Gay and Transgender Issues in the Workplace

     Thirty-some years ago, the comedienne Lily Tomlin had a very popular character named Ernestine who was a bossy, snoopy, disrespectful, and cranky telephone operator. When dealing with unhappy customers, she would snort with derision and remind them that they were dealing with the phone company, an institution that didn’t care about the customer’s complaint because AT&T was “omnipotent.” Though she pops up from time to time in Lily’s work today, Ernestine retired from her switchboard “duty desk,” hopefully before her once powerful employer was no longer considered to be omnipotent. Today, it’s simply not the same AT&T. It’s been broken up, sold, changed, and must now compete with other communication giants. Things change, even those things like AT&T that we believed never would. That has certainly been true in my life.

     The early days of my childhood were spent proudly and happily in Flint, Michigan, once a beautiful, thriving automobile capitol, now a dismal place that plans to plow under many of its neighborhoods because they are considered abandoned eyesores that only contribute to the city’s reputation of being a wasteland.

     For most of my life, my father worked at the largest, most prestigious and respected corporation in the world, General Motors, which is based in Detroit. As the Director of Institutional Operations in the department of public relations, he was generally greeted by the host of New York’s 21 Club with “Hello, Mr. McNaught. How are Buicks selling?” My father is now dead, General Motors is on life support, and Detroit is on a suicide watch. 

     When I moved to Boston, I worked for the most powerful man in the city, a political icon who made the Hub an international attraction. Intimidating most people with his sharp mind, Kevin White was talked of as a future U.S. President. He is now being accommodated by his few friends because he has Alzheimer’s.

     The love of my life, Ray, worked long days and nights throughout his career for one of the most highly-respected firms on Wall Street. As a managing director of a financial institution with a long, rich history and tradition, he wouldn’t have considered working anywhere else. Now, Lehman Brothers no longer exists, nor does Ray’s retirement program.

     All of us have heard stories about people who, because of the world financial meltdown, have been forced to downsize their lives — to get rid of their household staff, their second homes, and their three cars. A year ago, some of them imagined that they were “special,” perhaps better than common folk. The world was divided between the “haves” and the “have nots.” Because of newfound wealth, they were temporarily “haves.” Now, they’re “have nots.”

    Nothing stays the same. Everything changes, often against our wills. But sometimes the changes are good, which is why those of us who are working hard to create safe and productive environments for everyone in the workplace would do well to celebrate each day the advances we are making, and not get discouraged by the seemingly insurmountable obstacles we face. These include our global financial insecurity, or a diversity-averse CEO, or the cultural wars we witness taking place in our workplace. If we are patient, things will change. The economy will recover. The CEO will be replaced with one who is more enlightened. And the current cultural wars will end or shift to another issue. Gay marriage is a good example. The chasm between gay employees and some religious conservative employees is shrinking despite what we may see on the Internet.

     On YouTube today, you can watch a few highly emotional warnings against gay marriage. The number has increased because of the significant advances that have been made in the United States and the world to provide gay and lesbian couples the same legal status as heterosexual couples. One such emotional YouTube clip, created by the Iowa Family Policy Center in response to the unanimous decision by that state’s Supreme Court that gay people had the constitutional right to marry, features the very likable couple Karl and Judy Schowengerdt whose gay son Randy died of HIV. Karl and Judy insist that gay marriage hurts heterosexual families because Karl never would have been gay had he not been “actively recruited” by the homosexual community. Your heart breaks for them, particularly because they see themselves and their son as victims, when, in fact, had Randy’s homosexuality been initially embraced by his parents, he might have ended up in a gay marriage that matched in length and happiness that of his folks.

     Like yesterday’s Edsel and today’s Pontiac, the arguments of the Schowengerdts against gay marriage are nearly extinct. The Republican Party is being advised by its younger members, as is the Evangelical Church, to drop the issue of gay marriage and to move on to things that really impact the lives of people, such as divorce, poverty, injustice, and the environment. Even Dr. Laura Schlesinger, the conservative talk show host who once led the battle against gay marriage, has changed her tune and now feels that such marriages would be good for society. Things change, sometimes for the better.

