Gay and Transgender Issues in the Workplace

     President Barack Obama is, I believe, our nation’s Director of Diversity and Inclusion. Like his counterparts in the corporate world, he seems to firmly believe in creating an environment in which all citizens feel safe and valued. It’s too bad that he doesn’t have as much leeway as his corporate counterparts in disciplining citizens who create hostile working and living conditions for others. At the very least, he ought to be able to mandate their attendance at a diversity class in which they would understand the impact of their behavior on others and how it undermines the nation’s values. (I think it would be great if Rush Limbaugh was required to attend such a class. I’d love to have him in one of mine.)

     If U.S. Congressman Barney Frank and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia were employed by the same corporation, both of them would be required to take diversity training because of on the job behavior.   

     Barney, who like Oprah, is immediately recognized by many people by the use of just his first name, created a stir this week by suggesting that Justice Scalia is homophobic. Now, most people who have heard or read Justice Scalia’s comments on homosexuality would probably agree. I feel that he’s our Anita Bryant on the Supreme Court. Justice Scalia makes no excuses for his socially conservative Catholic views. He refuses to use the word gay without quote marks and he refers to same-sex intimacy as homosexual sodomy. When it comes to gay issues, he has, I feel, no ability to check his biases at the door of the workplace.

      In a corporate setting, Justice Scalia wouldn’t be allowed to make disparaging remarks about gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender people regardless of his rank or religious affiliation. He would, in fact, be asked to use the term gay rather than the more formal term homosexual. Corporate employees are protected from the culture wars by policies that underscore the value of diversity in the workforce. I suspect that Justice Scalia would feel quite isolated by his views. I’ve not met any corporate manager in the past ten years who was anywhere near as rigid in his socially conservative views as Justice Scalia. (I’d love to have him in one of my corporate presentations too. I think I might have an impact on his thinking.)

     But, nor would my friend Congressman Frank, if employed in a corporation, be allowed to refer to Antonin Scalia in the workplace as a homophobe. Such labeling, though possibly true, is also in violation of corporate policy. It contributes to the creation of a hostile work environment in which no one can be expected to produce at their highest level. If Barney had an issue with Antonin, he would be encouraged to take it up with his manager and then with Human Resources. They in turn would have the obligation to approach Antonin to discuss the impact of his behavior on his colleagues. If he persisted, they would explain, he could be discharged.

     Having worked in the Church, in the media, in government, and in corporate settings, I feel that if every employee in every workplace was guided by the principle of valuing diversity that has been incorporated by nearly every major company in the western world, the earth would be a much more civil and safe place to exist.

     Can we imagine what life in the United States might be like if every radio talk show host was required to speak in a respectful way of all groups of people? What if they were told that any words from him that created a hostile environment for others would result in the termination of employment?

     What if respect for diversity was the guideline in every major religious denomination, in every election campaign, in all immigration debates, and in all matters of governance?

     What if everyone in the Armed Forces, regardless of rank, was required to be respectful of everyone else’s difference? If they were employees of a U.S. corporation, they would be. So would police officers, prison guards, and border patrols.

     Today, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people have a much better chance of being treated with respect and feeling safe in the corporate workplace than they do anywhere else in their lives. It’s easier for me to advise a gay person where to work than it is where to worship. It’s likelier that they will find justice in the Human Resource Office of their workplace than in the legislative or judicial branches of their government.

     Perhaps that will change. Perhaps our new President and the First Lady will inspire a new tone in our dealings with one another. They and everyone else, I feel, could profit greatly by being familiar with the extraordinary model of valuing diversity that now directs all corporate business.

  ***

www.brian-mcnaught.com 

     At a meeting this week in Atlanta of former Surgeon General David Satcher’s Advisory Board on matters of national sexual health, our very diverse group was asked to brainstorm on five or more things we believe will happen in the next fifty years that would influence how we strategize to meet our goals. I suggested:

     *The U.S. will be bilingual;

     *China and India will be the superpowers that influence world culture;

     *Newspapers and books printed on paper will disappear;

     *A gay person and his or her legally-recognized same-sex spouse and their children will be in the White House;

     *Wars will be fought over water;

     *Young people won’t feel the need to label their sexual orientation;

     *Religion will lose its influence in the U.S. as it has in Europe.

