King: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell for Businesses
Rep. Steve King, the prom king of Wingnuttia High School, is opposed to protecting gay and lesbian people from discrimination by employers, saying that all they have to do is keep it a secret and no one will know that they’re gay and therefore they can’t be discriminated against.
“If you don’t know anybody’s sexuality you can’t discriminate against them,” King said in a discussion about sexual orientation in the workplace. Private businesses need the freedom to operate, King said. “I would think that, unless somebody makes their sexuality public it’s nobody’s business. Neither is it our business to tell an employer who to hire,” he added.
That sounds kind of like a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” policy for the workplace, Think Progress’ Scott Keyes said.
“How do you know somebody’s sexual orientation?” King asked in the interview. “I don’t know how you discriminate against somebody because of their sexual orientation. That’s their business.”
He makes it sound as though gay people are talking about all the gay sex they had around the water cooler. There are lots of ways that someone might found out a co-worker is gay without them ever talking about it. Someone might see them taking part in a gay pride event. They might, like heterosexual people do, put a picture of them and their spouse in their office or cubicle. They might want to bring their partner to an office function, like a Christmas party. All of the things that no straight people even has to give a thought to, King wants gay people to have to hide. Of course, King doesn’t really think gay people should exist in the first place.
anandine:
April 9th, 2012 at 10:08 am
There are lots of ways that someone might found out a co-worker is gay without them ever talking about it.
For that matter, with some gay guys, you can tell by listening to them talk about anything.
regexp:
April 9th, 2012 at 10:12 am
When I ask if a company has domestic partnership benefits – that effectively outs me. And that’s even before being offered the job.
@anadine
Stereotype much?
d cwilson:
April 9th, 2012 at 10:17 am
If only wingnuts would adopt a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with respect to their religion in the workplace.
jamessweet:
April 9th, 2012 at 10:17 am
The issue of whether you can tell someone is gay “just by hearing them talk” is best avoided here. All you need to do is focus on the fact that, by this standard, a heterosexual man can say “my wife” with it apparently not being an advertisement of his sexuality, whereas if a homosexual man says “my husband”, then he has done the equivalent of waving his dick around in Rep. King’s face, apparently.
Forget pictures of spouses or bringing them to the Christmas party or Pride parades or anything like that. By King’s faulty logic here, if I say “my wife” to any of co-workers, I might as well have posted hardcore porn pics of me and her getting it on. Obviously nobody feels that way about straight people, so it’s an unequal standard to feel that way about gay and lesbian couples. That’s as far as we need to take this.
Walton:
April 9th, 2012 at 10:23 am
I think Steve King may be the worst person in Congress. He’s an extreme racist who has referred to undocumented immigrants as “cattle” and “criminals”, has been supported by anti-immigrant hate groups, and once said that those in Congress who support comprehensive immigration reform should have a scarlet letter A, for “amnesty”, pinned to them. Recently, he made light of the physical abuse, sexual abuse and grossly inadequate medical care suffered by detainees in ICE custody, during the congressional hearing which was dubbed “Holiday on ICE” by fellow racist Lamar Smith.
Basically… he’s an all-round racist, sexist, homophobic bigot. I cannot believe that people keep electing him to Congress.
Michael Heath:
April 9th, 2012 at 10:29 am
Rep. King is not alone in this dishonest argument; many conservative Christians make the same argument. One of the most effective advocates using this argument is Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. Of all the times I’ve seen Mr. O’Reilly make this argument, none of his guests make the obvious point Ed does here.
Mr. O’Reilly likes to use the example of how his parental rights are abused when a gay couple “shove it in his face” by holding hands or putting their arms around each other when everyone’s leaving a movie theater when he’s accompanied by his children. Well sure they’re abused your rights Mr. O’Reilly, but the argument your competing rights are greater than gays being able to show affection in the same manner heterosexuals is idiotic – not that his fans are smart enough to conclude given the cocaine-like high they get watching O’Reilly spew Christian-justified hatred toward gays.
This DADT approach is simply a way to falsely claim conservative Christians are also for equal rights, all while seeking to ostracize gays and if they’re successful, I think to go back to a society who denies the reality of GLBT existence as they attempt to frame it now with their abused children and indoctrinate all public school children. The other argument these bigots make while falsely claiming they support equal rights is that GLBTs already have equal rights since they can marry people of the opposite sex, just like us heterosexuals. That was most vividly argued recently by Michelle Bachmann when asked by a child why she fights against equal rights, a question the media is too cowardly to ask.
MyPetSlug:
April 9th, 2012 at 10:30 am
Not to mention, if a company started firing heterosexual people and then said, “Well, then they should’ve have made their sexuality public. Besides, it’s nobody’s business who we hire.” What are the odds that Steve King would go ballistic?
