Assembly Chair Debbie Ossiander
Anchorage Assembly Chair Debbie Ossiander made extensive comments on August 11 explaining why she would not support passage of the Anchorage equal rights ordinance, AO 2009-64. [Ref #1] Included in her comments was her opinion about Title VII f the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub. L. 88-352), as follows (tip o’ the nib to John Aronno of Alaska Commons for transcription):
I also discovered that, though what we are proposing as protection at the municipal level, through the Equal Rights Commission, there are some federal regulations and laws that could pertain here. I particularly looked at Title VII, what was covered in Title VII, I read some court cases, I read some court cases about Title VII, it’s basically the civil rights law of the United States, and it basically covers, in my mind, employee discrimination, including same sex employee discrimination, for businesses with over fifteen employees.
Pamela Kelley (right) talking with Jean Craciun during a break at the July 21 Anchorage Assembly meeting
This was in spite of testimony before the Assembly on July 21 by Anchorage attorney and UAA Justice professor Pamela Kelley to the effect that, no, in fact existing law does not protect LGBT people from discrimination [Ref #2] and a followup letter Prof. Kelly sent the following day to Ossiander and to Assembly Member Jennifer Johnston about a U.S. Supreme Court case arising out of Title VII, Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U.S. 75 (1998). [Ref #3] As discussed in my post about Prof. Kelley’s letter, Oncale is one case which demonstrates how narrowly the Supreme Court interprets Title VII’s provisions regarding sex discrimination — which does not extend to sexual orientation. [Ref #4]
Now comes a case decided last Friday in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Prowel v. Wise Business Forms. This case involved a self-described effeminate gay man who claimed his employer discriminated against him because he failed to conform in his mannerisms, style of dress, and interests to masculine gender role stereotypes, in violation of Title VII’s prohibition of sex discrimination. [Ref #5] The 3rd Circuit based its decision in Prowel on another Title VII case, the 1989 U.S. Supreme Court decision Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, which ruled in favor of a woman who had been discriminated against because she did not conform to traditional norms of femininity. [Ref #6] As summarized by Marquette law professor Paul Secunda,
That’s called sex-stereotype discrimination… when an employer says to someone “you’re not acting ‘female enough’ or ‘male enough,’ therefore we’re firing you.” [Ref #7]
In other words, Price-Waterhouse v. Hopkins clarified that by making sex discrimination in employment illegal, Title VII also made sex-stereotype discrimination illegal. But it did not make sexual orientation discrimination illegal, as demonstrated by numerous references in Prowel. For example:
Emmett Honeycutt (portrayed by Peter Paige) in Showtime's "Queer As Folk" — like Brian D. Prowel, a Pennsylvanian with "pizzazz". (Showtime promotional image)
The question in Prowel was whether Brian D. Prowel, the plaintiff, had been discriminated against for being homosexual — in which case he had no recourse for a complaint under Title VII — or for not conforming to gender stereotypes — in which case he did. The court was clear in any case that,
There is no basis in the statutory or case law to support the notion that an effeminate heterosexual man can bring a gender stereotyping claim while an effeminate homosexual man may not. [Ref #5, p. 17; emphasis in original]
and hence concluded,
As long as the employee — regardless of his or her sexual orientation — marshals sufficient evidence such that a reasonable jury could conclude that harassment or discrimination occurred “because of sex,” the case is not appropriate for summary judgment. For the reasons we have articulated, Prowel has adduced sufficient evidence [of sex-stereotyping discrimination] to submit this claim to a jury. [Ref #5, p. 17]
What this means in essence is that within the 3rd Circuit’s jurisdiction at least — which includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the Virgin Islands [Ref #9]:
The 3rd Circuit’s decision is not precedential for Alaska, which is covered by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. But there is no reason to suspect that the judges of the 9th Circuit have any different understanding than the judges of the 3rd Circuit when it comes to the relevance of Title VII to sexual orientation discrimination. Let me repeat: SOL. Let me repeat: Too bad, so sad.
