The first time Alicia Pedreira heard from co-workers that they had spotted her picture in a photo exhibit at the state fair in Louisville, Ky. What photograph? At the time, Pedreira was working as a therapist at the Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children, a religious organization that contracts with the state to provide a range of services for at-risk youth.
Pedreira liked her job, and she had a sterling reputation among her peers. But she wasn't the chattiest person in the office. On the advice of the man who had hired her, she generally kept her personal life to herself -- until, that is, her photograph unexpectedly popped up at the Kentucky State Fair.
Taken by an amateur photographer during a AIDS walk and entered, without her knowledge, in the state-fair art competition, the image depicts Pedreira, who is 37, in the company of a woman with short-cropped brown hair whose arms dangle suggestively around Pedreira's waist.
The two women look distinctly like a couple, an impression that Pedreira's tank top -- which bears a map of the Aegean Sea with an arrow pointing to the ''Isle of Lesbos'' -- all but announces. On Oct. A termination letter explained that Pedreira's ''homosexual lifestyle is contrary to Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children core values.
Pedreira was devastated; several of her colleagues were so angry that they resigned in protest. Friends urged her to fight back. Last April, Pedreira and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit in United States District Court in Louisville, accusing the Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children, which receives more than three-quarters of its money from the government and is the state's largest provider of services for troubled youth, of engaging in religious-based discrimination.