I mean, from a purely financial perspective, wouldn’t this actually be in the company’s best interests? Families cost more in terms of health insurance and if the company doesn’t have to provide same sex partner benefits either (which I’m sure Rep. King is also against), you’ve just guaranteed that you’ve only got single people working for you. I know it’s illegal and all to discriminate against pregnant women, people with kids, marital status, but the company can just say “No, no, no. We’re not doing any of that, we’re just discriminating against sexual orientation, which is not a protected class. Check mate bitches!”
Michael Heath:
April 9th, 2012 at 10:36 am
Walton:
The new breed of conservative politician is they’re not merely social dominators pandering to conservative Christians as Thomas Franks reported in What’s the Matter with Kansas in the early-2000s, these new breed of politicians are increasingly a member of the very population they represent. Steve King is a defining example of what many conservative Christian voters believe and argue, as is Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, and Sarah Palin. So not only should we not be surprised by his elective success, we can predict such events to be increasingly probable in certain red-state districts like the one Rep. King represents.
Jeremy Shaffer:
April 9th, 2012 at 10:37 am
d cwilson at 3:
A place I used to work at years ago enacted such a policy after some issues arose between a Catholic employee and Baptist employee. However, it was limited to speech only and didn’t apply to what one could place in their personal work space. It worked about as well as one could imagine.
Michael Heath:
April 9th, 2012 at 10:41 am
MyPetSlug @ 7,
Great points.
dingojack:
April 9th, 2012 at 10:55 am
OK Rep. King, if gays can’t even hint at their sexuality, under the principle of ‘eqaulity under the law’, neither can straight people.
See how that goes down in workplaces all across America.
Dingo
eric:
April 9th, 2012 at 11:21 am
Telling businesses how to regulate water-cooler speech? Yet another example of Republican limited government; so small it now fits in that 4×5″ picture frame on your desk.
exdrone:
April 9th, 2012 at 12:01 pm
OR you can just not discriminate.
Patient: “Doctor, doctor. It hurts when I do this.”
Doctor:”Then stop doing that.”
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster:
April 9th, 2012 at 12:10 pm
This Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy is worthless when one sees an unmarried person in their thirties and older. And that person does not talk about any partners.
Oh, wait, these people also like to argue that LGBT people are free to marry. Just as long it is to someone of a different gender.
Modusoperandi:
April 9th, 2012 at 12:30 pm
To be fair, if anybody had sex around the water cooler, everybody would be talking about it.
democommie:
April 9th, 2012 at 2:06 pm
There’s a little video of Stevie being schooled by a lady, over at think progress (April 7, 2012). He needs to get some of that several times a day.
cactusren:
April 9th, 2012 at 2:09 pm
Janine @14: Are you implying that anyone over 30 who isn’t married is gay? What if someone is asexual? Or just doesn’t like talking about their personal life with their coworkers?
jeremydiamond:
April 9th, 2012 at 2:28 pm
With more and more companies asking new hires for their Facebook passwords, they’re getting themselves into a world of potential legal trouble anyway. This satirical letter of resignation captured that point perfectly.
vmanis1:
April 9th, 2012 at 3:52 pm
I don’t see the problem. Rep King has never come out as an idiot (`Say it now and say it loud/I’m an idiot and I’m proud’), and therefore nobody knows what a chucklehead he is.
Ace of Sevens:
April 9th, 2012 at 4:24 pm
Strange as it may sounds, this is an improvement from the religious right’s previous preferred position of rooting out the gays.
Ace of Sevens:
April 9th, 2012 at 4:29 pm
I wonder what his position is on making employees turn over Facebook passwords, which has been a growing trend.
matty1:
April 9th, 2012 at 4:44 pm
@14 and 17
I really don’t want to go to much into my personal circumstances but the assumption that everyone over 30 is either married (or equivalent) or asexual pisses me off. There are lots of reasons a person might be single and most of them are positive but the way society is built around couples irks me and so does the assumption that if I’m not part of that it’s because I have no interest in sex at all.
dan4:
April 9th, 2012 at 9:21 pm
“Private businesses need the freedom to operate.”
So King SUPPORTS protecting gay and lesbian employers from discrimination in the workforce if were talking about public sector (governmental) employment? Yeah, sure he does.
Aliasalpha:
April 9th, 2012 at 10:32 pm
Well what do gay people expect when they go around existing all willy-nilly?
uncephalized:
April 10th, 2012 at 10:38 am
I’m always torn on this kind of stuff. I mean, sure, it’s easy to see that there is a clear moral injustice when someone is discriminated against for their sexual orientation in the workplace, or anywhere. That’s not up for dispute in my mind; it’s bigotry, plain and simple. Where it gets sticky for me is when we start making laws about what traits employers can base their hiring decisions on. I’m just not sure it’s the government’s place to right every social wrong.
