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 Cant You Be Normal Just Like Me? The presentation helps participants adapt to diverse personalities to improve productivity and relationshipsthe 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 beliefsbeliefs that are undoubtedly shared by thousands of your very large and diverse workforce. Or is it really diverse?
I assume the intent of the Banks 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 believedthat 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 companys unreasonable and un-American politically correct witch-hunt, Im closing my Bank of America account. Unreasonable, un-American bigots should not be handling my money. They simply cannot be trusted.
BofA can't survive as they are entirely insolvent and Dr. Turek wouldn't have been there long anyway.
Anyone who has BofA stock should sell it now while it's up a bit because of Buffett. Thanks Warren.
Bank of America was instrumental and the deliberate prime mover in gifting our neighborhood with a Section 8 mega-multi-unit apartment complex some years ago. I don’t ever recall there being any Board of County Commissioner hearings addressing the bank’s application for the zoning requirements. It was like all of a sudden the damn thing was there. BofA provided every dollar for the financing of this project. Since that apartment community opened there have been unremitting trash dumping on the streets, grafitti attacks on power boxes and fences, drag races on the streets surrounding our subdivision at all hours of the night and early morning, and bands of roving teenagers walking through subdivisions (where they have no business being because they do not live there) defacing mailboxes with profanity scratched and etched into the metal boxes. This bank’s lending policies are inimical to and destructive of traditional American values. How much I despise Bank of America for what it has done to our small community and our property values I could not print here without losing my posting privileges......
As a second lieutenant in 1964 I started banking with Mational Bank of Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, TX. Fort Sam was started by a group of military officers many years before, and was very supportive of military members. They saw me through lost pay records, Vietnam and other overseas assignments with great service UNTIL they were bought by NationsBank, at which point their service became just like any other bank. I closed out mt accounts before BoA bought NationsBank, and never looked back.
We do not have freedom of speech if some HR or management drone can pour over your writings and arbitrarily fire you if they find something they dislike. Just because you work for a private company should not give them the right to punish you for expressing an opinion unless they can PROVE that it has DIRECTLY interferred with their business. This is something I would like to see the ACLJ start promoting.
inclusion and diversity = lower your standards
Huh? The stock has shot up 30+% recently. Bankruptcy? What a joke. Buffet invested 5 billion in the company just days ago.... Check your sources.
BoA deserves a painful death.
Eff ‘em, they screwed my family numerous times over some years ago and I’m surprised they lasted this long with their business practices.
I use a Credit Union. The service is orders of magnitude greater.
My current employer worships at the altar of diversity/inclusion.
It’s tough having to deal with, but deal with it I do. I have my own ways of “resisting” and countering the BS.
Hmmmm..I have a BoA mortgage....maybe I should cut them loose....but who would respect my convictions?
All banks do that after a late payment report. Many have reduced credit limits to the balance over the last few years for no reason at all. But I still hate BOA and all tools of the homosexual agenda.
You need to be a bit wider read. Fact: BofA has not fixed its huge sub-prime lending problem (translation: it owns a mountain of debt that will never be repaid except, perhaps, by tax payers and no one will buy) and it continues to engage in the practice.
Buffet is manipulating BofA stock to make the company appear to financially healthy for his benefit and only his benefit. As for the stock market, there is nothing about it that reflects the actual value of anything these days. How can the DOW, for example, get to 1200 despite 20-25% unemployment (and rising)? What is fueling the demand for manufactured goods and housing that would drive the DOW up? Nothing. Why are pragmatic non-ideological investors moving their money to commodities with intrinsic value—like precious metals?
Don’t know what world you live in. This country is an economic wreck. And it will get worse so long as the Usurping Marxist Onada occupies the WH. Things did change when the marxist Onada regime took over Washington. Too many people who should know better are pretending life in America is unchanged.
You can Google BofA-bankruptcy and BofA-layoffs. You’ll find the credible sources where I got my info.
I suspect this “project” will ultimately be torn down after the people who live in it destroy it. Seems to be the natural course of events. It’s what happens when ignorent people are given things they didn’t earn and can’t even afford.
I understand your frustration, but keep the faith. The reality of this “socially just” world the Marxists want to foist on us is becoming obvious much faster than I thought it would.
Sadly, it was probsably inevitable that we would have to go through this chaos so as to relearn what made America the greatest nation in the World. All of its success was taken for granted and even became despised. How dare we work hard and prosper. It was obviously at the expense of others.
Actually that is true. But it wasn’t because they were Asian, African or whatever. It was because of the choices certain groups and societies made through the years that crippled them.
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Amazing how 2% or less of the population is controlling the entire country. Of course, it's also true that the promotion of all kinds of immorality is one of the tools of the left to destroy society and remake it the way they want. The really amazing thing is that the rest of us who are not in the thralldom of the god of perversion are letting them.
Mike Adams tells it like it is.
If I’m not mistaken,Bank of America is Rockefeller owned. That would explain things, The Rockefellers have been funding subversion and perversion for generations.
I wish I had a Bank of America account so I could close it!
Why is this country jumping through hoops for 1-2% of the population?
Thanks for the ping.
I thank the Good Lord that my 50+ year working experience was, except for a brief one year stint with AT&T in the early 60s, spent working for small to medium size companies.
Rick Perry says corporations are people. I think corporations, by and large, suck because they have been invaded by the politically correct police.
I note this is a recent phenomenon and am thankful to be retired.
Genesis 18:20-21
20. Then the LORD said, "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous
21. that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know."
Genesis 19:4-7
4. Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom--both young and old--surrounded the house.
5. They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them."
6. Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him
7. and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing.
Isaiah 3:9 The look on their faces testifies against them; they parade their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to them! They have brought disaster upon themselves.
2 Peter 2:13b Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.
Ezekiel 16:49-50
49. "`Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.
50. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.
1. But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them--bringing swift destruction on themselves.
2. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.
3. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.
4. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment;
5. if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others;
6. if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly;
7. and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men
8. (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)--
9. if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.
10. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority. Bold and arrogant, these men are not afraid to slander celestial beings;
11. yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not bring slanderous accusations against such beings in the presence of the Lord.
12. But these men blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like beasts they too will perish.
13. They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.
But there IS hope!!!
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
9. Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived:
Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders
10. nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
11. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
If you could NOT change, you would be in most pitiful shape...
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