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Subscribe to RSSA former employee at the Library of Congress is claiming he was fired after he "liked" a Facebook page for same-sex parents, an act he says led to his boss discovering he is gay. WRC-TV's Jim Handly reports.
A former management analyst at the Library of Congress is claiming he was fired after he "liked" a Facebook page for same-sex parents, an act he says led to his boss discovering he is gay.
Peter TerVeer liked the “Two Dads” page on Facebook, a group that helps “promote the gay and lesbian community,” according to the page.
When his manager, John Mech, discovered he was gay, TerVeer’s once-positive performance reviews turned negative, he alleges, and his boss started making derogatory statements about his sexual orientation, according to TerVeer's attorney Thomas Simeone.
Simeone would not comment on details of the case, but a Roll Call article published Tuesday said shortly after TerVeer liked the Two Dads page:
TerVeer said he started to receive emails from Mech that contained ‘religiously motivated harassment and discrimination.’ Mech then called him into a meeting for the purposes of ‘educating him on hell and that it awaited him for being a homosexual.’
TerVeer's therapist ordered him to take medical leave because of the stress, Simeone said. He was fired last week for missing 37 consecutive days of work.
A spokeswoman for the Library of Congress said she could not comment on personnel matters. But the Library released a statement saying, “Library of Congress employees, like all employees in the federal government, have protection against workplace discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Library employees who believe they have been subjected to discrimination may avail themselves of an internal administrative process to address their equal employment opportunity complaints.”
TerVeer filed a claim with Library of Congress’ Equal Employment Opportunity Complaints Office, Simeone said. The office has until mid-May to make a ruling. After that, TerVeer can take his case to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. EEOC spokeswoman Christine Nazer would not comment on the case.
Even though sexual orientation discrimination was part of the case, Simeone said his client will fight the termination based on religious bias. He said laws protecting workers against sexual orientation discrimination are limited and provide few, if any, remedies for compensating workers in cases like TerVeer's.
Whatever the outcome, it’s a wake-up call for employees who may not yet understand the extent to which their social media participation can impact their careers. The question of what’s private and what’s not on social networking sites is rearing its head in the workplace more often.
This month Maryland became the first state to ban the practice of asking for a job candidate or worker's social networking password; and Illinois is considering similar legislation, said Daniel Prywes, an employment attorney for Bryan Cave. “The proposed bills would broadly prohibit employers from seeking access to private areas of social media accounts, with no exceptions for law enforcement or similar sensitive types of employment.”
Facebook has threatened to “take action to protect the privacy and security of our users” in cases where employers seek passwords.
While most companies don’t cyber snoop on workers and job candidates, it can be legal for your employer to mine your social media meandering and take adverse action against you for something on your Facebook or LinkedIn, as long as your employer doesn’t thwart discrimination laws or collective bargaining rights.
Discuss this issue on our Facebook page. But remember, your boss might be reading.
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There's no "gay" clause in the civil rights act.
It is not a protected discrimination like sex, race, religion, etc.
Oh? I thought being gay had to do with sex. And the part of the constitution that deals wit "...Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness".
And by the way, it's a personal thing and none of your, or anyone else's, goddamn business!
This story is disturbing, and on a lot of levels.
What if, on condition of employment, your boss demanded the passwords of all of your active social media accounts, and not just facebook? What if he or she also wanted access to your emails? It smacks of Big Brother in the most Orwellian way.
Privacy is an implied right (the Constitution alludes to this, in regard to illegal searches and seizures, testifying against oneself, etc.). Unless you are working in a military or top secret field, I really don't see the need to know "everything" about an employee's private life.
This is already being tested in the courts. Job Hunters are being told that it is illegal for a company to ask for your logins to these social media sites. As a prospective employee, would even want to work for a company that asked?
My first thought is that this would be a serious breach of security, forget the privacy issues. Then I think if an interviewer asked for my login and password, or any other ridiculously inappropriate question, I would stop wanting to work there.
This is as close as I will ever be to having a social account.
If a prospective employer of mine asked for anything more personal, they are no longer a prospective employer. Their loss. I have submitted to mandatory drug tests, pre-employment and random, credit checks, just to be able to exceed perforfomance criteria for the job at hand. I am done with it, Hire me to do the job, if I produce a profit (legally), shutup and get out of my personal life.
My thoughts exactly. I even think the random drug testing is just poor and lazy management. If a person's job performance is suffering, whatever the reason, address the deficiency. If the performance is good, then who gives a rip about the drug test results.