     On my way back to Ft. Lauderdale from Atlanta, I sat next to a woman with whom I struck up a conversation when she asked me about the Amazon Kindle from which I was reading. I ended up telling her what I had been doing in Atlanta, that I wrote and spoke on gay issues, and that I was eager to get home. In response to my query about her work, she told me that she had recently been on Dick Cheney’s staff as his political advisor. I shared that I was a lifelong Democrat and didn’t agree with most of what the Bush administration had done, but that I suspect the reason we didn’t have a constitutional amendment barring gay marriage was that Cheney’s love for his daughter Mary prompted him to privately block all such efforts. My traveling companion didn’t confirm or deny my theory, but simply smiled and said, “They’re a very close family.” We shook hands as we departed the plane and I watched her walk ahead of me toward baggage claim, on her way to meet a new client as a public relations consultant.

     When I got home, our Sun-Sentinel newspaper had an editorial cartoon that had a dinosaur wandering off with the name “Naugle” on his back, indicating that the man with antiquated, hostile attitudes toward gay people was finally leaving office as mayor of Ft. Lauderdale.

     My traveling companion on the plane is not a dinosaur, but like Jim Naugle, she does represent to me the passing of an era in which conservative fundamentalists have had far too much influence over the lives of most Americans who did not share those beliefs. It’s my feeling that we have spent way too much time and given way too much attention to those people with “strongly-held” religious beliefs. It’s been true not just in government and in our efforts to address matters of national sexual health, such as whether condoms are an acceptable tool that will help us stop the spread of AIDS, but also in the workplace. We have been preoccupied with the feelings of a small handful of religious conservatives who object to every effort made to create a safe and welcoming environment for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

     By way of illustration, at the end of a recent workshop that I conducted, I was asked to model answers for three questions that are often posed in the workplace by those who oppose corporate support of gay people. Here are the questions and my responses:

    Can a person change his or her sexual orientation?

    Psychiatrists have had some success in helping bisexual people focus their erotic feelings on people of the other gender, but no one has ever successfully changed his or her heterosexual or homosexual orientation. Behavior and Identity can be changed but feelings of attraction can’t be forced to change. Even the founders and leaders of the so-called “ex-gay” movement will acknowledge that their clients are unable to completely eliminate their erotic feelings of same-sex attraction. Besides prayer and 12 Step approaches, other techniques used to “change” feelings of attraction that have been tried unsuccessfully include shock treatments, castration, and lobotomies. Homosexual men were subjected to horrible experiments in concentration camps and in mental institutions throughout the world, including in the United States. The American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association have both warned about the negative consequences of “reparative” therapies.

     How can people with conservative religious or conservative social views feel fully valued in a corporation that fully values its gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees?

     Most employees with conservative religious or social beliefs understand that they are not only protected against discrimination because of their status and identity as people with such affiliations or tenets, but also valued for the unique contributions they make to the workplace because of their beliefs. But an employee who feels that being fully valued at work means that his or her personal moral values or beliefs will be embraced and incorporated by their employer, set themselves up for disappointment. Corporations want employees to “bring their full selves,” including their personal values, to work, but not to impose their values on their colleagues. A person, for instance, who believes strongly that abortion is murder, might wish that women who had abortions be fired by their employer, but if that is his or her criteria for feeling valued by the company he or she will be let down. Social or religious conservatives generally take issue with the sexual behavior of gay men and women. Corporations take no position on such behavior anymore than they do on divorce, co-habitation, or atheism.

   Doesn’t the “Safe Space” program single gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people out for special treatment? (In “Safe Space” programs, heterosexuals place a magnet in their office to indicate that the space is safe for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. The magnet usually has the symbol of the pink triangle or the rainbow flag.)

   Many companies are taking or permitting extra steps such as the “Safe Space” program in their attempts to create a safe and productive work environment for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees because they know that at this time in history these particular issues of diversity are more challenging for their employees than some others, such as race and gender, which in the past required extra attention like affirmative action and mandatory training on sexual harassment. The magnets that depict the pink triangle (that homosexuals were forced to wear in concentration camps), surrounded by the green circle (the international symbol of permission) are successfully used by companies as reminders of acceptance in the same way that symbols of a cigarette surround by a red circle and slash (the international symbol of prohibition) are used effectively by companies as reminders of their policy on smoking in the building..The program also exists because gay and transgender employees developed it and offered it as a suggestion to their employers as an effective means of creating a safe work environment. Other employees who feel that certain groups of employees feel unsafe and unvalued at work can also develop programs aimed at creating more productive work environments and suggest their use to management.

