own eyes a number of times. It is one through which I have myself lived.
Despite their assurances of respect for human rights, Catholic officials will always hound anyone who threatens those who have had a place within Catholic institutions, and who then become public about being gay. There is a tremendous need to punish and destroy those of us who refuse to toe the official line about homosexuality in Catholic institutions--often because we know too much about what goes on in the seamy underbelly of the institution.
We know, for instance, that those who pursue openly gay Catholics and try to disrupt our lives and careers are themselves often closeted, self-hating gay men who occupy positions of power within the church . . . .
