Virginia devolves some more

In February, Virginia's newly elected stealth-theocratic Governor Bob McDonnell, as one of his first acts in office, signed an executive order which removed sexual orientation from state non-discrimination laws. Protests quickly broke out across Virginia, as critics rightly pointed out that for all practical purposes this ruling would only impact GLBT workers at the state and municipal level. "This does nothing at all for the business owners, landlords, and millions of ordinary Virginians who want to discriminate against the gays," said Congressman Bob Goodlatte, echoing the sentiment expressed by many of his constituents. "Course I guess we can always just assume the law is on our side, cause I'm guessing that it probably is." The McDonnell administration has now taken it's first step to bring the order into focus, with state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli telling Virginia public colleges and universities to rescind policies that ban discrimination on sexual orientation, saying they have extended these protections 'without authority'. "I know our state slogan is 'Virginia is for lovers'," said Cuccinelli, making a yucky face, "But I don't even want to think about what some of these perverts are doing on the campuses of our fine Virginia schools. Or even off campus. It doesn't matter. These are our schools and these are our rules. And furthermore, the state assembly is readying a bill to change our state slogan to 'Virginia is for gun lovers'." Many of the schools are balking at the order. "As of today, our nondiscrimination policy stands as it is," says Virginia Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski. "We've got to get approval from our Board, and they don't meet all that often. And whoa, look at this, our agenda for the next meeting looks pretty filled up." "Look, we're telling the schools to stop non-discriminating, not to start discriminating, at least right now," states Cuccinelli. "If they want to give me any lip about it, well, I don't know, the order doesn't give me any enforcement mechanism, so I guess I'll just have to ask the Governor." "I know what we'll do," McDonnell said brightly. "We'll cut their budgets... Oops, I forgot, we've already done that."