     At some point in the next fifty years, when those who follow this generation will be bilingual and more focused on the need to conserve water, I believe they will read in their electronic newspapers about the freedom most Americans feel from religion.

www.brian-mcnaught.com

     My shoes are off and I’m on my back on my hotel room sofa recharging my battery after a long, challenging day with nineteen employees, divided evenly between gay and straight, who have completed the first day of intense training to educate their colleagues on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workplace issues. My guess is that these courageous volunteers are either still at the office or at home wearily making dinner for their families.

     Many of these members of Merck’s Employee Resource Group GLEAM (Gay and Lesbian Employees and Allies at Merck) spend 10 hours at work on an average day but have committed themselves to the enormous demands and personal challenges of a “Train the Trainer” session because they want to help make sure their workplace feels safe for everyone. In response to my pre-training questions, many of them told me that they were excited but afraid of not being good enough to be effective spokespersons for Merck’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion. They didn’t yet know how to answer the tough questions they anticipated getting when training the company’s managers in offices and plants across the country.

     Like their colleagues from Chubb, whose work had inspired them, all of the men and women at Merck  had made great sacrifices to be with me for the two eight-hour days. Their company had just completed a major acquisition so their colleagues were all in overdrive. Being the best and brightest in their fields, their enormous workloads were piling up and would need to be addressed when we were finished with the sessions. Some of them had to negotiate with their union so as not to have to take vacation days to participate.

      For two of the gay men, English was their second language, one being from Brazil, and the other from Malaysia. One straight black man was a deacon in his church, the head of a men’s group and an officer in his union. He signed up to learn how to educate others on gay issues because his deeply beloved godfather was a gay man who died of AIDS. But not all of the heterosexuals who took on this herculean task of training did so because they had a close personal connection to someone who was gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. One woman, motivated by a sense of injustice, did it simply because she met another straight ally who impressed her with her commitment to the issue.

      I met these men and women for the first time last night at dinner and by 5 o’clock tonight they had my heart and my greatest respect. I wish you could have been in the room with me today to watch them each face down their nervous fears of standing in front of others to tell their stories and to present a diversity curriculum they only recently had been able to review. Often in these situations, I experience myself with tear-filled eyes because I’m so deeply moved by the sights and sounds of people working so hard and so selflessly on an issue that has touched my life so dramatically, and on which for many years I and a handful of others felt we were doing battle nearly alone. We weren’t, of course, but most of the walking wounded I know from the early days of the movement also remember the feelings of isolation and loneliness I encountered. At times, the task seemed overwhelming.

     But today, there are armies of diversity soldiers who have assembled across the globe, at least half of them straight allies, who are determined to make the world a safer place for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. Many do so at great sacrifice to themselves and to their families. So, when I work with these frontline warriors in corporations, in churches, and in communities, I try very hard to have them fully realize how incredibly impactful their work is to the lives of others who will never know how to thank them.

      I tell you about my experiences this week at Merck and my awareness of similar programs being conducted elsewhere with the hope that it might comfort and inspire you, and that if you have the opportunity to do so, that you might thank these men and women when you meet them.

          I’m so very proud of my new friends. My hat is off as well as my shoes.

     “Tell me how you became an ally?” I asked in advance of helping a straight woman effectively speak on our behalf in the workplace. She eloquently wrote a powerful tale of her two gay uncles and the very different reactions they got from her family.

  *  *  *

     My “uncle” Bill was not really an uncle, but rather a close friend of the family. Bill and my parents went to college together and, as such, I’d known him my whole life. As a kid, he was the funniest person I knew. He was “over the top” funny. He’d get down on the ground with you and roll around; he’d do impersonations; sing and dance; and make you laugh until you cried. Growing up, Bill was always a presence in my life. There was never a point where I wondered if he were gay or straight - I just always new. He was “out” in every sense of the word.

     I remember meeting his different partners over the years, walking around the city with them on the weekends, and eventually sharing holidays with he and his current partner.  Growing up, my mom would often share stories with me about Bill. She’d tell me hilarious stories about the two of them in college – about when they were in plays together, the first time Bill met my grandparents, or legendary stories about Bill at parties. She also shared stories about how when they were in college he struggled to find his identity, that as a child in Catholic school he was never able to be himself, and that as an adult he had struggled through the loss of friends to HIV/AIDS. 

