Poor Mojo's Newswire

A Christian couple in Grand Forks, British Columbia has decided to close their bed and breakfast rather than face additional charges of discriminating against gay customers. . . . "We've been harassed so bad we're not running (the B&B)," said Lee Molnar, who lives with his wife Susan in the B.C. community of Grand Forks. Their lawyer Ronald Smith said they are "devastated" but also feel they can't continue to operate Grand Forks Riverbend Bed and Breakfast for fear they will be asked again "to violate their religious beliefs" by renting to a gay couple. Smith is representing the couple in a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal case scheduled to begin Wednesday, but it was postponed. "They're just a retired couple in Grand Forks who thought they would open their home to guests and here they are in the centre of a firestorm," Smith said. "They're a lovely couple. They don't want to be thought of as discriminating, but they're Christians who don't feel they can violate their religious beliefs."

In a current job posting on The People Place, a job recruiting website for the telecommunications, aerospace/defense and engineering industries, an anonymous electronics company in Angleton, Texas, advertises for a "Quality Engineer." Qualifications for the job are the usual: computer skills, oral and written communication skills, light to moderate lifting. But red print at the bottom of the ad says, "Client will not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason." In a nearly identical job posting for the same position on the Benchmark Electronics website, the red print is missing. But a human resources representative for the company confirmed to HuffPost that the The People Place ad accurately reflects the company's recruitment policies. "It's our preference that they currently be employed," he said. "We typically go after people that are happy where they are and then tell them about the opportunities here. We do get a lot of applications blindly from people who are currently unemployed -- with the economy being what it is, we've had a lot of people contact us that don't have the skill sets we want, so we try to minimize the amount of time we spent on that and try to rifle-shoot the folks we're interested in." There are about 5.5 people looking for work for every job available, according to the latest data from the Labor Department.

A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school. The project's leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children's ethnicity. But the school's principal says the request was only to fix shading and had nothing to do with political pressure. The "Go on Green" mural, which covers two walls outside Miller Valley Elementary School, was designed to advertise a campaign for environmentally friendly transportation. It features portraits of four children, with a Hispanic boy as the dominant figure. . . . "We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars," Wall said. "We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics)." Wall said school Principal Jeff Lane pressed him to make the children's faces appear happier and brighter. "It is being lightened because of the controversy," Wall said, adding that "they want it to look like the children are coming into light." Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/06/04/20100604arizona-mural-sparks-racial-debate.html#ixzz0pwqzbJIk