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The Changing Landscape
A great deal has changed since the first edition of Straight Talk About Gays in the Workplace: Creating an Inclusive, Productive Environment for Everyone in Your Organization. The author credit has changed as I have written this edition on my own. If you learn nothing else from this book, learn this: writing a book is a great deal like what I understand giving birth to a child is like. I am not the biological parent of a child so I can only go by what my friends who are biological mothers tell meâif you go through labor once, you won't want to do it again. Writing a book is a similarly intense process that I swore I'd never do again ⌠and here I am, on number three. (Several of my friends have more than one kid, too, by the way.)
Perhaps most significantly, I have changed. Some of these changes are due in no small part to a couple of curveballs that life has tossed me in the past decade, but that hardly makes me unusual. I'm not the only one who's had ample opportunity to practice making lemonade out of lemons. It's a common human desireâor necessityâto make the best of bad situations. Sexual orientation and gender identity are also common to all humans. We all have a sexual orientation and we all have a gender identity. It's a common ground we can build on, and for ten years, that's what I've been trying to do.
Beyond the changes I've experienced as an individual on the planet, the changes that most affect my work as an educator and consultant in workplace diversity are entirely external. I'm referring to the progression of human knowledge and resulting attitudes about orientation and identity that are occurring worldwide and almost daily. And, most important, they are the changes I've experienced because of the people I've met and worked with. I thought running Common Ground was going to be only a job. It turned out to be one hell of an interesting adventure.
DEALING WITH WHAT IS NOW
This book is more than just the third edition; it's the next iteration of our collective growth around these topics, and it's certainly the next step on my personal journey to better understandâand better explainâthe salient issues of sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace.
For instance, there was so much to discuss about sexual orientation when we wrote the first and second editions that it didn't even occur to us to include a discussion of gender identity, or what are commonly called transgender issues. Excluding them then was made simpler by the fact that, in 1994 and even 1998, the common misconception was that there were no transgender people in our workplaces. In 1994, lesbian and gay people had just started to pop up on workplace radar screens, it having been widely assumed until at least 1992, when Lotus became the first publicly traded company to offer same-sex domestic partner benefits, that all gay people worked for Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco, with a few gays and lesbians having managed to sneak into AT&T (but only in the Northeast), IBM, Apple, and Microsoft.
When I first started Common Ground, only six states had nondis-crimination laws pertaining in any way to employment rights that included sexual orientation; none of them included gender identity. As of March 1, 2004, fourteen states have laws inclusive of sexual orientation and pertaining to employment, among other things, and four of them specifically include transgender people. Eight states in ten years might seem rather slow, but it's better than nothing, and the truth is that changes are coming more rapidly now.
So to begin, I think it's prudent to take a look at where we, as a society, are in our opinions about parts of life that are intrinsically entwined with sexual orientation and gender identity, because no positive work can ever be done on human diversity in the workplace unless we strive to meet people where they are. I acknowledge that I would like people to be further along, that I sometimes wish I could flick a switch and have people get it. But I also know that almost nothing worth doing is ever easy, and so I continue to try to build public awareness and knowledge, brick by brick.
It comes as no surprise to anyone who's paying attention, even a little, to the world going by these days that issues of sexual orientation and gender identity are reaching a fever pitch in terms of the speed and number at which they are introduced into the broader culture. It would be difficult to find a person, regardless of orientation, who is not aware that the times are a-changin' relative to these things, and I believe that people want to participate in the discussions about them in meaningful ways. In order to do that, they have to know what they're talking about, and that's where this book and diversity education about sexual orientation and gender identity play a major role.
