Did I handle this properly? explained inside?

I own and run a business in an "at will" employment state.

Yesterday two of my employees called the office and said they were taking a "gay" day. I told them that it is not a legitimate reason as is outlined in their contract. Well this morning they came into work and after about 5 minutes they asked the IT guy why they couldn't login to their work computers. The IT guy called me and I told him to tell they two workers that couldn't login to the system to go back to their office. I then went to their office (they were in the same multi desk room) and said that I locked them out of the system yesterday. I added that they had one hour to pack their personal items and leave because their FIRED. They asked why. I told them that "gay" is not a reason to miss work in their contact.

I wouldn't have had a problem if they would have SCHEDULED a personal day to use as their "gay day", but they didn't so they had to pack their stuff and get their butts out.
* I fired a guy last year because he said didn't come to work because "he didn't want to come".

What do think about my decision?

I am with you on this, too. It is like saying pregnancy is a disability. I own a childcare center and I am dealing with a similar issue. I employee 4 mexican women and they called off work to participate in the Mexican Liberation Day sit out to bring attention to their efforts to work in Ohio. I was pissed!!!! I am their employer, obviously, I gave them a job and yet they are protesting a particular point of view from another perspective of their peers?? Why should I suffer that loss and stress to replace them at the last minute? We take care of little human beings...we can't afford to have 4 people off, at the last minute. It was just such a stupid move, like GAY day. Stupid!!!! You obviously, already support their position, but, NOOOO they can't leave it at that. We got through it and I let them all go within a few weeks when I secured their positions. We are an AT WILL co., also. I haven't been sued yet. Why in the hell didn't they just come to you in the first place and voice their concerns? That is what gets me. My feeling is that they want the attention and they were willing to risk their jobs to get their gayness out there. Grow -up boys! This is the real world and you were scheduled to clock in at 9am. Company policies trump ignorance.

If you hire someone, you have the right to fire them. Firring them because they did not come to work one time?? I don't know you might have a discriminate law suit in the making.
I think it would have been better handle my docking them for one day.

What is it going to cost the company in the long run to re-hire another employee just to prove a point??

It all depends on whether or not you value these employees. On both sides, you might've advised them ahead of time that you expected advance notice and they could've provided you with advance notice.

However, the politics of the demonstration had an air of ambush about it. Those who decided to play it that way should then be prepared to live with the consequences of their behavior.

The potential downside for you is that this lobby will sometimes label a business as hostile to their community and encourage customers to take their business to a more sympathetic competitor.

Does your state have non-discrimination laws based on sexual orientation?
I suspect you may have discriminated against these employees unless you fire every employee that ever misses a single day w/o a valid excuse.
I suspect that the cost to you in unemployment and legal fees, and cost of hiring and training new employees will prove that your decision was financially poor, not just mean spirited and discriminatory.

I think you've shot yourself in the foot by firing two perfectly satisfactory employees just to satisfy your own personal prejudice. In my opinion, that's not a very professional way to run a business.

EDIT: It seems like some of the people responding are not aware that yesterday was a planned political action day, where people were encouraged to deliberately "call in gay". The point to be made was that gay people make up a good sized percentage of the work force, and the purpose of the demonstration was to show how hard it would be to keep the businesses going without all the gay employees.

this is tricky because there's two ways to view this. as an employer, yes, they should have scheduled it ahead of time. as a human, you cant tell me you've never wanted to shut off the alarm and curl up with your lover all day. so really, only you can answer this question. do you feel right about what you did? im guessing no because why else would you be posting this queation on Yahoo answers.

I think you were unduly harsh. Was your reaction caused by their not showing up at work or was it because of the cause, the "gay day"? Have you exposed a personal bias?
You have unscheduled absences all the time. Or are you saying that you require your employees to schedule their sick days? I certainly hope you don't require your employees to come in while they are sick and "share the wealth" as it were. If they had called in sick would you have fired them. Yeah, they weren't sick. But obviously they felt this was an important event.
You also apparently showed your ignorance of current events in not knowing about it and the possibility of some employees missing work. If you had known, you could have sent a memo around before hand letting your employees know of possible consequences. Or asking them to let you know if they wanted were planning on participating in this event. It could be argued that this lack on your part caused the whole problem. Supervisors are supposed to relate to those under them. Not just hammer them. Now you'll have employees more worried about getting fired than they will about getting their work done. There's no doubt in my opinion that morale will suffer, employees will be more distracted, and performance will drop. Maybe not much, but it will drop.
You could easily have called them into your office, individually of course, and discussed the situation with them. You could have expressed sympathy with their cause, but informed them that their actions were inappropriate. You could have mentioned that they could have participated just as well after letting you know. They would have respected you for that and probably been better employees. Instead, you chose an emotional reaction that leaves a bad taste in a lot of employees mouths.
From personal experience, I worked for a company that hired a supervisor who took a hard line on many things. Worker moral plunged drastically and output suffered. The supervisor wasn't around very long.
It cost your company something to have these two people miss a day of work. How much will it cost your company to replace these two employees? If they were otherwise good, knowledgeable, employees, it will cost more than just the hiring process. You added another substantial cost on top of the first.
As far as the guy who said he "didn't want to come" to work, that was entirely justified but a completely separate issue. I've seen those and they aren't worth having as employees. These employees didn't say they "didn't want to" come to work, did they?
Hopefully, YOU will learn from this experience.

Yesterday was supposed to be "day without a gay" day. Kinda like the movie 'A day without Mexican,' which turned out to be pretty popular. So, on social networking websites like Facebook all gays were encouraged to call in "gay," not make purchases etc... This is in response to the Prop. 8 controversy.

I work at the nicer clothing store in a pretty liberal city. I'm one of the only straight guys there. In fact yesterday out of the 6 of us, 5 were gay. None of them called in.

Anyways, all that was to say that you made a legitimate decision. They were the ones being irresponsible and you had every right to take such action against them.

As the employer, you have the right to hire and fire as you please. It was a huge mistake on their part to call in "gay", and I think you were justified in firing both of them. An employee has to provide a valid reason for not being able to work. Perhaps these two will learn from their mistake, and the next job they will take their positions more seriously.

next time, hire people who actually care about the job

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