Gay employees might have less leeway than they think when surfing the internet, even from the privacy of their own homes. The all-access nature of the web can lead to conflicts with employers.
Here are some basic strategies to help ensure your online life doesn’t threaten your job.
• Use an alias online or only part of your name.
• Don’t disclose your place of employment, either in writing, or by taking a picture in your uniform or at your office.
• Assume that anything and everything you post (including explicit material) can potentially be seen by anyone and everyone.
• Activate private settings when available.
• Never use company equipment for personal online activities.
• Research your employer or potential employer’s policies on internet use and non-discrimination, including whether the company includes sexual orientation and gender identity in its anti-bias policies.
• If possible, be out at work from the start of your employment so your sexual orientation won’t be discovered online.
The last week of school before summer vacation is usually a laid-back, euphoric time for bus drivers. But as classes wound down in Henry County, Ga., last May, a gay bus driver was summoned to the school superintendent’s office and interrogated about an online personal ad he posted on a gay website.
Shawn Wooten was a driver for Henry County schools for five years, including for four schools in 2006, before he said he met with Preston Malcom, a former assistant superintendent of the Henry County school system last May about a personal ad that had come to school officials’ attention.
“He basically pulled out a copy of a personal ad I put up on Bear411.com from two years prior,” Wooten said of Malcom. “They said a parent was passing it around over at a high school.”
Malcom allegedly told Wooten that a copy of the profile — which featured several pictures of Wooten, along with images of users who commented on Wooten’s profile — had also been sent to Georgia School Superintendent Kathy Cox, according to Wooten. One of the images on Wooten’s profile was the genitals of a man who commented on Wooten’s ad.
Following the May 24 meeting, Malcom sent Wooten a list of four questions, according to a copy of a letter provided to the Washington Blade by Wooten. The questions included whether the pictures on the profile were of Wooten, whether he shared the information from the website with any Henry County students, whether he identified himself as a Henry County schools employee on his profile, and whether Wooten used school property to post the profile.
Wooten responded on May 31 that all of the pictures were his except for the explicit image, but answered no to Malcom’s other three questions. A week later, on June 8, Wooten received a letter from Henry County Schools Superintendent Jack Parish informing him that on June 7 “the Henry County Board of Education accepted my recommendation to terminate your employment as a school bus driver.”
The termination letter did not list a cause of Wooten’s firing, but in a June 13 e-mail Parish wrote Wooten saying the action was taken “because of the belief that it is in the best interest of the school system.”
But in an era where plenty of teachers and school personnel have personal websites or online ads, Wooten is convinced he was fired for being gay and posting on a gay website.
“I was just sickened and couldn’t imagine how people could do someone this way — I mean, it isn’t like I dyed my hair or something like that,” Wooten said. “It is not something I can change. It is me, who I am. I can’t and won’t apologize to anyone for being me.
“I feel like if it would’ve been a, per se, straight ad, nothing would’ve been done,” Wooten added.
THE LEGAL BOUNDARIES of online privacy remain murky, but in the many states lacking employment non-discrimination laws that include sexual orientation, there appears to be little to stop employers from using online gay content to dismiss a worker, said Greg Nevins, senior staff attorney for the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund’s Atlanta office.
“It reinforces the importance of having employment protections so employers don’t engage in improper or discriminatory reasons for discharging people,” Nevins said. “A lot of it comes down to the question of would [employers] be doing the same thing, but for the sexual orientation of the person.”
The Henry County school system has a policy prohibiting teachers and staff from using school equipment for their personal online activities, but has no specific policy on the content or personal websites or dating ads, said Tony Pickett, a spokesperson for the school system. However, the system’s “Electronic Resources” policy also instructs personnel to “not access inappropriate materials” and “do not use language that is obscene, insulting, purposely inaccurate or offensive to others,” Pickett said.
“Given that teachers are expected to abide by the code of ethics of Georgia, even if they were supposedly to create [a website or online personal ad] at home and it was obscene, insulting and what have you, it could still be kind of an issue for us,” Pickett said.
Discouraged by the firing, Wooten volunteered on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union when Congress holds hearings on the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The ACLU has yet to finalize its list of speakers and is unsure if Wooten will be included, but officials said his story reflects how discrimination can evolve with technology.
“You have a right, certainly, to communicate on the internet, especially as long as it’s not during work hours,” said Paul Cates, director of public education for the ACLU’s LGBT Project.
“Half the people under a certain age are using the internet to look for dates,” added Cates, who characterized Wooten’s posting as a “perfectly innocent ad.”
A lot of recent attention has been paid to employers using websites like Myspace and Facebook to cull information on prospective employees, but not so much on niche dating sites like bear411.com where content can be more racy. Dating sites that require a membership tend to feel more private than sites that can be accessed by the general public.
But “that false sense of privacy can lead people to reveal more about themselves than they would normally,” said Jeffrey Prince, a professor at University of California-Berkeley who studies sexual orientation in the workplace.
“Increasingly these online profiles are becoming more popular, but often people are forgetting they’re not private — they’re quite public,” said Prince, who added that older web users “may not be as familiar with electronic sites and how information may be accessed and duplicated.”
DESPITE THE UNFAIR discrimination that gay people suffer at work, Prince suggested that gay employees find a balance between out-and-proud and employed-and-protected.
“I hate to say that they should [avoid mentioning their sexual orientation in online profiles], but I think it’s realistic in today’s electronic world to be careful what they put up on different sites because these are always open to misuse,” Prince said. “I hate to forward the stereotype that one should hide his or her sexual orientation on the basis of fear.”
The National Career Development Association is incorporating a session on gay-related workplace issues at its annual conference in July, and the potential abuse of online information by employers needs to be included in that discussion, said NCDA board president Barry Chung.
“People haven’t thought that far [about the unique career risks for gay people online] and they aren’t sensitive to the possibility of discrimination,” Chung said.
The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an advocacy group for gay and lesbian members of the military, has repeatedly criticized armed forces leaders for snooping online to find damaging information on gay soldiers. The group has represented more than a dozen gay soldiers — including several who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan — who were outed by online profiles.
“While online communities can be an important communication tool for military personnel, they can also lead to investigations and dismissals under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” said Kathi Wescott, deputy director of law for SLDN.
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