     My mom talked to me about Bill in the same way she talked to me about any of her other friends. As a child, I never saw Bill’s life as being different than mine or any of the other straight people I knew.  Growing up with “Uncle Bill” has had a lasting impact.  Once an adult, there was never a question how I felt about gay people, where I stood on issues related to gay rights, whether or not I was an “ally.” Because of Bill, my first experience with a gay person was not about knowing a “gay person,” but rather it was about knowing a great, funny, loving, caring uncle. My stance on matters related to equal rights in many ways was formed at a young age by being given the opportunity to share in his life in this way.

     But that isn’t where my story as an ally ends. In fact, I think it only begins with Bill. My life as an ally was also greatly impacted by my uncle Robert.

     Robert always lived away from us in New York City. He never missed a holiday or birthday. He was always there. As a kid, I thought he gave the best presents — always from fabulous stores where my mom wouldn’t shop. I loved his gifts!  As I was growing up, my family and I would go visit him about once a year and stay with him in New York. My uncle Robert was the fashionable, hip, cool relative – the total opposite from my parents. The fact that he was always alone seemed completely normal to me.  As I got older, I guess I may have wondered why he never dated or brought anyone with him, but it would be a fleeting thought. He was my uncle and this is the way it was. 

     At some point, once I was an adult, my mom shared a story with me, a story my grandmother shared with her years prior…

     When Robert was first living in New York, my grandmother surprised him with a visit – she was staying for a week. It wasn’t long after she arrived, that my uncle sat her down and explained that friends of his were going to be stopping by, and as a preemptive strike, (figuring that it would become obvious after she met his friends) he told her that he was gay. Now, this act of coming out itself may not be earth shattering; however, placed in the context of how the rest of my family reacted, it explains a lot. My grandmother responded with a comment akin to, “That’s nice dear,” stayed the rest of her trip making no mention of it, and came home and didn’t speak of the event for years.

     Years later, my grandmother told my mom the story. My mom immediately reacted with sadness. Her heart broke for him. Imagine coming out to your own mother and getting almost no reaction.  Keep in mind, my grandmother told my  mom this story years after her trip. My mom, so stricken with this news, came home and immediately told my dad about what his mother just shared. My dad’s reaction was, “My brother’s not gay – won’t believe it till he tells me himself.” And so, years after coming out to his mother, and being outed to his brother by my mom, the fact that my uncle is gay remains an unspoken truth in our family.

     To this day, my uncle remains in the closet with our family.  We still visit him and he still comes home for holidays – but he is always alone. My mom has never confronted him with the knowledge she has, but instead always extends an open invitation to him to invite anyone he wishes to our home. He never has. My dad continues to deny his brother’s lifestyle, and my brother and I don’t pry for fear of embarrassing him.

     I think about my uncle and his story and feel sad. I’m sure, from the stories he shares, that he has a very full life; however, he doesn’t share that with his family. What must this be like? How transformational must that moment have been when he came out to my grandmother and she swept it under the rug, such that he never broached the subject with a family member again.  What keeps him from sharing his “whole self” with his own family now, despite the fact that his parents have passed away? And, what I think about most with his story as it relates to what we hope to do with this training – what does it mean for me that I am a “straight ally?” If any of us had truly been allies, would we approach my uncle and make sure he felt comfortable to share his whole self with us? Or, do we respect his decision to keep his life separate?

     After some reflection, I think the common thread in both these stories is the presence of allies (or lack thereof). In my “uncle” Bill’s case, my parents were his allies. In turn, they raised me in such a way that I could become an ally myself – seeing him first for the wonderful person he is, and then as a gay man.

     When I think of my uncle Robert, I think if only he had had an ally within the family, someone he trusted enough to lean on during his decision to come out. When my grandmother proved not to be an ally – and then when my father also chose to ignore the truth - would the presence of someone else have been enough to help him bring his “whole self” to our family? I have to think, no matter how close our family is or how many holidays we spend together; he does not see us as his allies. I don’t blame him. I just wish it were different.

     When I look at my parent’s role in both these stories I wonder why then, they couldn’t have been the same kind of ally they were for Bill for my uncle Robert. I guess that, in the end, being an ally – defining yourself as such – is not just about supporting gay rights or equal opportunity, but it’s about supporting people. It’s about taking the time to understand what the gay people in your life need from you and what being an ally means to them. 

               *  *  *

     Another lesson to be learned, I think, is that we gay people help create the responses we get from others.