Corporate Thought Police: Growing pro-gay business agenda jeopardizes religious employees

Albert A. Buonanno of Denver had worked at AT&T Broadband for two years. But in a 2001 reorganization, the company directed employees to sign a "certificate of understanding." The document said employees must "fully recognize, respect, and value the differences among all of us," including "sexual orientation."

Buonanno, who attends a Baptist General Conference church, told his supervisor in a letter that he wouldn't discriminate against or harass homosexuals. But he also said he couldn't sign the statement because it contradicted the Bible. Buonanno's supervisor fired him the next day.

The Rutherford Institute, a religious liberties organization based in Charlottesville, Virginia, is representing Buonanno, 47, and a handful of others. They all lost their jobs for refusing to condone employment policies they found biblically immoral.

The culture war over homosexuality in America has moved to a new front—the workplace. Christian observers say millions of employees are being commanded not just to tolerate homosexual behavior but also to respect and even promote it.

"There are certain things you can't say, or joke about, in the name of tolerance," Rutherford Institute founder John W. Whitehead told Christianity Today. "It's not so much the gay groups as much as the big corporations wanting to make sure they are above criticism."

According to the Human Rights Campaign, the largest pro-homosexual political organization in the country, at least 300 of the companies in the Fortune 500 have included sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination policies. Heterosexual employees who balk at such rules are punished, sometimes severely.

In October, the Rutherford Institute filed a federal suit against the Department of the Interior on behalf of Kenneth P. Gee Sr., a Bureau of Reclamation job training teacher in Nampa, Idaho. In 2000, Gee, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, received a directive from his employer to "observe gay and lesbian pride." The e-mail contained a link to a website that said, "Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike."

In an e-mail to his supervisor, Gee responded that he believed homosexuality is sinful, and he didn't want to celebrate it. Three supervisors subsequently informed Gee that his inappropriate e-mail violated federal policies and embarrassed the Bureau of Reclamation. Gee said he later received a counseling memo about inappropriate use of a government computer. The memo warned him not to express disagreements in the workplace.

The Department of Interior is one of 38 federal departments and agencies to have adopted a sexual non-discrimination policy, according to the HRC.

Gee's suit seeks relief at the federal court in Idaho, and is based on the First Amendment, Fifth Amendment, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). According to Rutherford attorneys, RFRA applies to all levels of government, local, state, and federal. The Supreme Court in Boerne v. Flores in 1997 struck RFRA down at the federal level, arguing that RFRA was an unconstitutional expansion of power under the 14th Amendment, which only applies to the states.

Most federal courts since then have held that RFRA still applies to federal agencies, and hence requires those agencies whose actions substantially burden religious exercise to justify such restrictions by demonstrating that a compelling interest exists and that no less restrictive means are available to further that interest.

According to Gregory S. Baylor, director of the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom in Annandale, Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court's 1977 Trans World Airlines vs. Hardison decision weakened the Title VII religious accommodation provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The court ruled the airline couldn't be forced to give an employee Saturdays off for religious reasons because it created an "undue hardship" for the company.

However, Baylor noted that the Workplace Religious Freedom Act (S.893) was introduced in the Senate in April, with bipartisan support. He said the legislation would require employers to prove they would sustain significant expense regarding such hardship.

So far, there has been relatively little backlash among rank-and-file employees against the pro-gay agenda in corporations. "Gay activists are pressuring from within, and often they meet with barely any resistance, including from Christian groups at the corporation," said Peter LaBarbera, founder and president of the Washington-based Americans for Truth, a lobbying group opposed to the gay-rights agenda. "When you have a very loud and demanding gay employee group and not much opposition, the tendency is to cave in, and that's what's happened."

LaBarbera said the diversity and tolerance propaganda promoted by corporate human resource departments have intimidated and worn down many Christians. "Christians shouldn't feel guilty about taking a stand," LaBarbera said.

On the other hand, many Christians have no problems signing company statements because many such statements ask for no more than to refrain from discrimination or harassment of people of many categories.

Whitehead said Christians shouldn't discriminate in terms of religion, race, or sexual orientation, but neither should they be forced to deny their faith. "In the workplace you need to be fair to everybody," Whitehead said. "But Christians shouldn't sign something that is clearly contrary to the Bible. If you compromise your faith, you deny the Lord."

Those Christians who defend their rights sometimes win. The Rutherford Institute negotiated an out-of-court settlement for Denise Maynard, an AT&T Broadband worker in Florida fired for objecting to a pro-homosexual personal e-mail circulated companywide. Another settlement involved New Yorker Anne E. Coffey, terminated by Verizon after refusing to sign a company code condoning homosexual behavior.

"[Some] Christians are sticking to what they believe the Bible says about homosexuality," Whitehead said. "They don't want to be forced to agree with a handbook or a policy."

Whitehead believes Buonanno's suit, scheduled to go to trial in February, will be a test case.

"These cases are really important because certain people are being told they can't have free speech anymore," Whitehead said. "It's the most frightening thing I've seen in my 30 years of law practice."

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The gayrights lobby are a bunch of goose-stepping Nazis. The leftist media has labeled Christians as the intolerant fascists, but the reality is that the gaystapo will not rest until every is re-educated to their amoral doctrines.

