A blog devoted to the actors and public policy issues involved in the 1998 District of Columbia Court of Appeals decision in Freedman v. D.C. Department of Human Rights, an employment discrimination case.
Monday, May 30, 2011
A Freak
Some people call me a freak. I take that as a compliment. In The Lives of the Great Composers, New York Times music critic Harold Schoenberg wrote about Verdi's final opera: "Falstaff is almost a freak, what the biologists call a sport. Nobody had expected Verdi to compose another opera. And, even granting that there might be another work, who would have expected it to be a comedy, and the most atypical opera Verdi ever wrote?"
During my employment as a paralegal at the law firm of Akin Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld from 1988-1991 I believed I was a victim of job harassment. In May 1989 a coworker confirmed that there was a rumor current at the firm that I was homosexual. I reported my concerns about the harassment, which featured rumors and innuendo, to the psychotherapists I saw during my employment. Both Stanley R. Palombo, M.D. and William D. Brown, Ph.D. surmised that I was a victim of rumors and innuendo because of my underemployed status. I was licensed to practice law but was employed as a paralegal. In the view of Drs. Palombo and Brown my coworkers reaction to me was rationally based on my failure to actualize my professional credentials by practicing law. On one occasion Dr. Palombo said to me, "You're a freak."
During my employment as a paralegal at the law firm of Akin Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld from 1988-1991 I believed I was a victim of job harassment. In May 1989 a coworker confirmed that there was a rumor current at the firm that I was homosexual. I reported my concerns about the harassment, which featured rumors and innuendo, to the psychotherapists I saw during my employment. Both Stanley R. Palombo, M.D. and William D. Brown, Ph.D. surmised that I was a victim of rumors and innuendo because of my underemployed status. I was licensed to practice law but was employed as a paralegal. In the view of Drs. Palombo and Brown my coworkers reaction to me was rationally based on my failure to actualize my professional credentials by practicing law. On one occasion Dr. Palombo said to me, "You're a freak."
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