Think the battle over “same sex marriage” isn’t already over? Check out this web site and think again.
The Department of Justice (yes, THE U.S. Department of Justice) has an LGBT organization called DOJ Pride. Has had it since 1994. The organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered DOJ employees and, of course, their now-obligatory “allies,” works to “identify and address key areas affecting its LGBT employees.” Its activities include brown-bag lunch lectures “featuring experts in the LGBT community discussing issues of importance to DOJ Pride members, such as marriage equality” and a yearly Pride Month Celebration and Award Ceremony.
Its goals include “developing and implementing effective policies and practices for the elimination of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or expression in all Departmental activities.”
The website’s Legal Discrimination page currently focuses on sex discrimination against transgender people “because they fail to conform to sex stereotypes,” inviting people who have “experienced discrimination on the basis of their actual or perceived gender non-conformity [emphasis mine]” to sue the Department of Justice.
The website’s blog page includes photos and information about recent activities: a letter from the organization to the Attorney General about benefits equity; a screening of the movie Edie & Thea: The Story Behind the Windsor Case featuring a Q&A with Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry; a DOJ Pride ice skating outing; a screening of the film Two Spirits (“Fred Martinez was a Navajo boy who was also a girl. In an earlier era he would have been revered; instead, he was murdered”); Happy Hour with attendees of the annual Lavender Law Conference and Career Fair; and photos from last year’s DOJ LGBT Pride Month Program.
The program, which had the catchy theme “The Power of Out,” featured talks by Attorney General Eric Holder and EEOC Commissioner Chai Felbum. It also featured a scene from a play about a lawsuit against California’s Proposition 8, which the event writeup described as “eliminating” gay and lesbian couples’ “right” to marry in California.
Again, this is THE Department of Justice.
Is it any wonder that the DOJ declared it would no longer argue in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, when one of its official employee organizations is hosting events with the president of Freedom to Marry? When a header on the DOJ Pride Legal Discrimination page features a photo of Ted Olson testifying for “gay marriage” in front of the Supreme Court, a copy of an issue TIME Magazine dedicated to the subject in is hand? When “marriage equality” is its own employee organization’s key interests?
Just last week, DOJ Pride emailed a pamphlet to all DOJ managers. Made public over the weekend by lawyer and conservative columnist Matt Barber, LGBT Inclusion at Work: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Managers suggests a few common-sense measures to create a more pleasant workplace (e.g., don’t allow your lawyers to call opposing counsel “dykes” or “pansies” — a real brain-stretcher there — and don’t gossip with others about whether or not employees are gay).
But mostly, the pamphlet is a propaganda piece about how to behave, speak, and even think in the brave new world its creators would like to create. Forget DOJ employees’ rights to free speech and religious freedom: When it comes to LGBT issues, there is only one right way to be.
“DO use inclusive words like ‘partner,’ ‘significant other,’ or ‘spouse’ rather than gender-specific words like ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ (for example, in invitations to office parties or when asking a new employee about his/her home life).”
“DO use a transgender persons chosen name and the pronoun that is consistent with the person’s self-identified gender.”
“Talk openly and positively about your colleagues, friends and family who are LGBT.”
If a employees “come out,” the pamphlet says, managers should not judge them, or even remain silent. “Silence will be interpreted as disapproval,” the pamphlet says. The one correct response to this declaration is “interest and curiosity.”
But interest and curiosity is not enough. Managers should actively encourage these declarations — preferably by making their offices “safe spaces” by displaying special DOJ Pride stickers, by themselves “coming out” as “straight allies,” or by coming out as LGBT. Once you’ve made your office a Safe Place, you should also request re-education for your office through DOJ Pride’s “Allies in the Workplace” training.
The work of a very small group of people in a very large organization? Probably. An isolated incident? Not a chance. DOJ Pride’s “7 Habits” brochure simply reflects the tactics of the activist Juggernaut that demands conformity and affirmation and has now declared that silence is not an option.
The latest effort to celebrate people “coming out” as “allies” is yet one more of a series of highly successful tactics to identify “gay rights” as civil rights, and to paint anyone opposed to them as bigots. Politicians in my city are already identifying themselves as “allies,” lest anyone — as the DOJ Pride pamphlet threatens — take their silence for disapproval.
The Attorney General of the United States is speaking at this group’s events. Pride Month (June, in case you didn’t know) isn’t just Pride Month for DOJ Pride, it’s Pride Month for the entire department — and the rest of the federal government as well. Although June has been celebrated as Pride Month by gay organizations for many years, President Obama first officially declared June to be Pride Month in 2011. Last year it was celebrated by the CIA, the Pentagon, the Department of the Interior, the National Institutes of Health, and other federal departments and agencies. The White House sponsored a “Pride Month Champions of Change Video Challenge” to spotlight LGBT “parents and students, neighborhood and business leaders, artists and advocates… united in the fight for equality.” Yes, that’s a quote from the White House web site.
So if you think the fight over the redefinition of marriage will be overseen by an impartial government, one that takes careful consideration of its own employees’ religious, political, and philosophical beliefs and rights to free speech and to practicing their religious beliefs — much less your beliefs and freedoms — think again. And consider making your office a “safe space” after you “come out as an ally,” at least if you still want a job. Because DOJ Pride is right about one thing: Silence is no longer an option. More and more, people in all walks of life being forced to ally themselves to one side or the other of what has become a defining issue of our generation.
Silence will be taken as disapproval. By both sides.