Posted on 08/29/2011 5:04:59 AM PDT by Kaslin
Dear Mr. Moynihan:
I want to bring to your attention a recent decision made by your HR team that I think does not reflect your leadership of Bank of America. Dr. Frank Turek was fired as a vendor for his political and religious views, even though those views were never mentioned or expressed during his work at Bank of America.
By way of background, Dr. Turek is an eight-year veteran of the United States Navy, and he and his wife have two sons serving in the United States Air Force. He has conducted leadership, teambuilding and other training programs for Bank of America on several occasions since 1995. His programs have always earned high marks, hence the repeated invitations.
In late May of this year Dr. Turek was hired to present at a meeting of your Global Business Management & Analysis Team within Global Wealth and Investment Management. The title of his presentation was called “Why Can’t You Be Normal Just Like Me?” The presentation helps participants adapt to diverse personalities to improve productivity and relationships—the essence of inclusion and diversity. The meeting was scheduled to take place at your Merrill Lynch facility in Pennington, New Jersey on June 17.
Three days before the event Dr. Turek was abruptly fired by an HR representative. Why? She explained that someone Googled his name and discovered that he had written Correct, Not Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone. Marriage was not the topic of his presentation, nor has it ever been in all his years of working with the bank. Moreover, as his book reveals (although no one at the Bank is likely to have read it), Dr. Turek treats all people with respect, whether he agrees with them politically or not. Nevertheless, in the name of “inclusion” and “diversity,” he was immediately excluded for his political and religious viewpoint. Mr. Moynihan, please answer this question: Do you have to have certain political or religious views to work at Bank of America?
I know you cannot really believe that free speech and religion rights vanish when one works with Bank of America. I know that you cannot believe that all political conservatives, Jews, Christians, Mormons and Muslims should be fired for their deeply held beliefs. But that is how the Bank of America policy of “inclusion” was applied to Dr. Turek. He was fired because of his personal political and religious beliefs—beliefs that are undoubtedly shared by thousands of your very large and diverse workforce. Or is it really diverse?
I assume the intent of the Bank’s value of “inclusion” is to ensure that people in that diverse workforce will work together cordially and professionally even when they inevitably disagree on certain political, moral or religious questions. Dr. Turek agrees with that value and was demonstrating it. He was being inclusive working with the Bank. But your Bank of “America” was being exclusive by refusing to work with him, even though his viewpoint was never discussed during work.
If you deny that your culture is dramatically tilted toward political correctness, I ask you to consider this: What action would have been taken by your bank had Dr. Turek written a book in favor of same-sex marriage but a conservative employee had complained? Got a bit of a double standard? Or is that somehow “different”?
My purpose in writing is two-fold. First, I ask you to move to correct your culture of exclusion, which is falsely advertised as a culture of inclusion and diversity. Dr. Turek has been excluded now from earning a living with your company. Moreover, I am concerned about the thousands of conservatives, secular and religious, who are employees of the Bank. In my view, such totalitarian political correctness is immoral and un-American, and I doubt it engenders a climate of diversity and collaboration you champion.
Second, this story will be told beyond the confines of Townhall.com. I want to give you the opportunity to respond before it is.
I thank you for your attention to this matter and look forward to your prompt reply. I can be reached at adams_mike@hotmail.com.
Respectfully,
Dr. Mike Adams
For those readers who recall Dr. Turek being fired as a vendor by Cisco for the same reason earlier this year, you may be wondering how these two cases are related. Since Bank of America fired Dr. Turek two days before I broke the Cisco story in my June 16 column titled “The Cisco Kid,” they could not have learned about Dr. Turek from me. It just seems that we have two bigoted California-based companies that independently seek to “out” those who believe what reasonable people have always believed—that the primary reason the government endorses marriage is not because two people of any sex love one another, but because only heterosexual unions can procreate and best nurture the next generation.
Unless Mr. Moynihan stops his company’s unreasonable and un-American politically correct witch-hunt, I’m closing my Bank of America account. Unreasonable, un-American bigots should not be handling my money. They simply cannot be trusted.
I contend that the reason that American corps are stagnating is that all of the execs. come from the same schools and learned the same lessons and will squash any original thought the moment it appears.
There is nothing so frustrating as working in a place that stifles individual initiative.
If an Ivy league education were a badge of shame, the country would be better off. I'd like to see people with a degree from Harvard working as roofers. Let the folks from community colleges run the big corporations; they would do a better job. Not joking.
if I hear these two words again...
There are a number of other large financial institutions that grovel for homo dollars in the name of “diversity,” usually to the exclusion of any reasoned argument to the contrary. The environment they create for conservatives is anything but comfortable.
This will bless them in a very important way.
Namely, they will not have their money with the Bank of America.
Bank of America is one screwed up company. It thinks its primary purpose is to promote Marxist social justice pogroms—rather than be a responsible business institution to its shareholders and majority of its customers.
As is the case with societies Marxism ruins everything it touches so also is BofA being ruined. Instead of focusing on fixing its business it squanders its time and energy persecuting people who do not share its social views. What’s next for BofA? I suspect it will be soon requiring its customers to be gay or sign a disclosure statement regarding their views on homosexuality. BofA will then accept only politically correct customers. Has all the makings of profitable business model.
Been a BofA customer for quite a number of years. Been watching BofA to see how it manages itself out of the sub-prime lending nonsense that got it into trouble in the first place. Seems the bank continues the bad behavior. On top of that it takes Onada’s so-called stimulus money and banks it. Qualified borrowers need not apply at BofA.
With the recent announcement of BofA’s pending bankruptcy and coming layoff of thousands of employees, I’ve been closing down my BofA accounts. Already transferred the bulk of my money to a local bank. Social security checks for my wife and I are now being sent to the new bank. Another very small retirement check should start going to the new bank next mailing cycle. Once that happens it’s bye bye BofA and good riddance.
Roger that. It is not just BofA. Every corp is under the gun for this garbage. Whether they want too or not, they are afraid. They simply refuse to stand up and do what is right and not give into this crap because they are afraid of what it will do too their companies.
probably why That HYPOCRITE Buffet just poured BILLIONS into BofA.
I will bet my mortgage there is some sort of quid pro quo coming from Comrade Zero's regime for Buffet's Marxist article promoting higher taxes on the wealthy.
Many years ago when we were still making mortgage payments on our house the mortgage had been transferred by the previous mortgage holder to BOA, and why our payments were always made on time and were never late the bank had the audacity to raise the payments to more then double then what it was. We complained and they took it down again. Needless to say also is that we took a loan out with the bank we had at the time and paid the mortgage off 10 years sooner then it was due. We also paid the loan off. Now when i get a credit card offer from BOA it goes right through the shredder
You are probably right
I bank with another large bank, but I’ll bet they have the same policy. It’s pervasive.
Did you have an adjustable rate mortgage? Did they make an error in the adjustment? What excuse did they give to increase the payment?
Dr. Turek was fired because of his intolerance. The advocates of tolerance can not permit people like him to continue to spread their intolerant views. Therefore he must be fired. Perhaps the jackboot of tolerance should be applied to his face for good measure. Orwellian.
I think the guy should sue.
Buffett has all of his money in a TAX FREE SLUCH FUND FOUNDATION!!!!! He’s a HUGE HYPOCRITE!!! He could write a check to the US Treasury for billions if he really wanted to.
Ping-a-rooni.
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