Fresh Updates from RAC

Last week the Employment and Housing Non-Discrimination Act was introduced in both houses of the West Virginia State Legislature. If passed the bill would expand current protections against discrimination based on race, gender and religion, to include sexual orientation and gender identity and age. The Religious Action Center has partnered with Fairness West Virginia to engage a number of Reform rabbis in the state, including Rabbi James Cohn at Temple Israel in Charleston. Rabbi Cohn joined Reverend Mel Hoover and Reverend Rose Edington in the following Op-Ed, published in the Charleston Gazette on Monday March 10:

Hard work doesn’t discriminate.

We believe, as most West Virginians believe, that citizens in our state should face a level playing field in looking for, and keeping, a job or a house. No one should be fired or denied housing because of the person’s race, color, national origin, sex, age, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, genetic background, HIV/AIDS, military status or political affiliation.

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Human and civil rights often begin in small and unexpected places. This pattern is further exemplified by the latest developments in the struggle for equal protection in the workplace in Utah.

Despite popular perception there is currently no federal law that prohibits discrimination in the workplace (i.e. firing, failing to hire, demoting or refusing to promote) based on sexual orientation and gender identity. And while a number of states have enacted their own protections, still 29 states have no protection for lesbian, gay and bisexual people and 34 states have no protection for the transgender community.

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I’ve written before on RACblog about the important marriage equality cases before the Supreme Court this term: Windsor v. United States, the case that challenges the so-called Defense of Marriage Act; and Hollingsworth, v. Perry the challenge to California’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. While there have been many developments and much speculation since that time, I want to fill you in today specifically on the overwhelming number of briefs that were filed in the cases before the deadline last week.

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Education is the key to success. This axiom seems so intuitive that the idea of a major segment of a country’s population excluding itself from basic education seems ridiculous. Could you imagine schools that deny thousands of students access to subjects that would give them the tools to work and support themselves? That is exactly what is happening here in the state-funded Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) school system.

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I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the struggle to expand rights and inclusion of the LGBT community and referenced the famous quote from former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, “Where, after all, do universal rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world.” I wrote this about a new non-discrimination policy in a small town called Vicco, Kentucky, but it turns out I could have been looking even closer to home. In just the last few weeks my own alma mater, Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, has become a flashpoint in the struggle against hatred and discrimination.

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We are now mid-way into Jewish Disability Awareness month, a month dedicated to learning more about disabilities, disability rights, how we can increase inclusion in our own communities and how we can improve the civil rights of people with disabilities across the country and the world. How have you been commemorating this month? Haven’t started…?

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Tonight, President Obama will deliver his State of the Union address to Congress and the nation. Leaders of the Reform Jewish Movement are highlighting key issues they hope President Obama will address in the speech and calling on the President and Members of Congress to act swiftly on pressing domestic and international concerns.

Watch it here after the jump & watch the President’s address to this joint session of Congress. Weigh in yourself by following us on Twitter, @theRAC.
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Around Tu Bsh’vat it’s hard not to think of the Talmudic story of the old man planting a tree. The man is asked by a passerby why he is wasting his time planting a tree that he will never reap the fruits of. He responds, I may never but my children might, and their children will. Too often that is the story of our work for social justice – we will never live to see the results of our struggle, but we struggle anyway so that someday someone will.

But, every once in a while, we get to witness the fruits of our many years of labor. This week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released its excellent new guide, Hate Crime Data Col­lec­tion Guide­lines and Train­ing Man­ual.

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