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From: rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: abetting discrimination
Message-ID: <1164@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 26-Nov-84 13:57:06 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncca.1164
Posted: Mon Nov 26 13:57:06 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Nov-84 04:23:15 EST
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 23

In her reply to Ross Greenberg, Julia Harper writes:

> But people like you have no recourse but to get rid of a homosexual if you 
> told to by a client or superior.  Currently, your client -- or your boss
> -- or whoever -- can legally tell you to fire or not hire someone because 
> they are gay.  

Is this actually true?  How can clients do this, especially once the ink's
dry on the contract, unless it's explicitly written in?  Can even superiors
do this (there IS recourse: personnel departments, state & federal gov't
agencies regulating hiring & firing practices ASIDE from those covered by
anti-discrimination legislation, the threat of a suit in courts not neces-
sarily hostile to the idea of ability as a criterion for employment)?

It may be naivete or ignorance on my part, but I doubt that a contract or
even the "chain of command" in a company positively empowers clients or
superiors in the ways Julia Harper & Ross Greenberg blithely assume they
do.

If the only compulsion for caving in to a client's or superior's unjustifiable
demand is $$: losing future promotions, fighting attempts to fire you, etc.,
then the situation has nothing to do with law or company regulations, & the
word "legally" in the quote above is a red herring.