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Christians Need Not Apply
By Luke Visconti
February 12, 2008
Luke Visconti received many e-mails, most of them anonymous, in response to his Ask the White Guy blog entry about faith in the workplace. Here are two of the most eloquent responses from people who felt he was not being inclusive of their religious views. He explains why denying people their civil rights based on orientation is what's really offensive.
The controversy began late last year when DiversityInc held a Religion in the Workplace roundtable, which appears in our Nov./Dec. 2007 issue. We invited corporate leaders, members of religious groups, and the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's leading LGBT-advocacy group. We also invited Peter LaBarbera, executive director of Americans for Truth, an organization "dedicated to exposing the homosexual activist agenda." When most of the panelists refused to appear on the same panel with LaBarbera, Luke disinvited him but allowed him to have his say with a one-page column in the magazine.
Luke also wrote a rebuttal to LaBarbera, which appeared alongside it.
Question:
I'm sure you received a lot of posts concerning your response to the Faith in the Workplace question. I don't actually have a question but a response to your response. Please read it here: BrandNew Magazine.com
I am extremely nervous about posting my response, but I have to speak up for what I and many other Christians believe. I am actually further left on the issue than a lot of Christians. I didn't delve into what I do or don't believe concerning homosexuality. My purpose for writing this response was to show that the problem of diversity is not solved by stifling one group to support the other.
I do understand that during the hiring process, the employer must consider where someone stands on the belief spectrum in terms of how disruptive that individual could potentially be in the workplace, but nevertheless, ruling out someone's employment simply on what they believe is also intolerant and insensible.
Marcia Wade
Editor
BrandNEW Magazine
Answer:
I think you made a mistake in providing a critique of an article (and my point of view) when you didn't read the article. Your mischaracterization of my publication is a disservice to your readers. The very first line in your article is wrong. There is no "anonymous pseudonym" on DiversityInc. Look at the homepage; look at the byline in each column. My name is right there--my PICTURE is right there. Every article has a byline or source.
Your leaps in judgment into what you thought I meant (without reading the article) were simply wrong. The sad thing is that you and I do not disagree at the core of the argument. What you wrote about people and healthcare expressed a very human and humane perspective that would be accepted by many well-thinking people, Christian or not.
It is interesting that ALL of the so-called Christian publications criticizing me have not called me for comment first. These "Christians" prefer to execute uninformed judgment. I'm not saying that you shouldn't judge--judge we all must if we are to discern good from evil, but please, judge armed with information.
Here's where it gets interesting: I'm getting hate mail--some of it very disturbing--from people who are incited by commentary from sources like Mr. LaBarbera, who do NOT want their audience to read what I said but prefer to tell them what THEY think I meant. Very un-Christian, in my opinion.
Question:
I am a new subscriber to this site and am stunned at what passes for "diversity" here. I found the situation with Peter LaBarbera particularly distasteful. While he may or may not be an "extremist," particularly in the eyes of some of the other panelists that were invited to the forum, to shut him out is utterly indefensible. That is exactly the type of thinking that the other "progressive" panelists are allegedly fighting against. Forums that shut out "extremist" LGBT and minority views years ago were OK by this reasoning, and for other groups to shun the inclusion of LGBT, Black, Hispanic or Asian guests and participants must also be an acceptable practice by these standards. I guess this is the type of thing I should expect from a columnist and web site with a forum titled "Ask the White Guy." (As a white guy, I find that offensive in this context.) Christian values are no less important and no less worth protecting than any other human rights. The final sentence in Mr. Visconti's column of it being "good to know what your enemies are thinking" is reprehensible and extremely insensitive.
Jim McGeown
Answer:
You use the words reprehensible, offensive and "utterly indefensible" (when I gave LaBarbera a whole page unedited to express himself, a benefit not given to any other panelist) and you expect what?
There were people on the panel who were VERY religious. I wish they would have had the stomach to hear Mr. LaBarbera out in person. I would have liked to replace him, but the whole panel fell apart at the last minute. I'm not sure more time would have made a difference. How do you find a "less offensive" person in this area? It's like finding a less offensive Klansman to speak to a panel of civil-rights advocates. There ARE certain conditions that many people find almost impossible to overcome.
Please understand that it was my desire to have Mr. LaBarbera live, not out of a sense of "fairness," but to air him out in the sunshine. In a room of intellectual and passionately religious people, without his self-supporting chorus, his evil would have been clearly exposed. This has an immense value. Using my Klan analogy, most people passively supporting segregation would not feel good after hearing Bull Connor live for a while. It took the Pettus Bridge, when Southerners (and the rest of the world) got a belly full of seeing people shot with fire hoses and bit by dogs, to create a change of heart in many people "going along to get along." It is my goal to get that change moving in hetero people who don't think this is their fight. In my opinion, it's every good American's fight.
Like Connor, LaBarbera feeds the dark side in some people, as evidenced from the vicious e-mail I'm receiving that comes from anonymous or closed e-mail accounts. In my opinion, denying people their own orientation and civil rights is evil and it won't stand.
By the way, I'm absolutely NOT putting your e-mail in the "vicious" category; I have enjoyed our dialogue. It would be no fun if everyone was "compliant."
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