SWEETWATER, Tenn. — A local housing authority director was disciplined for using “sensitized, inflammatory words” to challenge a federal government proposal to expand antidiscrimination policies to include sexual orientation by gays and lesbians, the board’s chairman said in a statement last week.
Vicki Barnes, director of the Sweetwater Housing Authority, wrote a January letter in response to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s request for feedback on a proposed rules change that would expand antidiscrimination policies to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The letter was obtained by local station WBIR-TV.
Barnes wrote that she objected to changing the authority definition of family.
She wrote that LGBT individuals have made a “personal and moral lifestyle choice,” adding, “Other groups who make a personal lifestyle choice are drug users and sellers, gang members, prostitutes, cults and murderers. You are saying any group of persons can call themselves a family.”
Board chairman Wayne Key said in an April 5 statement that Barnes had been disciplined and that future communications would be monitored by the board.
Key said Barnes had apologized for the statement.
The authority oversees 158 apartments and several Section 8 housing units in and around Sweetwater, which is about 45 miles southwest of Knoxville.