I work for a large corporation in New York state. A few months back I was asked by my boss If I'm gay, (I'm not) and I told him this and the fact that I've had a girlfriend of 2 years. Apparently he didn't believe me because he told me to 'come out of the closet.' At first I dismissed his comments, but since then he has asked me repeatedly if I'm gay in the presence of my co-workers, and once even brought up the topic in a formal meeting (interestingly when I told everyone at this meeting again I was not gay, my boss responded "we are glad to hear that, believe me". After he made this comment a gay employee was hired no two weeks later, what a coincidence Last week I heard him telling some visiting sales reps at a luncheon that I'm gay, I asked my supervisor why he was doing this to me and she replied "because he can". I reported this to the company's ethics committee with no response, I called up to follow-up and they told me they had no record of my email, so I have since requested paperwork from the EEOC to file a charge.
I have nothing against people who are gay (I have had several gay friends throughout my life) but his constant harassment and defamation has definitely created a hostile work environment for me, and it has affected my physical and mental health. Oh yeah and I lost the permanent position I applied for to the gay employee they hired (as a temp at first).
At this point I'm just waiting for the paperwork so I can file a charge. I'm surprised at the fact that I work for a global corporation and they haven't even responded to my report. My boss is really out of line with some of the sexual comments he makes at work (I work with mostly women so he is probably intimidated by me somewhat) but I'm sure they are offended by his comments, he says some seriously vulgar things. As much of a sad old homophobic bigot as he is, there is a chance he could get fired by me reporting this so I have to think about this as well, he does have a family. This is the type of individual that no amount of sexual harassment training will ever change (a complete neanderthal straight out of the stone age) I am young and have never had any experience with this sort of thing before , I would greatly appreciate any advice anyone can give on what they think is the right thing to do here...