Local
Gay coach fired at VCU
Advocates renew call for Obama exec order on workplace bias
VCU women’s volleyball coach James Finley says he was fired because he’s gay. (Photo courtesy of Finley)
A women’s volleyball coach at Virginia Commonwealth University, who says he was fired last month because he’s gay, would have a far better chance of getting his job back if President Obama had issued a non-discrimination executive order for federal contractors.
That’s the assessment of Tico Almeida, president of the national LGBT advocacy group Freedom to Work.
“If the executive order were already in place, Coach [James] Finley could have the Department of Labor investigate whether federal contractor VCU allowed anti-gay animus to overshadow the fact that he led his team to a 25-6 winning record this season as well as a perfect graduation rate for his student athletes,” Almeida told the Blade in a statement.
Almeida said VCU would be a prime target for a discrimination investigation under such an executive order because it has received more than $40 million in contracts in recent years from such federal agencies as the National Institutes of Health, the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Defense.
“President Obama should sign the executive order today because every day that passes is another day in which taxpayer money can be squandered on anti-LGBT workplace harassment and discrimination,” he said.
Finley, 52, told the Blade he learned of his dismissal on Nov. 19 when the university’s recently hired athletic director, Ed McLaughlin, informed him he decided not to renew Finley’s contract as coach.
He said he filed a discrimination complaint with the university’s diversity office. The university’s personnel policy bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. A VCU spokesperson said the office has 45 days to investigate the complaint under university rules.
Another university spokesperson, Pamela Lepley, told Richmond news media outlets that McLaughlin’s decision not to renew Finley’s contract was “in compliance with appropriate VCU employment practices and policies.”
In his own statement, McLaughlin said he did not base his action on the fact that Finley is gay.
“It is unfortunate that Mr. Finley feels the decision not to renew his contract was based on anything other than previously stated concerns about the volleyball program,” he said.
Finley told the Blade McLaughlin told him his reason for not renewing the contract was a desire to take the volleyball program in a “different direction” in order to lift the program to “an elite level.”
Finley and his husband, John Sternlicht, an attorney, consider McLaughlin’s rationale for not renewing Finley’s contract a thinly veiled pretext.
The two say they believe the true motive was McLaughlin’s unwillingness to retain an openly gay man as coach of the VCU women’s volleyball team, despite the fact that Finley is credited by students, other coaches, and sports writers with having vastly improved the team and inspired its women players during his eight-year tenure as coach.
“The reality is they were below 500 [in their win-loss record] for 14 straight years prior to me coming here,” Finley said in a telephone interview.
In the years in which he served as coach, the team has had the highest winning percentage in women’s volleyball at VCU in the previous 20 years, he said.
“We had 25 wins with only six losses,” he said in discussing the current year. “We had our highest national ranking in program history.”
According to Finley, many university officials, students, and the athletic department staff have been fully accepting of him and Sternlicht. Many of his colleagues attended his and Sternlicht’s wedding celebration last year, he said
With that as a backdrop, Finley and Sterlicht said McLaughlin remained distant and unsupportive of Finley since the time McLaughlin was hired as athletic director in July of this year.
He never attended any of the women’s volleyball games at the university’s home court, never congratulated him or the players for their successful season, and appeared to turn and walk in another direction whenever the two crossed paths on campus, said Finley.
Sternlicht said evidence of anti-gay animus surfaced when it became known last month that McLaughlin demoted a woman staffer who was the only other out gay person in the athletic department.
According to the Commonwealth Times, Pat Stauffer, a 30-year employee at the VCU Athletics Department, was stripped of her title as Senior Women’s Administrator and given the new title of Senior Associate Athletic Director for Sport Administration.
Finley said any doubt about McLaughlin’s motive for firing him vanished in his own mind and in that of his supporters when his volleyball players told him McLaughlin said the university wants a coach who would “represent the university well.”
“What he was saying is I, as a gay man, can’t represent the university or the athletic program in a positive way,” Finley said.
Finley’s dismissal comes at a time when LGBT advocates in Virginia say they are uncertain over whether sexual orientation non-discrimination policies adopted by the state’s universities and colleges, including VCU, can be enforced.
Last year, Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli said the universities didn’t have legal standing to adopt such policies because sexual orientation discrimination is not prohibited under Virginia law.