     The lesson we all have the opportunity to learn in the midst of all of this dramatic economic and cultural change is that it is dangerous to be smug like Ernestine, the telephone operator. Things come and go. Attitudes change. Nothing in this life is omnipotent. So, we might as well be present to and enjoy our family, home, job, town, car, financial situation, health, faith, and the environment because what is here today can be gone tomorrow.

     Why has Susan Boyle, the 47-year-old Scottish lass, so completely captured our attention and our hearts? Though Ray and I listened twice (through YouTube, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY) to her extraordinarily beautiful rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” the night it arrived in my e-mail, I want to listen to it again and again. Each time a reference to her pops up in my CNN.com news briefs, I check in to see what delightful tidbit is now being revealed about the unassuming, never-been-kissed, singing phenomenon.

     But why are we all making such a big fuss over her? Is it not because we all identify with Susan, and our souls leap with excited recognition of our own desire to be given not only the chance to shine but also the experience of having our standing ovation recorded and watched by millions of people worldwide, thus ending our obscurity and loneliness? Don’t all of us feel certain that there are others out there who think we’re common, unimportant, unattractive, and not to be taken seriously, and that when Susan Boyle embarrassed the doubters by proving their smug judgments dead wrong, that we felt fully vindicated? When she won, we won.

     Wasn’t it also Susan’s unpolished nature and simplicity of spirit, so contrary to the star quality of her judges, and of all of the government, sports, and entertainment stars that dominate the attention of our daily lives today, that made her our David slaying the Goliath of “specialness?”

     Consider what our reactions to the YouTube recording of Susan’s great moment might have been had we not seen her interviewed in advance by the hosts of the show, nor watched the incredulous, impatient, and scoffing non-verbal responses of the judges and of the audience? Would we have taken her under our wing and experienced her as anything other than an extraordinary voice had we not seen the context of her singing?

     And what would we think of Susan Boyle if we passed her in the grocery store, stood behind her in the Post Office, or knew only that she was an unemployed, middle-aged, church-going spinster had we never heard her sing? Would we imagine that she could make us cry by opening her mouth and sharing her talent? Don’t we love her so dearly because she is much more than meets the eye and so too are we, unless of course we’re pretending to be more than we are?

     As Directors of Diversity and Inclusion struggle to effectively make the business case for the corporate mantra of valuing diversity, they need to do nothing more than share the experience of Susan singing on Britain’s Got Talent, and the comments of the judges about their shortsightedness and about an impending lucrative record deal. The Diversity Directors can also show the senior executives and all of their employees the YouTube recordings of other contestants of the television program who have stunned the judges and the audience because their appearance belied their skills. Paul Potts, the heavy-set mobile phone salesman with the crooked teeth and the baggy suit, and Connie Talbot, the six-year-old girl missing her two front teeth, both were greeted by the judges and members of the audience with looks of disdain but nevertheless conquered the cynicism with angelic voices and found homes in the hearts of millions of people globally. How many people in the workplace aren’t given the chance to succeed because the way they look, speak, or get from place to place doesn’t have the markings of stardom? Does the cream always rise to the top, or does it sometime require that we shake up our attitudes to allow it to rise?

     When people walk past me on the street, refusing to respond to the “good morning,” or the smile, I sometimes comfort my loneliness by thinking, “It’s your loss.” When I’m dismissed socially by some gay men because my body doesn’t sexually arouse them, by some lesbian women simply because I’m male, or by some heterosexuals solely because I’m gay, I take refuge in the awareness that I’m a kind, thoughtful, smart, generous, and sometimes funny person who they won’t ever have the chance to know, nor have their lives enhanced by my skills. Knowing that is how I feel is exactly the reason why I say “hello” to, and share a smile with, homeless people, grocery store baggers, garbage collectors, children, the elderly, black, Asian, Latino, and Indian people, ticket takers, popcorn vendors, foreigners, and anyone else who I sense might feel isolated and unappreciated because of their packaging.

