U.S. political leaders have long opposed walls. Twenty-five years ago when President George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law he said, “Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.”
At his 1987 address at the Brandenburg Gate, former President Ronald Reagan answered the delayed call of Eastern Europeans suffering the brutality of communism when he said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” The wall soon fell and with it the lie of communism. Portions of the Berlin Wall stand at the Reagan Library in California, the Gerald Ford Museum in Grand Rapids and at other locations in this country.
The Great Wall of 2015 is the wall to workplace equality for LGBT people in offices from coast to coast where discrimination lingers despite progress at ending employment inequality for other minorities. Where is the leadership to end the legalized discrimination against LGBT workers? What political leader or leaders will have the courage to bring down the wall of workplace exclusion for qualified LGBT workers?
Fairness in the workplace and employment equality are good business and good for business. No pilot studies or extensive workplace surveys are needed to prove what Edwards Deming, Tom Peters and dozens of other management specialists and virtually every management school in the country have already proven beyond question: Fairness in the workplace increases worker efficiency, morale, innovation and profits.
In an ideal world, there would be no need for legislation to prevent discrimination in the workplace. I have seen no ideal workplaces in the U.S. or on my travels around the world.
Discrimination is contrary to liberty, freedom and the pursuit of happiness. It is also counter to the fundamental tenants of free market capitalism where workers and businesses are ruled by markets not by bigots.
Critics of employment equality say the Pink Mob is unnecessarily sexualizing workplaces by using the very concept of workplace equality for the tired purpose of promoting the gay agenda. Sex has been in workplaces since the concept of workplace began. Sadly, discrimination is ancient in practice as well.
The issue of employment equality is not as politically divisive as the media reports and talk radio/TV shouters proclaim. Most workplaces would be free of LGBT discrimination if workers could respectfully talk with each other and reach a policy of equality. This would, however, limit Washington fundraisers on both sides of the issue.
It is not that employment equality is divisive. The issue is that there is so much damn money, publicity, headlines, and Tweets on the matter that serious debate was buried long ago. As a result, LGBT workers are needlessly suffering discrimination, unemployment, lower standards of living, and resulting personal and financial problems.
There is a Great Wall of workplace discrimination against LGBT workers, their families, and allies. I experienced it myself from “Uncle Jesse” Helms, as his senate staffers called him, when the political Baron of bigotry took to the Senate floor in July 1994 to personally fire me from a federal job. His complaint: I was promoting the gay agenda by working for employment equality.
There is also an industry of fundraisers who are more concerned about the next fundraising campaign than the campaign for workplace equality. Lowering the fundraising expectations, unrealistic I know, could help politicians end the Great Wall of employment discrimination against the LGBT community.
Employment equality for LGBT workers is so politicized new thinking and new leadership are desperately needed to determine how this much-needed goal of fair and equitable employment can be achieved. LGBT workers have suffered long enough. It is time for concrete action to improve the lives of long neglected Americans who only want to work and to support themselves and their families.
Human Rights Advocate Jim Patterson is a writer, speaker, and lifelong diplomat for dignity for all people. In a remarkable life spanning the civil rights movement to today’s human rights struggles, he stands as a voice for the voiceless. A prolific writer, he documents history’s wrongs and the struggle for dignity to provide a roadmap to a more humane future. Learn more at www.HumanRightsIssues.com
