I am employed by a major funeral home corporation in TN. I am being consistently verbaly abused by a select few employees with comments such as "Are you bi?", "Faggot", so on and so forth. These allegations are very FALSE, however this has become a real issue with me. I am tired of these little episodes and want it to stop. The sad thing is that these guys do this in front of management personell. What can be done? Should I file a suit, or what? Please Help!!!

While sexual orientation is not a protected status in TN, harassment is illegal if it is based on a protected status, such as gender, race, religion, disability, national origin, pregnancy status, etc. You can read more about it www.eeoc.gov (http://www.eeoc.gov).

There is a US Supreme Court case, Oncale vs. Sundowner. In the case, the employee (Oncale) was threatened and harassed by coworkers through name-calling, physical asault, etc., and implications that Oncale was a homosexual. As I said earlier, sexual orientation such as homosexuality is not a protected status. However, the harassment was conducted without regard of Oncale's actual sexual orientation. The legal issue resolved by the US Supreme Court is whether discrimination, in the form of harassment, is illegal if the discrimination was committed by those of the same gender as the victim. The US Supreme Court stated that such discrimination/harassment is illegal.

While at the federal level, employers must have at least 15 employees to be covered by the law, TN law takes discrimination law to employers with 8 or more employees. You can read more about TN discrimination law at: http://www.state.tn.us/humanrights/index.html