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.
Could be, but we're not talking about "some companies", we're talking about Wal-Mart, which already had such training in-house and simply added sexual orientation to it.
I'm not arguing that the Texas case will be used to promote pedophilia, I'm talking about Corporate America's carte blanche elevation of "sexual minority" groups. Gays, lesbians, and transgendered folks aren't the only "sexual minority" groups around.
Guess who is already riding the bandwagon from the trail blazed by the wedges, inroads, rhetoric, etc. of the gay community?
...Tell me how corporations that employ anyone who works with children (say on on-site day care) can keep someone who says their "sexual orientation" is children? What if someone who has a clean record (no arrests) openly admits such an orientation? No known abuse has been committed. Isn't a corporation, once it says it doesn't discriminate vs. a person's "sexual orientation" suppose to ignore whatever internal attractions a person has as "irrelevant" to what someone job's qualifications may be?
BTW, I wrote the above & following paragraphs last week on another Wal-Mart thread {anticipating the kind of post I would get like yours}:
"Sexual child abuse is illegal!" you say. But I just said no such crimes have (yet) been committed. How can you discriminate against someone for something they might do? Besides, until SCOTUS overturned state sodomy statutes, almost 20 states still had sodomy statutes on the books. You didn't see national corporations draw up non-discrimination policies for one set of states and another for the other set just because to embrace homosexuality meant that they were embracing an illegal act in almost 20 states, did you? No!
And while you say that that the sodomy case dealt with sodomy and not a homosexual act, aren't you just playing word games, here? (Gays were labeled sodomites after Sodom; aren't the two terms interchangeable?)
Knowing when it's your turn to be on top? :)
I am depressed [said in best Slim Pickens voice]....
But the crux of these new workplace-imposed re-education lessons will be that you can't "discriminate" against the most flaming stereotypical person because it's their sexual orientation. There will be "sensitivity" training ala the horsepuckey that was peddled regarding sexual harassment.
When sexual harassment is defined as quid pro quo, or clearly inappropriate behavior such as fondling, etc., it's understandable to anyone. When it moved into the arena of "the hostile workplace" it went totally off the wall into touchy-feely feminized BS.
"Hostile workplace" is most properly defined as anything that bothers the complainer that the HR people (often women) will support. Thoughtcrime is a reality under this definition, and definitely punishable, as well as being unforseeable on the part of the "offender".
This new policy of Wal-Mart's could easily result in the same thing. I can't see how they could possible prohibit cross-dressing. Or men in tight pink pants, or ones that outline their crotch area. Or women in leather with crewcuts.
This is nothing more than PC carried through to please a vocal minority. Homosexuals should be treated no differently than any other employee - do a good job and you'll prosper, exhibit undesirable behavior and get fired.
Yes. It's just a matter of "how long"...like "how long" before the taboo nature of it breaks down.
Reading that article "Pedophilia Chic" a few years ago opened up eyes as to how mainstream it was becoming. This wasn't being introduced into fringe areas.
And just look where cultures have already broken down that sense of stigmatization. As two examples from the early 90s, a San Francisco news station covered the fact that a pedophile group met in a small SF library where there was only one bathroom--one shared by the pedophile group & minor patrons alike.
Did members of that group just slide into the woodwork upon being "outed." NO! They began protesting outside of the TV station that got them kicked out of that library since their "rights" were being trampled on.
I saw an "Out Vermont" (gay pub) in the early 90s which was describing pedophilia and homosexuality as both being part of the alternative lifestyle movement.
Also, same-sex pedophiles are "advantaged" in being able to hide behind the magic wand of "sexual orientation" protection...these won't be stupid enough to begin massing as "pedophiles" on the bandwagon...No, they'll be doing what the same-sex pedophiles have already been doing. They already operate under cover of the "sexual orientation" protection by claiming to be part of the "gay" community.
The fact that someone reviewed the class ads of gay pub, "The LA Advocate" over a multi-year period & concluded that 1/3rd of the ads were soliticiting minors for sex shows that the pedophile community has been alive & well within the gamy community for quite some time.
Oh, I wonder how many of those LA Advocate ads soliciting for sex with minors have been followed up on with the same zeal (and glad they have this zeal!) undercover cops masquerade as 13-year-old online girls? I doubt they have.
You can't conclude that "pedophilia = a crime" when you add our cultural ingredients of class ads in the LA Advocate with other samplings like those found in the article, "Pedophilia Chic."
True. Very true...and well put. The entirety of "the sexual minority movement" lies in creating a new identity. If the way one dresses is part & parcel with their identity (e.g. cross-dresser), then to even corporately frown upon this is to "discriminate" against the very identity of their being.
Why do we have to have it shoved in our faces with training sessions, etc. as to what other folks do in the privacy of their bedrooms? Why should the way they have sex be of interest to us?
Unless I start buying into stereotypical mannerisms like "the way one talks" (feminized mannerisms), I can't tell who is gay and who isn't. They don't go around wearing posters shouting, "I'm gay." (And even if they did, since gay is starting to be "chic" in our culture from a special protection on the job vantage point, why should we take it at someone's word that they're "gay" when they might not be? And even if they are "gay," whose to say they won't be "bi" by tomorrow and "transgendered" by Friday...so why bother trying to keep up with the sexual activities of our co-workers?).
Even figures used by the gay community in the early 1990s (they used these figures for marketing clout to show Corporate America how much more dispensable income they had than the avg. family)...show gays have had much higher % of college grad degrees and more managerial positions than straights (this shows they haven't been discriminated against).
Now, folks might just say, "Well, gays are highly industrious, intelligent, creative, folks who tend to have less family ties to help them get ahead with their careers." Maybe.
All I know is: If there's no problem, don't fix it.
Does anyone know the origin of "sensitivity training"? Sounds Marxist to me.
It'll be fun watching Wal-Mart traying to dance around that one.
This is indeed funny. Yet seriously true.
Even now. What's to stop any employee of a company that says they don't "discriminate" vs. {undefined} "on the basis of sexual orientation" from saying they're orientation is a hole host of things...
Three men could test the ropes by saying their orientation is pornography...they could advocate to have the same "rights" gay, lesbian, and transgendered folks have by showing porno films during employee forums. They would have the same rights to posting e-info & posters about these forums. Gay groups have long been able to give materials about homosexuality for placement in corporate libraries. "Porn orientation" men could follow likewise...
Folks, licentiousness=when you open the door to one alternative sexual lifestyle, you open the door to all of them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.