To the editor:
As a gay business owner in South Carolina, I already have the absolute right to fire anyone I want to fire from my business who is heterosexual. As a gay licensed real estate professional in South Carolina, I have the absolute right to refuse to sell or to rent housing to ANYONE who is heterosexual. No law in South Carolina protects heterosexual people from my actions and there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do about it. There is no such thing in South Carolina as protection from discrimination in either employment or housing on the basis of sexuality. I can legally discriminate at will all day long.
What I choose to do is to be ethical and to treat people equally. It’s what smart business people do.
Why would anyone gay or straight choose to do business with unethical people who have a proven track record of bad business practices like those of Sen. Lee Bright’s failed trucking business which resulted in a foreclosure filing and S.C. Department of Revenue tax liens in three separate tax years? How interesting that while Sen. Bright’s business was failing and his bank was foreclosing, Sen. Bright was ginning up legislation to make sure that there would be an entirely new class of South Carolina citizens to whom he and his failing business could refuse to provide service on religious grounds … because you know there’s one thing all failing businesses need — fewer customers.
In the Lowcountry, when we see a cockroach, we spray it knowing that we’ll likely find it upside down on the floor and still kicking a bit the next morning. That is where we are with LGBT rights in South Carolina. Discrimination has been sprayed, but it’s still upside down kicking on the floor of the General Assembly.
— Charles Smith, West Ashley, Charleston, S.C.
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