The place I worked that did this tested two people randomly during my six years there. Neither was a person who had any performance issues, or would have any suspicion of being a drug user. Oddly, there WERE employees who had obvious issues and clearly deficient job performance, yet were never tested. Like I said, just lazy management (or non-management).
This is why I refuse to have a facebook page. If I want to tell my friends something, I will tell them verbally, not on some website. A lot of people use this so they can say "I have 543 close friends."
Really?
Name them....
I didn't say I had that many friends (perhaps you should read before you post). There was a woman who started the antifee campaign against a bank. She said she contacted her "500 closest friends on Facebook." C'mon.
I do not and never will have a FB page. I agree it should not be looked at by employers but the fact is they do look. So when do people llearn not to put anything out there that can come back to bite them? Right or not it is a fact and people should learn how to deal with it and if they don't not complain when they get bit.
Like many "straight" (AKA "thrait") men out there, this guy obviously loves to cyber-stalk gay men and obsessed with all things man-man. And like many "thrait men", somebody THAT obsessed almost always turns out to be a truck stop penis gobbler. Hide your kids from somebody THAT obsessed with dick.
Ha ha, good one dude.
Out...
Not sure of Library's policies, but in some places simply using Facebook at work can get you terminated. The computer provided to you by the business is supposed to be used for business purposes, not socializing. And missing 37 consecutive days of work is too much even for a public employee. Private companies usually let you go after a couple of weeks (unless it's maternity leave or a catastrophic event like broken bones or major surgery), and contract employees can be let go after just a few days regardless of the reason.
He simply uses his orientation to extort the money from his employer (us, the tax payers). It's pure luck he's Caucasian, otherwise he'd be playing the race card that usually provides much better payoffs, plus involvement of all the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons on his side. Being female would also have helped to site gender discrimination, and get Gloria Allred on the case. But he has only what he has - that queer orientation of his - and uses it in an attempt to turn it into a big payola and take revenge on the management.
There is one part of this that is being missed: The employer, regardless of the type of leave, has the right to have any position of employment that they deem needing to be staffed, staffed. That is to say that, in any case, without respect to any other proceedings, a job that needs to be done, needs to be done and the employer may staff that position at will, if the employee that vacated that position is off work longer than the employer is able to have that job unfulfilled. Now the court, in this case, may require that the employer has to put the former employee back to work, but in many cases, not necessarily in the same job, or even at the same pay. And if the employer wants, they may also eliminate the position entirely by rolling its duties into someone elses position. Then, if they are ordered to return the employee to work, they may do so in a different job. By taking not taking immediate legal action and by taking off thirty-seven consecutive days of work, this man put himself in a precarious position.
From a purely objective standpoint, both parties made mistakes in this case. The employee for taking off over a month and expecting to return to the job he basically vacated, and the more obvious, the employer for being criminally-stupid. And yes, the laws vary from state to state. It will be interesting to see how this is resolved.
Unless I missed it he didn't go through channels during his employment about being harassed. I would think most people if they are truly going through that much harassment would have filed with either superiors or with the personnel department. It seems he only went to them after he was fired..........if that is true then I don't give his story too much credibility.
Mech’s daughter noticed that TerVeer had “liked” the “Two Dads” page on Facebook, which led her to ask TerVeer whether he was gay. He said yes.
Looks like daddy's little girl is a stalker in training, too. What was she doing on his Facebook page?
Oh, and "straight" people always say gay people advertise their sexuality when that's BS - they bug us and ask us about our business because they're obviously bitter and have no lives. We don't approach you with our business, you approach us like Barbara Walters, wanting to know all our business because their own lives is garbage and they have nothing to talk about but homosex.
from reading the story it seems mr two dads brought all this upon himself. boo hoo no parade this week.
the US has become such a fascist corporate pseudo-christian bigoted police state. so i stay in self-exile. so many in the US have no clue how the world is moving on and you are so self-absorbed and falling far behind. you have consumed yourself. a shame common sense is so very un-common. too busy with foxnews, star search, extra size portions, NFL, car racing, celebrity gossip- god's chosen country?!
and if my boss is reading, it's ok, i am a one person business, and my boss doesn't mind if i'm homo or not.
You sound miserable, I feel sorry for you :(
Should read: "By not taking immediate legal action and by taking off thirty-seven consecutive days of work, this man put himself in a precarious position."
Here we go again!!!! What gays fail to realize is that people don't hate them because of their sexual preference...NOBODY CARES WHO THEY SLEEP WITH ANYMORE!! The reason people HATE gays is because of this garbage!!! Gays and blacks need to realize that they as a group are causing people that have NO PROBLEM with the color of their skin or sexual preference to HATE THEM FOR OTHER REASONS (such as playing the race card instead of taking accountability for actions, or playing the gay victim)....NEWSFLASH>>>>Your actions are causing people to HATE you and it has nothing to do with your sexual preference or skin color!
You obviously did NOT read the article... this guy liked a page on facebook and it made his boss ask if he was gay... his boss then went on to lecture him on sin and hell.... Since this is a government job, not one at a church... the boss had no right to do any of that... Sounds like you hate way too much... there's a cure for that... Love
Missing 37 days of work and claiming you were fired for being gay is like murdering 37 people and saying you got the death penalty for jaywalking...
No offense, but I used to file Copyright registrations at the Library of Congress, and, well, do they really have any straight people working there?
Firing a Librarian because they are Gay is like firing the church organist.
I am shocked! Shocked to find out that Gay people get jobs as librarians!
Really? I am shocked any straight people worked there.
I wonder if I can miss 37 days because I'm stressed. Probably not. I'm just a straight white guy, I don't have rights.
You are correct. Plus, I venture to guess that when the workplace gets stressful for you, you pull up your big girl panties and deal with it.
Wow.. so being harassed means put on your big girl panties and take it like a (wo)man??? You've obviously never been harassed!
A little sarcasm there....
And yes, I have been harassed, but I still showed up and did my job and worked through it and things turned around for me.
It is very unlikely that his claims have any merrit. This isn't some po-dunk company. This is the Library of Congress and it is a long-shot that anyone there would participate in such harassment. It is 2012. Very few people openly have problems with Gay people. The few facts that are available show that this person had a history of poor job performance and was called out on it. This entire things sounds like retaliation from someone not wanting to take responsability for their own actions.
FInally a sane voice in this discussion. WOrk place bigotry is against the law. Your personal religious (bigoted) beliefs have no place in the work place especially if you are a supervisor.
I'm in agreement with the "social networking is a scourge" crowd. I told my brother that my life is not interesting enough to give play by play reports. Frankly, neither is anyone else's. He says "You can send private messages too". I replied, "Yeah, they call that e-mail".
And this is why you should NOT have any current co-workers as Facebook friends!!! Your personal life is none of their business, and sometimes they use it against you for their own personal gain...or as in this case, to harass you!
Only thing he did wrong was not adjusting his privacy settings so people like his boss can't snoop his Facebook
Whos to say what the general public should feel or think about same sex parents or anything else for that matter..when you post personal information and its already a controversial subject you get what you get...personal information should be just that and not put out for everyone to comment about or act on...or except and expect the consequences...not necessarily fair but it is what it is
"I can't publicly comment on this. All the ladies I work with at the fashion shows think I'm gay, if they found out I'm not, they would stop walking around in front of me naked. It's a sacrifice I can live with."
Hilarious.
Good for you.
On another note, when will people learn that every thing they say and do is being monitored and that they need to be careful about what they say on social media sites?
I'm not saying it's right, but people need to be more cognizant of the ramifications of their actions.
There is a bit more to this than being fired for being gay..1) His supervisor created a hostile work environment with the emails and comments. This alone is a reportable and actionable offense within the company, at the very least. Did he report his supervisor's behavior to the company HR department? He should have. 2) If his doctor advised he take off time, then he is eligible for FMLA (unpaid leave). Did he do this and follow the procedure to do so? 3) His supervisor discriminated against him due to his religious beliefs. No matter where you work that is discrimination based on Federal Guidelines.
I am not gay but I certainly believe in gay rights. I 'like' gay oriented facebook pages. Liking something doesn't 'out' you. I have the right to freedom of speech and so did the employee. So 4) he has a case that his constitutional rights were violated by his supervisor.
The supervisor was in the wrong. As for some of the comments like those of TED ARIZONA..you need to get a clue dude. Every American citizen, in fact every human, deserves the same human right as everyone else. Period.
It amazes me how many people I know who get in trouble because of facebook crying. They're like crack fiends; the more they are told to watch what they say, the more they go off the deep end. Surprising what people will do for a like or a few comments.
I have to wonder if his performance at work changed and he is using Facebook as an excuse? We have several gay men and women here where I work and they are very open about it. Nobody really cares. They are good people and hard workers. If their performance goes in the crapper they will get reviewed based on their work performance and not their private lives.