Posted on 07/07/2003 7:37:43 AM PDT by kattracks
Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - One of the country's largest pro-family ministries is taking the nation's largest retailer to task for equating homosexuality with immutable characteristics such as race and gender. Focus on the Family said Wednesday that it is "profoundly disappointed" that Wal-Mart will also force its more than one million employees to undergo so-called "sensitivity training."
Wal-Mart spokesman Tom Williams told CNSNews.com Thursday that the company has, in fact, added "sexual orientation" to the list of protected classes in its equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination policies.
"We felt it was the right thing to do at this time for our employees," he said. "We want everyone who works for Wal-Mart in the states - that's 1.1 million people - to feel that they are valued and that they are treated with respect, no exceptions at all."
Williams said the move also "makes a lot of sense" from a business standpoint.
"Our continued growth requires us to be one of the more desirable employers around," he said. "We think that clearly stating our policy of respect and protection for everyone regardless of 'sexual orientation' will help us compete for talented employees who otherwise might not feel comfortable coming with us."
Focus on the Family says Wal-Mart's action 'is a profound betrayal'
Dr. Bill Maier, vice president and psychologist in residence at Focus on the Family, said the "right thing to do" would have been for Wal-Mart to consider the values of the overwhelming majority of its shoppers and employees.
"Singling people out for their differences is a profound betrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King's dream, and that is exactly what Wal-Mart's policy does," Maier said in a press release.
"Focus on the Family shares Wal-Mart's commitment to treating all people with dignity and respect, but this sensitivity training offends the values of the vast majority of Wal-Mart's associates and customers," he said.
While Wal-Mart said its decision was based on fairness and good business, homosexual activists are claiming credit for pressuring the company to make the change.
"Wal-Mart's decision is in response to nearly two years of discussion between the company and the Equality Project partners," said a press release from the Pride Foundation, one of the partners in the effort.
The "Equality Project" is a coalition of pro-homosexual investment groups that use their claimed $100 billion in capital to influence companies to give special employment status based on a worker's claimed homosexuality, just as federal law requires employers to do for immutable characteristics such as race, gender, age and disability.
"This change helps ensure that Wal-Mart's gay and lesbian employees will be judged on their merits, not on their sexual orientation," claimed Zack Wright, a spokesman for the Pride Foundation.
"The inclusion of sexual orientation in Wal-Mart's nondiscrimination policy is the only example of fair treatment for gays and lesbians that some people will ever see, particularly in rural, more conservative areas," Wright continued, taking a swipe at the largest segment of Wal-Mart's customer base.
Groups already pushing for even greater concessions
But even as the activist groups were praising the company for agreeing to their demands, they were hinting at expectations of further concessions.
"Wal-Mart's recognition of sexual orientation is an important first step toward equality," said Marsha Botzer, a member of the Pride Foundation board. "I look forward to continuing our discussion and eagerly anticipate the day when they will also include gender identity in their non-discrimination policies."
"Gender identity" is the umbrella phrase used by liberal activists to refer to individuals choosing to identify themselves as members of the opposite sex. Individuals who dress or have surgery to change the appearance of their bodies to that of the opposite sex are said to be "expressing their gender identity."
Stephen Crampton of the American Family Association (AFA) warned that Wal-Mart can expect more demands from homosexual activists in the future, now that they have proven unwilling to stand up for traditional morality.
"Just as Neville Chamberlain gave in to Nazi Germany's outrageous demands, so Wal-Mart has capitulated to the radical homosexual agenda," Crampton said.
The AFA believes the next step for homosexual activists will be pressuring Wal-Mart to extend health benefits to same-sex partners of employees, followed by corporate recognition and support of homosexual clubs and public events like "gay pride" parades.
Wal-Mart officials acknowledged that a computer-based non-discrimination training program for all employees would include discussion of "sexual orientation." The change to the policy will have no effect on employee's eligibility for benefits.
The company does not offer insurance or other benefits to sex partners of unmarried employees, whether heterosexual or homosexual.
'Sensitivity' or 'diversity training' used to further homosexual agenda
As CNSNews.com previously reported, groups that monitor anti-discrimination policies believe homosexual activists are using mandatory workshops and diversity training programs to advance their agenda throughout corporate America.
"Diversity training is becoming mandatory catechism class for the church of the politically correct," said Jordan Lorence, an attorney and senior vice president for the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative public policy group based in Arizona.
Lorence said that, until recently, homosexual activists have been willing to tolerate others who disagree with but do not publicly protest their sexual behavior choices.
"But what is happening now is that we're seeing a subtle but radical transformation of that traditional norm, and the vehicle in which this change is coming is diversity training by employers, either public or private," he said.
"I don't want to minimize racial tensions or sexual harassment," he added. "Those can be handled by seminars or training to be respectful of people's differences, but not compelling a uniformity of thought."
