With graduation approaching fast, less than a
month away, a lot of soon to be college grads, including myself, are starting
to look for jobs. With the job-hunting,
there is always the post interview nerves that everyone gets. What makes it
even more nerve racking is knowing you may not be hired because of your gender,
sexual orientation, or something else the interviewer may not like about you.
I wasn’t aware of the fact that people actually
got fired because they were homosexual until recently in my journalism ethics
class when a few of my classmates did a case study over the issue. Hearing this was a complete shock to me. I
know there are people who are anti-gay but I never knew it could actually
affect someone in the professional world. I always thought there was a law that
protected people against this kind of discrimination but apparently not. With
today’s society, you would think that discrimination is something that doesn’t
happen too often. Well, now a days, it’s actually becoming more and more
common, especially discriminating against the gay community.
Later on
in the week, I stumbled upon an article on prdaily with the title, “Report: Man ‘likes’
gay-advocacy Facebook page, gets fired”.
The article discusses how “a former government employee claims
he was fired for being gay after he “liked” a pro gay-and-lesbian Facebook page”
(Allen).
Some companies won’t directly say they are
firing someone because of their sexual orientation, they will find another
excuse. However, one can usually determine when they are being fired for being
gay.
Currently,
“the Equal Employment Opportunity Complaints (EEOC) office does not protect
against workplace discrimination based on an individual’s sexual orientation.
In fact, President Obama on Wednesday backed away from issuing an executive
that would bar federal contractors from discriminating against workers based on
sexual orientation” (Allen).
I feel
like people shouldn’t be discriminated in the workplace just because it’s
supposed to be a “professional” environment. It’s sad that there are still
people out in the world who are very close -minded when it comes to accepting
people who are different. People need to
open their eyes and look back at the times when people were discriminated for
the color of their skin. It wasn’t okay back then, which is why it came to end,
so they should look at this in the same way.
So
hopefully in the near future, a law that protects people against this type of discrimination
will be passed so everyone can get an equal opportunity when it comes to
working in the professional world.
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