Erin Beck, Register-Herald of Beckley
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – While West Virginia Senate President Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson, declined last week to support any legislation to prevent landlords and employers from turning away LGBTQ adults, he took a stance on discrimination against LGBTQ children.
“We’re going to protect all of our children regardless of any different characteristics,” he said, in an interview Friday.
During the West Virginia Press Association’s Legislative LookAhead event Friday in Charleston, Carmichael and Speaker of the House Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, said that while they don’t believe landlords and employers should be able to turn away LGBTQ adults, they declined to endorse any policy solutions to prohibit those refusals.
But in a separate interview on a separate LGBTQ policy, Senate President Carmichael said it is doubtful that a rule that a legislative committee recently approved, allowing agencies that place foster children to reject LGBTQ children, will make it through the Senate.
“Those children still need to be taken care of,” Carmichael said. “It should be a moral imperative for us to take care of those children. I am convinced that will not – that there will be no discrimination against children that are gay.” …
