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Keaveny confident MONA will pass through Senate

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The Missouri Nondiscrimination Act (MONA) has been filed in the Senate every year for almost a decade, but it has yet to make it out of the chamber.

However, bill sponsor Sen. Joe Keaveny, D-St. Louis, believes this year will be the first year since 2007 that significant action happens on this bill.

“If I wasn’t confident we couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t have filed the bill,” he said, repeating what has become his mantra on the legislation. “Nationally, the conversation has changed, and with the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, I think there’s going to be a time here, and you saw it today, where fewer and fewer people are testifying against the bill.”

Keaveny
Keaveny
Keaveny’s confidence may not mesh well with the blunt answer President Pro Tem Ron Richard had last week after Gov. Jay Nixon’s State of the State speech. Richard gave a plain, simple “no” when asked if he saw MONA getting out of the Senate.

“That remains to be determined,” Keaveny said after a hearing on the bill done by the Progress and Development Committee, which he chairs. “If he stays that firm, we’re going to have trouble getting out of the Senate. If I can appease some of his concerns, then we’ve got a pretty good chance.”

Keaveny said he hoped to leverage growing economic support for the legislation to help convince Richard to change his mind. Representatives from Monsanto, Barnes Jewish Health Care, and both the St. Louis and Kansas City Chambers of Commerce testified in favor of the legislation.

“Ron Richard, above anything else, is a man about jobs,” Keaveny said. “He wants to create jobs. You saw some of the biggest employers in the state testify in favor of the bill.”

However, Keaveny does not want to get caught up in the economic folly in allowing discrimination against the LGBT community to exist. Instead, he wants to focus on the moral responsibility to end such discrimination.

James Pittman (pictured above) provided perhaps the most emotional testimony during the hearing even though he spoke only for a few brief moments. Pittman is involved in litigation after allegedly being discriminated against, harassed and ultimately fired by the Cook Paper Recycling Company for being gay. Cook Paper Recycling has continued to deny that any kind of discrimination took place and that Pittman was a guest at the homes of many employees at Cook.

“At no time was he ever subjected to name calling or derision by me or any other employee,” Joe Jurden, the president of the company said in a statement. “That sort of behavior is simply not tolerated at our company and is grounds for termination.”

Steve Urie also testified about his termination for the same reason. Urie worked for one of the largest healthcare systems in Joplin and he was fired in 2005 from the hospital for “bringing homosexuality into the workplace.”

“You kind of immediately lose all of your self-esteem, and I think that’s why I so rapidly started looking for work,” he said. He quickly got a job at Joplin Health and Rehab after telling them what had happened. “I think that kept me from getting into a really deep depression because when somebody tells you that you’re nothing or that you don’t have any protections, it’s like it just knocks the wind out of you.”

Not everyone wanted the legislation to go through. Ray McCarty, executive director of the Associated Industries of Missouri, believes the bill may open businesses up to lawsuits.

“Establishing new classes that may sue their employers is a problem,” he said, adding that “We encourage our members to have policies that curb discrimination at every turn.”

But Keaveny is confident that even if the bill does not make it out of the Senate this year, it eventually will. He credited a growing ratio of people in support of the legislation compared to those against it, a ratio he says has drastically changed since the proposal was first introduced.

“My generation can do it, or the next generation will do it,” Keaveny said.