I definitely agree with having strong anti-discriminatory language in government hiring policies. There’s no conflict at all there; all citizens are to be treated equally in the eyes of the government. Great. But what right does the government actually have to tell Joe Homophobe that he must play nice and hire an employee who offends his personal sense of icky in one particular way, but not another? People are discriminated against every day because they are short, or unattractive, or remind a potential employer of their child-molesting great-uncle. Sexual orientation is just one trait (albeit a hot-button trait in our current societal situation) out of thousands that someone could use to unjustly discriminate against a person. So is skin color, for that matter. And the reality is, if someone really doesn’t want to hire you because he thinks you’re gay, he’ll make up an excuse like “his attitude wasn’t a good match for the company” or whatever. It’s not provable either way anyway, because discrimination only really occurs in someone’s brain. There’s nothing otherwise illegal about not hiring someone, unless it is done with a certain pattern of thinking in the hirer’s mind. And that makes it thoughtcrime, which is really not a road I think we should go down if we are interested in any kind of liberty.
Lastly, I don’t even think this kind of legislation is effective. Like I said above, an employer can come up with any old excuse for why he does or doesn’t hire someone. So how do you prosecute? By guessing what his motives are? That’s hocus-pocus. It might even cause more harm than good in the long run by enforcing the idea that the government is out to “control our lives” and “run our family business” and “stomp on our values as Real Americans”, which is the kind of thinking that digs people deeper and deeper into their bigotry holes.
Ultimately I think social problems like bigotry and discrimination just can’t be fixed by government. And by the time politicians get around to supporting any anti-discrimination measures, it’s usually because a majority of their constituency is clamoring for them. Which means they’re already on their way to being largely redundant anyway, because the mind change started in the voters, not the legislature.
uncephalized:
April 10th, 2012 at 10:41 am
I should add that in a “perfect” society, there would be plenty of job options for everyone and if an employer was known to be discriminatory, social pressure and boycotting would either force them to change their practices or run them out of business. But I know that’s not how it works on planet Earth so I definitely acknowledge there is a major problem here. I’m just thoroughly unconvinced that legislating it away does anything positive to fix it.
flex:
April 10th, 2012 at 1:10 pm
@ uncephalized,
To an extent you have a point, the laws prohibiting workplace discrimination among protected classes are largely unenforceable. When these laws are used they are mainly against the most obvious offenders; employers who are too stupid to find other excuses for their discrimination.
On the other hand, legislation is enacted for many reasons.
Legislation can be used to try to enforce cultural norms which are being abandoned by the culture. The Defense of Marriage Act is an attempt to enforce a cultural norm which was current 30 years ago, but rapidly fading from our modern American culture.
Legislation can also be used as a positive force to change cultural norms which are embraced by a culture, but are actively detrimental to some groups within a culture. There are 9 or 10 protected classes in Federal Law; including age, sex, race, color, religion, and national origin. Some states add others, for example in Michigan it’s illegal to discriminate based on obesity (weight). These laws make employers aware that society generally feels that these factors should not be taken into account unless there is a genuine need for that trait in the job.
While these laws are not able to be enforced to the extent that discrimination occurs, they do serve the purpose of notifying employers that society, generally, feels that discrimination for these factors is unfair and unethical.
The thing to remember is that legislation does not happen in a vacuum, the government we have is a reflection of both the society we have and the society we desire. If we, as a society, desire to end sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace, we need to let employers know this. There are many means to get this message to employers: boycotts, letter campaigns, share-holder meetings, etc. These have varying levels of success. A corporate directive saying that hiring/firing practices need to be blind to sexual orientation looks good, but doesn’t have much teeth.
However, adding sexual orientation as a protected class to federal anti-discrimination laws will send a clear message to employers that as a society we don’t think sexual orientation should be a consideration. Further, should employers blatantly violate these laws, they will lose money. Employers pay attention to that.
If you are unconvinced that laws which are largely unenforced can have positive impact on cultural norms in society, consider speed limit laws. Most people drive above the speed limit and are not caught, very few people always remain below the speed limit. But the blatant violators, the ones doing 95 MPH, are far more likely to be caught than those going 80 MPH. So most drivers stay below 80 MPH, creating a cultural norm of the average speed on a freeway being around 75 MPH. (At least on the freeways I drive, your mileage may vary.)
So, yes, legislation which is enacted, but cannot be enforced in most cases of violation, can have a positive influence on society.
Finally, government and society are not independent entities. Government is a reflection of society. Democratic government reflects how the various cultures within our society approach the questions of fairness, opportunity, wealth distribution, education, public vs. private goods, etc. Not only as part of the immediate past or present aspects of our culture, but far more importantly, where each sub-culture sees the future of our society. Hence, the culture wars.