Oh for god's sake, you're there to work, not explore your feelings.

What sickens me most is that if I as an employer want to hire only gays, or no gays, or only Biblical Christians, or no religious people, then that is MY BUSINESS and no one else's.

I know better how to run my business than some bureaucrat, gay activist or religious activist.

Leave your politics and your religion at the door when you come to my place of business. We're there to make money and you're on my time.

I informed my supervisor about a "Gay and Lesbian Pride" poster displayed on a companywide bulletin board. He noted the PC police would be on him instantly if he were to display a "Catholic Pride" poster in his cube.

Perhaps if the documents are more inclusive and include language that would allow a Christian to sign, it would be more appropriate.

What if the documents said that Charity is to be observed in relating to others?

I could sign that. Not including the word ~Charity~ in an office document would be discrimination against Christians.

How's that sound? Like throwing raw meat to the left?

I had my firm which I had spent two decades building, ripped away from me by my two partners last winter. One of the issues was that I objected to the firm supporting a pro abortion "charity." I retaliated by spending firm monty to support the Salvation Army and the ACLJ (American Center for Law and Justice). A month later, they began the process of booting me out. I'm glad that they're not my partners anymore and I believe I'm on a much better path now.

Have the homo-nazis paid your work a visit yet???
We got the start of the "re-education" here about two weeks ago.
The overwhelming attitude from the plant was "so what??". What really killed the whole attempt was the crystal clear indifference from the majority of the plant employees, including most of the gays and lesbians that work here.
One comment that I heard from one of the lesbians.. "Great, just when everyone stopped paying attention to us, now they've gone and made us targets again...".
This rush to "normalize" gays is going to smack them in the face on down the road.

My wife left a job because the "gay-friendly" policies were actually thin cover for discriminating against heterosexuals, especially those with children.

The Gaystapo have not hit either of our current employers... yet. Thankfully, we live in a relatively conservative community, so we have alternatives if things become intolerable.

If you start to coerce one side of the debate into cheering for the beliefs of the other against their First Amendment rights, then you get onto very shaky legal ground. I think this case is going to bear that out if AT&T isn't smart enough to make another out-of-court settlement.

The First Amendment bears upon our relationship with government, not with each other. There is no First Amendment religious protection from employers.

Furthermore, everything about, and that is wrong with, a "homosexual activity agenda" does not require the Bible to reveal or counter or heal.

The gayrights lobby are a bunch of goose-stepping Nazis.

What else can we expect of people who find all kinds of alibis to love some because of their sex or skin pigment and hate or be phobic with others for those same reasons.

There is no First Amendment religious protection from employers.

Not directly, but there are federal civil rights laws that embody the same thing and they've been consistently upheld by the courts. Also if your business does commerce with Uncle Sam then there are other requirements (the Fedguv doesn't have to do business with you any more than you have to do business with it).

My wife is facing sort of the same issue, one of the employees that she supervises is a prancing nancy boy, and is rather blatant about it, and the fact that he'll use it to further his own cause within the company. Even at my wife's expense.
We sat down and had a "strategy" session here last weekend to present a layered defense against this poofter and plan a long term strategy of isolation and removal. Good thing is that the little butt-weasel is stepping on toes right and left..
Sad part is, my wife says that he is very good at his job, and if he would devote all the energy and time he puts into being "super he-bitch" (my wife's term!!) to work he'd be even better. He doesn't seem to understand that nobody really cares that he's gay, just that he shows up for work and does his job. My wife really doesn't give a hoot one way or another about what someones "sexual orientation" is, but she gets a little peeved when people try shoving daggers under her short ribs.

I used to be very tolerant of homosexuals. I didn't agree with their lifestyle, but I believed that, if they wanted to live that way, who was I to object. I wasn't discriminatory or condescending to them, and I knew quite a few over the years.

But in recent years and particularly after reading an article like this, I am getting increasingly fed up. Their attitude and behavior about their sexual orientation is disgusting, and I am not talking here about the sexual behavior itself. I'm talking about their ramming it down other people's throats. They are losing far more than they are gaining with this approach.

They have managed to take a reasonably tolerant person, me, and turn me against them and alienating me completely. And I am sick to death of hearing gay this, gay that, day in, and day out. I can't be the only person who feels that way.

At the rate the sensitivity police are going, the only thing that will become acceptable to talk about at work will be the weather.

The alternative to having all this pc shoved down your throat is to open up a home business. With internet sales booming that's one way to go, and there's plenty of others as well. Plus it sure beats getting dressed in the morning.

What sickens me most is that if I as an employer want to hire only gays, or no gays, or only Biblical Christians, or no religious people, then that is MY BUSINESS and no one else's.

It's time to play Pick a Verb. "Is" isn't the operative verb here; "should be" is the best you can do.

"I informed my supervisor about a "Gay and Lesbian Pride" poster displayed on a companywide bulletin board. He noted the PC police would be on him instantly if he were to display a "Catholic Pride" poster in his cube."

Similar thing happened to me. I complained about a gay pride poster at work and was almost sent to sensitivity school. I even used all their buzz words..offensive, divisive, all the -ist words. When I asked if we could display a poster proclaiming 'it's great to be straight' you would have thought I was asking permission to burn a cross. Tollerance, as practiced by leftists, is a joke.

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