     When asked by Simon Cowell, the scariest but wisest judge on what constitutes “talent,” why she hadn’t pursued her dream of being a star like her idol Elaine Paige, Susan explained that she hadn’t been given the chance before. That’s all that any of us wants is a chance –a chance to test ourselves, a chance to let people know who we really are, a chance to shine. Only the tiniest number of us will ever be the subject of positive international attention, but we don’t need to have the world know our name in order for us to feel fulfilled. All we need is the opportunity, that even just one other person can provide us, that allows us to be seen for who we are and not how we appear.

     Thank you, Susan Boyle, for being “gobsmacked” by this experience. Like Barack Obama, and the young hero of Slum Dog Millionaire, you represent the aspirations of billions of people in the world at this time.

     When asked how she felt when confronted with the unwelcoming sneers prior to her performance, Susan said that she thought, “I’ll show them. So I did.”

     When asked how she felt since being “discovered,” she replied, “I won’t be lonely. I certainly won’t be lonely anymore.”

     “Monkey Mind” is a term in meditative practice that refers to our tendencies to allow our mind to race from one issue to the next, like a monkey jumping from one tree to another, or from one window in the cage to the many others, getting very excited or agitated by what it sees.

     My Monkey Mind races today from the window in which I see Out magazine’s inane listing of the 50 most powerful gay people in America, including people who refuse to publicly acknowledge that they’re gay, like Barry Diller, Matt Drudge, and Anderson Cooper, and excluding real movers and shakers in my gay life (other than those whom I know and love on Out’s list) such as Chuck Wolfe, Bob Witeck, Kevin Cathcart, Nadine Smith, Nathaniel Frank, Gregory Maquire, Carol Dopp, Joe Kort, Kim Nelson, Kevin Hannan, David Norris, John Corvino, Selisse Berry, Kathy Marvel, Kate Clinton, Ralph Blair, Mary Breslauer, Ron Ansin,  Eli Coleman, Susan Gore, Anthony Collerton, Michele Karlsberg, Evan Wolfson, Bianca Cody Murphy, Keith Kahla, Wes Combs, Richard Alther, Kim Cromwell, Steve Walker, Dotti Berry, Ron Robin, Greg Sampedro, Dan Brown, Christian de la Huerta, Mark Benson, Ray Repp, Tomie de Paola, Richard Friend, Ray Struble, Todd Sears, Howard Israel, Liz Winfield, Tom McNaught, Bill Johnson, Mark Leno, Richard Wagoner, Stratton Pollitzer, Daryl Herrschaft, Larry Wald, John McNeill, Paul Diederich, Larry Kessler, Jim Braude, David Mills, Larry Kramer, Mike Signorile, Mark Leach, Joe Kramer,  Carson Kressley, Sharon Lynn, Ann Maguire, Sarah Peak, Chad Allen, Marty Moran, Philip Rafshoon, Mark Harris, Craig Wilson, Steven Tierney, Scott Pomfret, Nancy Wilson, Dan Woog, and those many others who I’m regrettably forgetting because of my agitation.

     Out this window, I read about gay teenagers being mercilessly executed in Iraq and Iran simply for being gay. These sweet young men are being hunted down, hung, shot, and beaten because they had the very bad luck of being born into a country in the 20^th century that is barbaric and primitive in its religious-based attitudes and laws about sexuality and gender. As my good friend Tom Roberts would say “Where’s the outrage?” Agitation.

     And over here, I’m listening to blowhard Bill O’Reilly, the conservative Irish Catholic TV commentator on Fox, who is so upset about the Iowa Supreme Court lifting the ban on gay marriage in the same week that the Vermont legislature overrode the Republican governor’s veto of a marriage bill, that Mr. O’Reilly  desperately focused his  and his listeners’ attention on Adam Lambert, the extraordinarily-talented leading contender on American Idol after Bill found an “embarrassing” picture on the Internet of the performer kissing another man. O’Reilly asks publicly if the country should keep Lambert on the show with their votes. Ridiculous. Dizzying Anger.

     With all of that upset, can my Monkey Mind then focus on the experience we just had of four neighborhood children leaving an Easter basket at our gate with dyed eggs marked “Brian” and “Ray”? Is it possible to peacefully embrace the significance of that offering and of our friend Milton, who we introduced on Friday to the practice of dying eggs, who showed up on Sunday with a giant chocolate Brazilian egg filled with candy, just as children in his homeland receive on Easter morning? Or can my Monkey Mind settle completely into the half-hour cuddle in bed that Ray and I enjoyed for the first time in many moons, or the hot chocolate that Ray so lovingly prepared to increase the pleasure of my reading the Sunday New York Times, or of the poached salmon and asparagus risotto I made for dinner?  