For more than a year, Almeida and other LGBT advocates have been urging President Obama to sign an executive order requiring companies and other entities such as universities that receive federal contracts to adopt internal personnel policies banning employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Existing federal civil rights laws already ban employment discrimination based on race, religion, sex and ethnicity, but those laws don’t apply to LGBT people. A bill pending in Congress known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, would add similar protections for LGBT people in federal law.
But ENDA remains stalled in the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, and Capitol Hill observers say it has no chance of passing unless Democrats regain control of the House in the 2014 elections.
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The Comings & Goings column also invites LGBTQ college students to share their successes with us. If you have been elected to a student government position, gotten an exciting internship, or are graduating and beginning your career with a great job, let us know so we can share your success.
Congratulations to Jamie Leeds, chef extraordinaire, and owner of Hank’s Oyster Bars, as she ventures into some new areas. Leeds is an award-winning Washington, D.C.–area chef, restaurateur, and entrepreneur with more than three decades of experience shaping the region’s dining scene.
Her first new venture is a restaurant opening in Alexandria this week. It will be called Hank’s Pasta Bar, bringing a personalized twist to classic Italian dining with a hiddenrestaurant-inside-a-restaurant in Old Town, Alexandria. The new trattoria is above Hank’s Oyster Bar, and will feature a build-your-own menu, marking a new direction for Leeds in partnership with chef Darren Norris. Norris brings more than three decades of experience to Hank’s Pasta Bar, with a foundation grounded in Italian cooking. The grand opening was scheduled for May 14. The elevated casual eatery blends an inventive chef-driven menu with an easy-going, sit-down dining experience that puts guests in charge. Hank’s Pasta Bar bridges the gap between elevated fast casual, like Norris’s Shibuya, and full-service dining, like Leeds’s Hank’s Oyster Bar. Diners order electronically at the table, but unlike fast casuals, food and beverages are delivered on plate ware, and a server is on site at all times.
The restaurant-inside-a-restaurant, welcomes guests to dine in with a full bar, including Italian wines and craft cocktails, maintaining its focus on traditional Italian fare with contemporary touches, including a build-your-own pasta bowl experience starting at $16. Create your own pasta bowl from seven artisanal pastas (including gluten-free), nine made-in-house sauces, proteins, vegetables, and toppings. Leeds said, “It’s the kind of place you’d find down a side street in a Tuscan hill town, after being tipped off by a friend who says, ‘trust me.’ If you know, you know.”
The restaurant will continue Hank’s community partnerships, including with Real Food for Kids, supporting programs that improve school food and nutrition equity.
In addition to this you should try Jaimie’s other new venture. Back Door Taco at Hank’s in Dupont Circle. You walk down the alley from 17th Street to the back door of Hank’s, and enter a small patio to partake of great tacos and interesting cocktails.
District of Columbia
HIV Vaccine Awareness Day set for May 18
Whitman-Walker joins nationwide recognition of efforts to develop vaccine
Whitman-Walker Health, the D.C.-based community healthcare center that specializes in HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ-related health services, will join health care advocates from across the country to support efforts to develop an HIV vaccine on HIV Vaccine Awareness Day on May 18.
“HIV Awareness Day, observed annually on May 18, was established to recognize and thank the volunteers, scientists, health professionals, and community members working toward a safe and effective prevention HIV vaccine,” Whitman-Walker said in a statement.
“Led by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the day is also an opportunity to educate communities about the critical importance of preventive HIV vaccine research,” the statement says.
It adds, “The reality is that any new vaccine discovery must be built community by community, institution by institution, and then it must reach everyone – especially the communities who have carried the heaviest burden of this epidemic.”
On its own website, the National Institutes of Health says HIV Vaccine Awareness Day also highlights its longstanding efforts, coordinated by its Office of AIDS Research, to support researchers’ efforts to develop an HIV vaccine.
“Researchers are making promising headway in efforts to develop a safe, effective HIV vaccine,” it says in a statement on its website.
A Whitman-Walker spokesperson said Whitman-Walker was not holding a specific event to observe HIV Vaccine Awareness Day, but it will recognize the day as a way of encouragement for its ongoing work to address the AIDS epidemic and support for vaccine research.
“Today, no one has to die from HIV,” said Whitman-Walker’s Health System division’s CEO, Dr. Heather Aaron in the Whitman-Walker statement. “We have the treatments, the technology, and the research to change outcomes, and yet people in our community are still dying from HIV//AIDS,” she said in the statement.