So display your gender stereotype noncomformity freely. But keep your sexual orientation firmly in the closet. At least, that’s what the case law on Title VII has to say about it. And that will remain the case until, if and when, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Title VII’s sex discrimination provision includes sexual orientation discrimination, or until Congress amends Title VII to add sexual orienation through an Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), as has been proposed in both houses of Congress recently. [Ref #7] Until then, as Paul Secunda explained to the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog,
…while certain states and cities have laws prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, the Supreme Court has never ruled that sexual orientation is covered by Title VII. [Ref #7]
It may all the same be true what Debbie Ossiander said of Title VII, that “it basically covers, in my mind,. employee discrimination, including same sex employee discrimination.”
But what counts with Title VII isn’t what’s in Debbie Ossiander’s mind — but in what the courts have ruled. So while she may have partially salved her own conscience with her mistaken notions about Title VII, reality is that thanks to her “no” vote on AO 2009-64, and what seems likely to be her refusal to override Mayor Sullivan’s veto of it, LGBT people in Anchorage have no more protection from the unfair job discrimination than they they do in housing, public accommodations, financial practices, and municipal practices.
In the meantime, Brian D. Prowel: I wish you the very best. What your coworkers and employer subjected you to was inexcusable. Readers of this blog can read the full court decision to see just how nasty they were. And rest assured that some Anchorage employers and coworkers are every bit as nasty. Too bad. So sad. No recourse here.
[Crossposted at Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis]
[Crossposted at Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis.]
As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity. I make sure this is reflected in my actions and my work.
I live in Anchorage. Like most of LGBT folk in Anchorage, along with our allies, a lot of my emotional & political energy over the past few months has been taken up in our fight for protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. On August 11, we won that fight — temporarily — when the Anchorage Municipal Assembly, by a vote of 7 to 4, passed the Anchorage equal rights ordinance, AO 2009-64. But a few days later, on August 17, Mayor Dan Sullivan vetoed it. While the Assembly has a few more days to try to override the veto, it doesn’t seem likely. And so, for the third time in 35 years, Anchorage first granted equality to at least some of its LGBT citizens, and for the third time the forces of intolerance, Christianist supremacy, and homophobia took it away again.
So you’ll pardon me if it wasn’t until today that I got the full skinny on why the Outer Alliance was started some days ago with the goal to “educate, support, and celebrate LGBT contributions in the science-fiction and fantasy genres.” [Ref #1] I knew it had something to do with some creepy comments made by a certain science fiction/fantasy writer, but I didn’t actually know what he said.
Now I know. And let me tell you, it rates every bit as full of hatred and ignorance as the worst offal spewed in Anchorage this summer out of the mouths of Christianist hate-pastor Jerry Prevo, self-proclaimed homophobe and “rascist” Eddie Burke [see note 1 below], and the numerous red-shirted individuals who carried their “Truth is Not Hate” hate speech into the Assembly chambers or spilled it into the comments on the Anchorage Daily News website [note 2].
The SF/F fiction writer in question was John C. Wright, Nebula Award-nominated author of the fantasy novel Orphans of Chaos, along with other SF/F titles. His Wikipedia entry provides a good summary (I’ve removed the links and internal footnoting for ease of reading):
On July 29, 2009, Wright posted an entry in his blog entitled More Diversity and More Perversity in the Future! where he criticized SyFy’s [formerly known as the SciFi Channel] promises of more diversity in programming, calling homosexuality an “abomination”, “an irrational lust”, “a malfunction of love”, “perverted” and not “normal and natural”, drawing comparison to racism and suggesting its depiction to be similar to that of “love affairs with corpses, small children, and farm animals”. This caused controversy within the science fiction community, drawing heavy criticism from fellow sci-fi writer such as Hal Duncan. Wright later deleted the original post, complaining of “slander” at having his views about lesbian and gay people identified as homophobic and bigoted, and sought to clarify that he shared the views of his church that homosexuality was against nature. He concluded, however, by saying “The love a homosexual feels toward his lover may be disordered — but it is still love, and love is still divine.” [Ref #2]
As wryly noted by Mari Kurisato a few days later,
John C Wright has decided to try to outdo Orson Scott Card and other misohomosexuals, primarily by being a stellar shit thrower on the internet and then going “well, I didn’t mean it exactly like that.” [Ref #3]
Links within the quote are hers, and worth checking out. They are, in order, the full text of John C. Wright’s original LiveJournal entry, which someone retained after Wright took it down from his own blog; the portion of SF/F writer Orson Scott Card’s Wikipedia entry on his views about homosexuality; and an entry from Wright’s blog indicating a putative “apology.” [Refs 4, 5, 6] For her part, Mari Kurisato, a talented illustrator, went on to design Outer Alliance’s logo. [Ref #3]
But the actual post I ran across which first gave me a rundown, and some highly useful commentary, about the John C. Wright controversy was one by Kip Manley called “John C. Wright is recoiling in craven fear and trembling, and I don’t feel so good myself” [Ref #7], which takes Wright’s nonsense and makes it — well… nonsense. Because that’s what it is. And pretty atrocious nonsense too. Much as we became accustomed to hearing in Anchorage in the course of our Summer of Hate. [Note 3]
At one point, Manley quotes from an older post of his, when the topic of discussion was Orson Scott Card — a writer I used to call “my favorite Mormon science fiction writer,” up until the time Card started displaying his own antigay attitudes. Manley wrote in 2004:
Science fiction is largely a fiction of setting: the bulk of the iceberg that’s unseen, underwater, is the act of world-building, and in that act, politics is paramount. (One is building a polis, after all.) —Therefore, it’s all-too-appropriate to keep in mind an author’s politics when considering their science fiction: an author who, say, considers homosexuality to be an aberration, is un- (or perhaps less) likely to build a world that would appeal to a reader who does not. There’s an assumption clash: one of his fundamental, foundational bedrocks is abhorrent to me, and vice-versa.
One can respond: well, yes, but there’s nothing about aberrant homosexuality in Ender’s Game, so how can it clash? Heck, there’s nothing in that book about homosexuality at all! And I will resist the urge to say oh, you think so? and I will even resist the urge to say precisely! —Instead, I’ll allow as how there’s frequently large gaps in the jerry-rigged polis left as exercises for the reader: one can hardly describe every kitchen sink, after all; one must make assumptions, and count on the reader doing likewise (which among other reasons is why fan fiction [and slash fiction] is so popular in science fiction). But that’s precisely why when those assumptions suddenly clash, it’s unsettling, even violently dissonant. [Ref #8]
I struggle with those issues myself — whether or how completely to divorce the art from the artist — even with people like Orson Scott Card, whose second “Ender” novel, Speaker for the Dead, has always struck me as deeply compassionate in its acceptance of difference between people. But if the artist is not necessarily the same as his art, nor is Card the same as Ender Wiggin. At least not when it comes to homosexuals. [Ref #9]
But deciding whether or not to purchase or read or boycott the work of writers who have publicly demonstrated their homophobia, or any other moral failing they may have, is not what the Outer Alliance is about. Rather, it is, as previously stated, to to “educate, support, and celebrate LGBT contributions in the science-fiction and fantasy genres.” [Ref #1] And here’s one reason why:
This is a point that probably does not need to be reiterated too often among our group, but one that never quits being useful: when they (the members of the majority culture, or whatever you want to call them) know personally even one of us, then they tend to be more open-minded about who we are, more ready to give up those prejudices based on what we are not. This fact, more than any other, is why we are winning what American right-wingers like to call “the culture war” in spite of our vast numerical disadvantage. Every single time a queer comes out or a straight ally speaks up in favor equality of human dignity, at least one, and usually more, of our opponents fall back and retrench or just give up. The John C. Right [sic] Affair is good example of it. [Ref #10]
As a writer — now hoping, frankly, to move on from the Summer of Hate and back to my writing — this is something I can wholeheartedly endorse and take part in. As a lesbian citizen of Anchorage, for whom the Summer of Hate is a very recent and very lasting memory, it’s how I intend to conduct myself in my day-to-day life: to live openly, happily, and fully as who I am — knowing full well that eventually, even the likes of Jerry Prevo and Eddie Burke will fall away.
I hope that readers of this blog, most of whom (I think) are Alaskans, and some of whom (I hope) are readers of science fiction and fantasy, will consider joining the Outer Alliance and will take a look at some of the numerous posts posted today in honor of Outer Alliance Pride Day. They’re all listed on the Outer Alliance’s website. [Ref #11]
Maybe even take a look at mine. [Ref #12] I’ve gotta say, as interesting as Palin getting punked might be, such that my post on it’s gotten 130 hits today as of this writing — it would sure be nice to have more than 11 hits on the excerpt posted early today of my novel-in-progress Mistress of Woodland. Who knows, you might even like Mielikki more than you like Sarah Palin.