     Monkey Mind means forgoing the joy and beauty of the moment for the adrenalin rush of running from window to window to be stimulated by the major dramas of the time. It’s not that the dramas (our own, or those of our family, friends, and others) aren’t relevant to our lives. They are relevant, but not as important as the children’s Easter basket, the exchanged eggs, the snuggle, the hot chocolate, and the smiles of contentment from Ray and Milton as they enjoyed the salmon. If given the opportunity to reflect and to choose, the fifty (plus) most powerful gay men and women on anyone’s list, the young gay boys murdered in Iran and Iraq, Adam Lambert, and Bill O’Reilly would hopefully all opt to snuggle for a half an hour with the person they loved and receive baskets of candy and dyed eggs from children. But they too have Monkey Mind. We all do. It’s what makes our lives feel so unsatisfactory, so exhausting, and so meaningless.

     To stop running from window to window, we have to let go of the hand of the monkey. We have to stop letting it lead us around. And when we bravely do so, we can’t beat ourselves up for once again grabbing the hand and running with the money to the thousands of windows in our mind. Even hermits and monks, who have isolated themselves from distractions, grab the hand of the monkey throughout the day. They are generally just more aware, as anyone on a spiritual path would be, that the monkey ceaselessly demands attention.

     Multi-tasking is like having Monkey Mind. We fool ourselves into thinking that we’re fully capable of giving sufficient attention to each issue, but in truth, we know that though we may get a lot done, we’ve done nothing as well as we might have had we focused our attention completely on the one task at hand.

     Next year at this time, Out magazine will have another inane list of the “Fifty Most Powerful Gay People in America,” and gay men will still be hunted down and executed in Iran and Iraq, and Bill O’Reilly will again come up with something outrageous to keep his ratings high, but next year I won’t receive an Easter offering from the neighborhood children for the first time, nor be introduced to a Brazilian Easter egg for the first time.  I’m grateful to say that this time around, I had let go of the monkey’s hand long enough to focus on these moments of joy.

     Did you hear the one about the Scientologist, the Mormon, and the Pakistani Shia, who stood with their Roman Catholic colleague at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) having “several friendly conversations with un-offended co-workers” regarding their beliefs?

     The Scientologist was explaining his Church’s belief that seventy-five million years ago the galactic ruler Xenu brought billions of people to earth, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. He also said that his Church disapproved of homosexuality and has fought gay marriage.

     The Mormon, in a very friendly way, so as not to offend her colleague, told him that the story he told was “suspect” because the earth wasn’t that old, and according to her faith, God the Father and Jesus told 15-year-old Joseph Smith, Jr., in the early 1800s, who at the time was helping a traveling magician use “Peep” stones to find buried treasure in farmers’ fields, that all creeds other than hers were an abomination. “But,” she added, “we don’t approve of homosexuality either and were very involved in the defeat of gay marriage in California.”

     The Pakistani Shia grimaced in a friendly way so as not to offend his Mormon co-worker, and said, “We also believe that every religion other than ours is wrong. We also believe that wives should not leave their homes to work, to be educated, or to go to a doctor’s appointment without the permission of their husband, who also has the legal right to rape them at home. But, like you, we too think that homosexuality is an abomination unto God and is punishable by death.”

     The Roman Catholic who was gay and not yet out to his co-workers, said “When I was in school, we actually prayed during class time for all of you so that you might become Catholic and be spared the horrors of hell.” But he said nothing about his deeply hurt feelings about their negative beliefs about homosexuality. As a result, he found it impossible to focus attention on his job that day. How he wished, as depressed, angry, and distracted as he felt, that he didn’t have to pilot the afternoon flight of his Scientologist, Mormon, and Shia colleagues to visit another FAA site.

