Employment concepts and practices

Gay/Lesbian Studies - Discrimination in the Workplace

An Analysis of Discrimination against Gays and Lesbians in the American Workplace Today

While many people today may not remember a time and place where minorities and women were discriminated against openly in the American workplace, the time was not in fact so long ago. Indeed, it is reasonable to maintain that such discriminatory practices remain firmly in place in some form or another in many regions of the country, but the wholesale practice is no longer the status quo and there are laws on the books designed to prevent it. Notwithstanding the U.S. Army's well-known wink-wink nudge-nudge policy of "Don't ask, don't tell," even fewer people, though, may realize the obstacles and challenges that have historically been confronted by gays and lesbians in the American workplace, and there has not been a groundswell of media attention or well publicized Supreme Court cases to help educate the public in this regard. To this end, then, this paper provides a review of the timely and relevant peer-reviewed and scholarly literature to develop an appropriate background for the issues involved, a discussion of controlling legislation and a description of various types of discrimination that can take place in the workplace, is followed by an assessment of current and future trends and a summary of the research in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Background and Overview.

The move to reverse the long-standing practices of discriminating against anyone in general and gays and lesbians in particular can be traced to the years immediately following the end of World War II, during the era of the Red Scare. During this scary period in America's duck-and-cover history, it was easy to be fearful of almost anything and everything and homosexuals were no exception. "Although immoral conduct was grounds for dismissing homosexuals from the civil service by Theodore Roosevelt's administration," Lewis (2001) reports, "federal employment of homosexuals did not become a political issue until the Cold War, when heightened American fears about national security led to increased restrictions on all federal employees" (539).

According to Lewis (2001), homosexuals were a special target for restrictions to prevent them from obtaining security clearances. A series of Senate committee reports cited by Lewis suggested that "moral perverts are bad national security risks... because of their susceptibility to blackmail" (539). Likewise, in his essay, "The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government," Bachhofer (2005) reports that the actions of Frank Kameny, a gay political activist who was a former civilian Army employee fired after the discovery of a previous arrest for homosexuality, served to redefine the issues surrounding workplace sexual discrimination in terms of civil rights instead of individual standards of morality. According to Bachhofer, "His [Kameny's] involvement with the Mattachine Society of Washington sparked a new homosexual militancy in the capital, one that relied on the court system for many significant remedies. When the Scott v. Macy decision of 1965 and the Norton decision of 1969 came down, summary dismissals were no longer possible" (257). This author suggests that it is ironic that the very threat Congressional conservatives were seeking to quell during the 1950s, e.g., "an organized, threatening homosexual menace," was facilitated by the success of their polices (Bachhofer 257). These precedential cases were followed, over the years, by a series of fits and starts in terms of enacting legislation that was specifically targeted at outlawing discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation, and these issues are discussed further below.

Controlling Legislation.

According to Horvath and Ryan (2003), discrimination against lesbians and gay men in the workplace may have adverse effects on those individuals through factors such as increased stress and limited advancement opportunities; furthermore, discrimination may also have adverse effects on the organization itself: "Even though protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is not provided by current federal legislation," the authors note, "many state and local governments do include sexual orientation in their lists of protected characteristics. As of August 2001, 12 states, as well as the District of Columbia, had laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation" (Horvath & Ryan 115). In the case, High Tech Gays v. Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office (1987), a district court held that lesbians and gay men constituted a quasi-suspect class because "homosexuals have historically been the object of pernicious and sustained hostility, and it is fair to say that discrimination against homosexuals is likely... To reflect deep-seated prejudice rather than... rationality"; however, the court also found that federal policy did not pass even rational review and the case was reversed in 1990 (cited in Lewis at 539). Complicating matters for homosexuals and civil rights advocates alike today is the nebulous and hidden nature of some of the discriminatory practices that might adversely affect homosexuals in the workplace today, and these issues are discussed further below.

Types of Discrimination.

Much of the discrimination that takes place in the American workplace against gay men and lesbians appears to be based on homophobia, or a fear or dislike of homosexuals by human resource specialists or others within an organization. Homophobia is defined by Cheng (2003) as "the irrational fear of people and things related to lesbians and gay men" (323). The author notes that there are two types of homophobia: