Gay Discrimination

Last month marked the first time in American history that a president discussed gay rights during his inauguration speech. Which raises the question: Has the time come to outlaw discrimination against gays in the workplace? It's still legal in 29 U.S. states to fire a worker for being gay, and on Friday the ...

Isabel Perez had been working in human resources for 15 years, when she took the job as HR director at Ashley Furniture HomeStore. She says executives would tell her to hire only women or white people for certain jobs, and no "gays, lesbos" at all. After just two weeks on the job, Perez, who is married to a ...

Ed McGovern's restaurant in New Bern, N.C., specializes in seafood. He also disapproves of gay people. A lesbian couple got a taste of both in early December, when McGovern handed them a poorly written letter explaining that their love was "unnatural," and hastening the biblical "end of days." ...

For decades, Luis Patino worked for Birken Manufacturing Co. in Connecticut, building aircraft components. Starting in 1991, the taunts became relentless: "faggot," "homo," "faggot go home." They harassed him in Italian and Spanish, too: "pato," "maricon," "pira." His body shook with humiliation, his work ...

For four years, Shelly Flood says she was an excellent employee at a Maine branch of Bank of America. Her partner, Keri Flood, a cleaner at the bank, also received glowing reviews in the two years she worked there. But when the bank discovered that they were lesbian partners, things changed "suddenly and ...