Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican candidate for governor, has determined that existing state laws do not bar discrimination<\/a> on the basis of sexual orientation.<\/p>\n In a legal opinion sure to reverberate through his campaign for governor, Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette on Friday deemed \u201cinvalid\u201d a new agency interpretation that had extended anti-discrimination protections to gay and transgender Michigan residents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It’s difficult to imagine a more profound repudiation of history. After all, Michigan is the home of the labor movement, an important supporter of the civil rights movement; there is probably no one organization that did so much as the U.A.W. to help minorities, especially blacks and immigrants, into the middle class.<\/p>\n So now in Michigan, the home of some of the world’s finest universities (including my alma mater<\/i>, Michigan Tech), you can lawfully discriminate against the innate<\/b><\/i> trait of sexual orientation, but you cannot discriminate against the chosen<\/b><\/i> imbecilities and character failures of religion.<\/p>\n Don’t look for Michigan to restore itself to the first tier of economically important states any time soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican candidate for governor, has determined that existing state laws do not bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In a legal opinion sure to reverberate through his campaign for governor, Republican Attorney General … Continue reading \n