See Earlier Story:
Wal-Mart Includes Homosexuals in Anti-Discrimination Policy (July 2, 2003)
E-mail a news tip to Jeff Johnson.
Send a Letter to the Editor about this article.
Wow. That's SO horrible.
I need to check outside and see if it's raining frogs. /sarcasm
What's your definition of "sexual orientation"?
Everyone has a sexual orientation (some have more than one). So, since it's left undefined, in one sense it means nothing because it applies to everyone. But the gay community has co-opted this term as a code phrase for their bandwagon. And now, seeing the success of such a bandwagon, guess who's tailing along? Pedophiles and anybody who wants to be deemed as a "sexual minority" group.
Bzzzt. Automatic disqualification. Anyone who can't make their case without alluding to Nazism doesn't have a case to make. They're peddling hysteria.
Translation: I, Grand Wizard of All Rhetoric (GWAR), Past & Future, hereby decree that ALL allusions, references, parallels, history lessons, character lessons, to Nazism are banned from public discourse (apriori), lest you incur my hype that you are a hypester.
But oh great GWAR One, isn't that a form of censorship--a form of encouraging prior restraint of certain expressions?
So be it. Let it be written. Let it be.
But oh great GWAR One, what if one said, "Anyone who can't make their case without alluding to 'peddling hysteria' doesn't have a case to make? They're peddling safism."
"Safism?" What is that oh noble one?
"Safism" is attempting to make the world safe for whatever protected class status you seek to shrink wrap. For some, it's homosexuals. For some it's atheists. For others, it's perpetrating the myth that there's no absolute evil. Therefore, they knee-jerk at comments like Reagan's reference to communism as "evil" and they strife at any linkages being made to the pathways of Nazism.
Sounds like these folks have been taking lessons from Je$$e Jacka$$ and his Rainbow Coalition. Can you spell s-h-a-k-e-d-o-w-n?
Hmm...If so many folks are hysteria-mongers as you claim, what does one do with one who is hyper about seeing hysterics behind every bush?
Most sane people see it for the hysteria that it is.
If you like to reduce all arguments by "automatic" judgments as to whether they're being made by sane folks or a hysteric, then I suppose all posters should be officially welcomed into your psychiatric couch.
Once again, we have folks who instead of preferring to deal with the issues, like to hit their automatic buzz button & root out some folks' comments with stereotypical labels.
It becomes an easier black & white world that way for them...instead of dealing with the comment, they can write off the messenger as being merely insane.
Wasn't it THE CRASH that had a song lyric, "Wrong-o, boy-o"?
All pedophelia means is a sexual attraction to children. Since when is an inward attraction a crime? Or, are you a member of the liberal thought police?
Even when homosexuality has been held as criminally culpable in any given culture within history, homosexuals weren't arrested for being inwardly attracted to men.
Homosexuality = not a crime
Only a recent conclusion. Until SCOTUS ruled on sodomy case, technically homosexuality was a crime in well over a dozen states. Sodomy statutes were still on the books in almost 20 states through most of the 90s.
Okay, wise one. I'm a Wal-Mart manager (let's say). How do I know about what a person does in the privacy of their home and how do I keep from "discriminating" against what is not as plain as someone's skin color? Do I now have to listen is to any village gossip lines in order to be such a savvy manager?
What about in urban areas where such gossip lines emit mere trickles? Do I "judge" someone's sexual orientation based upon the ankle bracelet they where? A tatoo? An ear ring in an certain ear? Do we do an employee "group hug" and I watch for certain folks who might be a little more "touchy feely" with members of the same sex?
Please clue us clueless ones in here.
Aren't folks assuming something here...something akin that someone's "sexual orientation" (whatever that is) is somehow broadcast up & down the county they live in!
In other words, what does one person's closet have anything to do with the workplace anyway and why are folks making their private issues into a public whipping boy?
Some folks should keep their right to privacy about what they do in the bedroom out of the lives of others who don't want to know...forcing them to be subjected to workplace-imposed re-education lessons about religion, gender, character, relationships, and marriage.
The "sensitivity training" in some companies is indeed cut out of new cloth...especially companies with gay activists within the human resources departments of those companies.
AT&T, for example, being a corporate leader in this regard in the 80s and 90s, would once upon a time bring in Brian McNaught or his video ON BEING GAY...which included excerpts like the following: "According to Dr. John Boswell from Yale University, the book of Levi (Leviticus) was probably the only source in both Old and New Testament that clearly talks about men having sex with men. Boswell doesn't believe (as do most Scripture scholars) that Genesis had anything to do with sexuality, nor does he believe that St. Paul in writing to Romans and Corinthians and Timothy (the letter of Timothy) really talk about homosexual sex."
There ya have it. Corporations like AT&T now teaching theology (re-ed version) under the umbrella of "diversity training."
When folks @ these sessions claim that being gay is just like being left-handed, you've got a worldview training session going on...not some mere harmless managerial review process about hiring and firing decisions.
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