… might not exactly be the adventure she was looking for. Because sometimes even Hong Kong investment firms need comic relief.
Update: One has begun to wonder if Hong Kong investment brokers wear pajamas and live in their mother’s basements.
Update 2: For other (& longer) takes on this item from people who blog more extensively about Palin than I do, I recommend:
As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity. I make sure this is reflected in my actions and my work.
I’ve been reading the SF & fantasy for most of my life, thanks to me picking up the habit from my brothers Dave & Mark. I’ve been reading SF & fantasy by LGBT writers and allies for almost as long, starting in the late 1970s after I came out when I was in college. From those days I remember Joanna Russ’ The Female Man, first published in 1975 when I was still in high school; Sally Miller Gearhart’s The Wanderground (1978), a utopian classic reflecting the lesbian-feminist separatist politics of the late 1970s; Suzy McKee Charnas’ Holdfast Chronicles — I wrote a review he first two books in this series, Walk to the End of the World (1974) and Motherlines (1978) for Boston’s Gay Community News not long after the latter title came out.
I’ve read plenty of good queer speculative fiction since then, by LGBT and non-LGBT authors alike — people like C.J. Cherryh, Samuel R. Delaney, Kelley Eskridge, Nicola Griffith, Ursula K. LeGuin, Elizabeth A. Lynn, Marge Piercy, Melissa Scott, Joan Slonczewski, John Varley— the list goes on. And should go on. Which is why I joined the Outer Alliance.
Besides which, I write some of this stuff myself. In celebration of the inauguration of the Outer Alliance with Outer Alliance Pride Day 2009, I’m sharing an excerpt from my novel-in-progress Mistress of Woodland.
(And note, as did a friend of mine, the considerable irony of September 1 being both first day of legal same-sex marriage in Vermont, and the beginning of Mayor’s Diversity Month in Anchorage, a city whose mayor last month vetoed a measure which would have provided equal protection from discrimination for LGBT citizens.)
Mistress of Woodland (or MoW as I call it for short) takes its title from Mielikki, a forest spirit of Finnish myth known also as metsolan emäntä, mistress of woodland — and one of MoW’s principal characters.
MoW is the story of Rachel, devastated by the sudden loss of an important relationship. Now she’s trying to make sense of a world that seems to have been thrown into the air and scattered like playing cards in a child’s game of 52-pick-up.
But Rachel isn’t the only person trying to make sense of things. Hidden away in Rachel’s life are Mielikki and two other figures of Finnish myth, Väinämöinen and Lemminkäinen, who decide to send her to the Questors’ Fire, a metaphorical world devised by the mysterious Dice, who may in fact be the Spirit of Luck. By way of the Questors’ Fire, the three Finnish gods hope to lead Rachel back to Henkimaa, her spiritual home.
This excerpt is from a chapter called “Pain Mountain,” in which Rachel’s spiritual self — known by the other questors at the Questors’ Fire as Helvetti — is suffering from the effects of a grievous wound.
* * *
Helvetti fumbled with the buckles of the scabbard and removed it, standing sword and scabbard against the deadfall alongside her staff. Setting up the tent was usually an easy chore, but each step of it now seemed endless — pulling it out of the bag, spreading the tent itself out on the ground, snapping the poles together and kneeling down to push them through the sleeves of the tent. She felt faint and clammy, and she thought her face was wet with sweat more than rain. Her belly — but she tried not to think of it, of how the Holly-demon had driven the sword into her. She forced herself to work on until the tent was up, then the rainfly. She retrieved her staff and sword and knelt down to the door zipper and tensed. What if Holly…? — but no, she imagined the interior as she wanted it to be, and unzipped the door to find it so: her blue and purple sleeping bag, the red and black-checkered wool blanket she liked to take on road-trips, a couple of blue foam camping pads. Safe.