     If you think the story is tragic rather than funny, chances are you probably won’t get a kick out of the fact that a U.S. District Court in Georgia has just ruled in favor of a supervisor who had been disciplined by the FAA for discussing his religious views on homosexual behavior with colleagues at work. The man, Larry Dombrowski, has had his record cleared, and has had all of his legal fees paid by the government. The FAA, in compliance with the agreement, also distributed a memo titled Guidelines on Religious Exercise and Expression in the Workplace, a 1997 document issued by the White House that says federal agencies “shall permit personal religious expression by Federal employees to the greatest extent possible, consistent with requirements of law and interests in workplace efficiency.” I don’t know if the decision will be appealed, but it’s obvious that the Obama administration needs to clarify the meaning of the 1997 document.

     It was a press release from the archconservative Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) about the decision that said Dumbrowski had been misjudged for “several friendly conversations he had with un-offended co-workers about his Christian beliefs.” The ADF describes itself as “a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith…to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.”

     Despite the ADF’s claims that it was “a friendly conversation he had with un-offended co-workers” I can’t imagine how hearing a supervisor at work talk about how his or her faith condemns homosexual behavior would be anything but disruptive. Would the ADF also be willing to defend my right as a person raised Catholic to say at work that my religion teaches that those religious fanatics who quote the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Koran, or the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard to judge others are, in the words of Jesus, hypocrites?

     Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. (NIV, Matthew 23:27-28)

     If I said that at work, do you think I too would be protected by the 1997 White House document, especially if it was in a friendly conversation with un-offended co-workers? It’s just my personal religious expression, and that of Jesus too.

     Despite the ruling of the U.S. District Court, no person in the workplace should be allowed to cite their religious beliefs to put down or make judgments on any other person in the workplace. It is disruptive and counterproductive.

     Over 1,000 retired military officers feel that the men and women who serve in the United States Armed Forces, unlike those who serve in 20 of the 26 NATO member countries, are emotionally immature and sexually insecure. They also feel that the overwhelming majority of parents in the United States are homophobic.

     In urging President Obama not to follow the lead of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Israel, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, all of whom welcome the service of openly gay and lesbian citizens, the retired officers said repealing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy “would undermine recruiting and retention, impact leadership at all levels, have adverse effects on the willingness of parents who lend their sons and daughters to military service, and eventually break the All-Volunteer Force.” Yikes! If gay people have that much power, wouldn’t it make sense for the U.S. to have an all gay army, such as the renowned Sacred Band of Thebes in Ancient Greece?

     As any sexuality counselor, therapist, or educator can tell you, the only heterosexuals who are threatened by the presence of gay people are those who do not feel secure in their own sexuality. Emotionally healthy individuals are comfortable with diversity. Is it possible that the American youth who sign up for military service are less sexually secure and emotionally healthy than those American men and women who sign up to be police officers and fire fighters in the U.S., both of which groups actively recruit gay people?  Should we believe that they are less stable than their French, Italian, German, or British counterparts? If so, do we as a country want to perpetuate their immaturity by protecting them through restrictive policies or should we instead help bring them up to the standards of the rest of the world?

     The reality, of course, is that the American heterosexual youth who sign up for service in the Armed Forces are just as emotionally mature as their peers throughout the world. It’s our retired military personnel that feel sexually insecure – at least the 1,000 who signed the letter to President Obama that urged him to maintain the ban on openly gay people. But not all retired military are as sexually unhealthy. Colin Powell, the architect of the ban, wants to revisit it, as does Sam Nunn, who once led the battle in the Senate to keep openly gay people from serving.

     President Obama, his Secretary of Defense, and his Joint Chiefs of Staff, are intent on changing the policy. To do so, they will need the support of Congress. For Congress to vote intelligently, they need information. The best and most current information available is in the new book by Nathaniel Frank entitled Unfriendly Fire – How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America. Ray and I paid to have a copy sent to us and to one member of Congress. So too did 129 other people. General John Shalikashvili, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said “This book should be mandatory reading.”

     It only costs $38.00 to receive and to send a copy of the book to a member of Congress. Doing so would help make our representatives more sexually secure and emotionally healthy than the 1,000 former officers they have just heard from. If you’d like to help, please visit the book’s author at www.nathanielfrank.com.