“That is unacceptable, and it is exactly why our work continues,” she added. “Here in D.C. with more focus on Southeast D.C., the Whitman-Walker Health System remains committed to making a difference through cutting-edge research, policy advocacy, and philanthropy, because fair access to life-saving treatment is not a privilege. It is a right.”
District of Columbia
Capital Stonewall Democrats endorses Janeese Lewis George for D.C. mayor
Group also backed D.C. Council, Congressional delegate, AG candidates
The Capital Stonewall Democrats, D.C.’s largest local LGBTQ political organization, announced on May 14 that it has endorsed D.C. Councilmember Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) for mayor in the city’s June 16 Democratic primary.
Lewis George along with former D.C. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie (D-At-Large) are considered by political observers to be the two leading candidates among the seven candidates competing in the Democratic primary election for mayor.
Both have strong, long-standing records of support on LGBTQ issues, indicating Capital Stonewall Democrats members, like LGBTQ voters across the city, are likely choosing a candidate based on non-LGBTQ related issues.
In a May 14 statement, the group announced its endorsements in seven other Democratic primary races, including D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson, who is running unopposed in the primary. Also endorsed is D.C. Councilmember Robert White (D-At-Large), who is one of five Democratic candidates competing for the position of D.C. delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives.
D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) is among the four candidates competing with White for that post, and who like White has a strong record of support on LGBTQ issues.
In the At-Large D.C. Council race for which incumbent Anita Bonds is not running for re-election, Capital Stonewall Democrats has endorsed community activist and LGBTQ ally Oye Owolewa in a nine candidate race.
For the Ward 1 D.C. Council election, in which five LGBTQ supportive candidates are competing, the group did not make an endorsement because none of the candidate received a required 60 percent of the endorsement vote cast by Capital Stonewall Democrats members, according to the group’s former president, Howard Garrett.
The statement announcing its endorsements shows that it decided to list its “Preferred Ranking” of each of the Ward 1 Democratic candidates as part of the city’s newly implemented ranked choice voting system. It lists gay candidate Miguel Trindade Deramo as first, bisexual candidate Aparna Raj second, Jackie Reyes Yanes third, Rashida Brown fourth, and Terry Lynch fifth.
In the remaining ward Council races, Capital Stonewall Democrats endorsed Councilmember Matt Fruman (D-Ward 3), who is running unopposed for re-election; Councilmember Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5), the Council’s only gay member who is being challenged by two opponents; and Councilmember Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who is running unopposed for re-election.
The group also chose not to make an endorsement in the special election for another At-Large D.C. Council seat that became vacant when then-Independent Councilmember McDuffie resigned to enable him to run for mayor as a Democrat. Under the city’s Home Rule Charter adopted by Congress, that at large sweat is restricted to a “non-majority party” candidate, meaning a non-Democrat.
The three candidates running for the seat, all Independents, include incumbent Doni Crawford, who was appointed to the seat earlier this year; former D.C. Councilmember Elissa Silverman; and Jacque Patterson. All three have expressed support on LGBTQ related issues.
“The organization’s endorsement process included candidate questionnaires, public forums, and direct voting by active CSD members,” the statement announcing its endorsements says. “Each endorsement reflects the collective voice of 173 LGBTQ+ Democrats who voted in the process and are committed to building lasting political power in the District,” according to the statement. “Candidates that reached 60 percent support received the endorsement.”
Garrett, the group’s former president, acknowledged that with nearly all candidates running in D.C. elections expressing strong support for the LGBTQ community, many if not most of the group’s members most likely chose a candidate based on issues other than LGBTQ related issues.
He said he believes Lewis George, who he is supporting and is viewed as a progressive candidate who self-identifies as a Democratic Socialist, compared to McDuffie, who is viewed as a moderate Democrat, captured the group’s endorsement based on the view that she is the best person to lead the city going forward.
“I believe that Capital Stonewall members voted for Janeese Lewis George because we’re tired of the status quo and we need a new, bold leader to not only move our city forward but also to stand up to Donald Trump and his administration,” Garrett told the Washington Blade.
McDuffie’s LGBTQ supporters, including former Capital Stonewall Democrats presidents David Meadows and Kurt Vorndran, have argued that McDuffie’s positions on a wide range of issues, including LGBTQ issues, show him to be the best candidates to lead the city at this time and In future years.
The group’s endorsement of Lewis George comes one week after GLAA DC, a nonpartisan LGBTQ advocacy group, awarded her its highest candidate rating of +10.
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