She tossed in the staff and sword and crawled into the tent, staying to the floor so as not to muddy her bed. She lay down, unable for the moment to sit up even to zip the tent shut. Rest, just rest, she thought. She only had to shuck her wet clothes and climb into the sleeping bag and everything would be okay. Raindrops beat a quiet tattoo on the rainfly. She drew up one foot, then the other, unlacing her boots and kicking them off, peeling off her wet socks. The air was cold on her damp wrinkled feet. She unbuckled her belt and unzipped her trousers, pulled her shirt loose of her jeans. It was damp to the touch. It shouldn’t be. It was just the dampness of her fingers, she told herself, she’d been touching so many wet things. But when she brought up her left hand, her fingers were smeared red.
Panicked, she lifted her head and looked down the length of her body as, hands shaking, she pulled up her shirt. “Oh no,” she moaned, “please, no….” Her lower belly, that at Ophelia’s cabin had been as pale and smooth as if no sword had ever touched it, was dark with blood. She dropped her head back and wept in fear. “No, please… I don’t want to die… please, god, please… help me….”
“Ai, kiitos,” a voice softly exclaimed, “that’s all the excuse I need!”
With unthinking fear Helvetti scrabbled away from the doorway, grasping wildly for her sword. “No, no, don’t kill me!”
But the woman stooped in the doorway wasn’t the Holly-demon. It was no one Helvetti had seen before.
“It isn’t my plan,” the woman said gravely. She wore faded blue jeans and a forest-green slicker beaded with rain. Her eyes shifted from Helvetti’s face to the sword half-drawn in Helvetti’s one hand, then to her other hand pressed to the wound — holding my guts in, Helvetti thought, feeling how warm her blood was seeping through her fingers.
“I must look at that,” the woman said. She stepped into the tent, and Helvetti kicked off from the floor to scuttle away, but her shoulders and head hit up against the tent wall. She gripped the sword, not yet free of the scabbard, but the woman ignored it and knelt on the muddied floor beside her. “Keep your hand there,” she said, laying her own hand over Helvetti’s bloody one, adding to the pressure. Her accent was peculiar and at once familiar. “No, please don’t struggle — I’m not here to harm you. I’m going to help you.” She had blonde hair, a windchapped face. She turned her head, the thick braid at her back flinging out a spray of moisture. “Kauko!” she shouted.
“Who are you? Where… where in hell did you come from?”
“From the very depths of Helvetti herself… — Kauko!” the woman yelled again, and from outside the tent another voice called, “Täällä!”
“Missä laulaja?”
“Lähellä. Hetkinen, haen hänet.”
There was the woman’s face again, wide and strong, cheeks ruddy with the outdoors. “Kauko’s fetching the Singer. You’re bleeding overmuch, but he’ll fix you.” She lay a cool hand on Helvetti’s forehead. “Clammy. You’re pale. Going into shock, I think.” Her hand was steadying, calming. The terror was still there, but distant. “You do like a close call, don’t you? But you called me in time, just in time –”
“Called…you…?” Helvetti’s voice seemed to come from somewhere remote. Somewhere else far away her fingers released the sword.
“You called me, yes. ‘Please, god, please,’ you said. So here I am. Hmm — I’ve got to get these wet clothes off you, get you warm… but it’s not good to move you….”
“You’re… god?”
“Well, I’m not Ukko, or one of those from your Bible, and I’m not the Cosmic Egg. But you’re the one who says god is the universe and everything in it, so I’m close enough, eh? Tietysti! — I can poof as well as you, now, can’t I? That’s how I’ll move you.”
The woman’s eyes were almost oriental, the hint of what might have been epicanthic folds at their inner corners, crow’s feet at the outer. They were grey eyes. Warm. Warm, like her hands were now on Helvetti’s forehead, on Helvetti’s hand still held against the bleeding wound, far far away, warm like her voice chanting something low under her breath. Warm; but there was still the cold on Helvetti’s legs and feet from chill air and wet trousers.
Then a moment of strangeness, a shift, and the warm satiny feel of her sleeping bag against her skin, the bag zipped half down as Mielikki — yes, it must be Mielikki, finally Mielikki — leaned into her belly, the pressure of her hands holding back the blood, her grey eyes looking down on Helvetti, staving off fear.
Ft. Richardson woods, on the eastern edge of Anchorage — where much of MoW is set.