IT'S ABOUT ALL PEOPLE
Before I get to the ways in which our world is changing around these aspects of human diversity, it's important for us all to realize that when we are talking about sexual orientation we are talking about everyone. Therefore, laws or policies or programs that pertain to sexual orientation pertain to all people. If it's illegal for an employer in a given jurisdiction to discriminate against someone on the basis of real or perceived sexual orientation, then heterosexual as well as homosexual people are protected by that law. The fact that people don't seem to get that, or sometimes claim not to in order to push their own political and social agendas, is a major problem in moving these issues forward in the workplace and in society. For the same reason that we have affirmative action or EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) laws, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, or suspect classes in the U.S. Constitution, we also must have protections for people on the basis of sexual orientation. The truth is that we don't live in a perfect world where everyone lets everyone be who they are or who they say they are. We live in a world where protections are necessary for some groups of people for a period of time or, maybe it will turn out, forever. It's not âspecial rightsâ for gay people, as some of the more hysterical, divisive members of the religious right scream (repeatedly and without anything resembling rationality). It's about equal rights and protections for all people based on real or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity.
Here's an example. About five years ago, a young man who is straight walked into a gay bar in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the home of many gay bars, and asked for a summer job. He was told that the bar âdidn't hire straight boys,â and he sued them for employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. He won his suit because such discrimination is illegal in Massachusetts and in thirteen other states.
It must be understood from the start that âsexual orientationâ is not âcodeâ for âhomosexualityâ or for âgay issues.â Sexual orientation is an inherent characteristic of all people. We are, each of us, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or asexual. I understand that most people don't understand what these words mean, but that's why you'll find very good explanations of them all in this book and that's why I do the work I do. Give me two or three hours with a bunch of folks and they will still have questions or different opinions about things related to sexual orientation, but they will also know precisely what it is they are talking or thinking about. From there, let the discussions begin.
THE INHERENT ARGUMENT
I find it amazing, and vaguely un-American, for people to insist that the civil rights of other human beings in this country should be determined by popular vote, or that when judges make decisions such as the one that found sodomy laws to be unconstitutional or those allowing same-sex civil marriage, they are called âliberal activist judges.â Some people have a short memory. For instance, if it were still left to popular vote or not acted upon by the judiciary, in many parts of this country women would likely still not have the right to vote, interracial marriage would still be illegal, and segregation would still be the law. Indeed, in countries governed more by religious doctrine and less by rule of law or common sense, women can't vote and minorities are still enslaved. Winning civil rights is always a messy, complicated battle, and all avenues must be leveraged by people on the different sides of any issue. That is the American way, and it's fair because it's available to all. There's a reason why there are three branches of government. This was good thinking on the part of the founding fathers. The people who complain about activist judges don't seem to have too much of a problem when other judges rule it's okay to post the Ten Commandments in public buildings, despite the protests of many based on a fervent belief in the separation of church and state, or who force upon women a restrictive view of their right to have a safe abortion.
Speaking of the founding fathers, one has to conclude that statistically, based on knowledge of human sexuality, at least 10 percent of them were either gay or bisexual. I have a theory that if even a couple of them had admitted as much back at the original Constitutional Convention then perhaps they would have made provisions for people who were other than heterosexual. Of course, this theory is full of holes because they obviously knew that there were black people and women all over the place and hardly any provisions were made for them. Black men were counted as three-fifths of a person, and women, regardless of color, weren't counted for anything at all. Their unusual lack of foresight in some matters has necessitated changes such as the Bill of Rights, civil rights acts, and constitutional amendments to fill in some particularly gaping holes. So, why don't people on the religious right complain about the âspecial rightsâ granted to them in the Bill of Rights (freedom of or freedom from religion) or in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which guarantees that a person's religious convictions are respected no matter what? Why don't people complain that EEO statutes extended to race, religion, national origin, color, or sex are special rights and are also double-dipping for some because they're also covered by the classification of âsuspect classesâ in the Constitution? Why? Because it wouldn't serve their purpose of demonizing gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, that's why. Or they'll say that a person doesn't choose his or her race or sex or national origin or religion. Or do they?
Think about this: I believe that a person's religious affiliation and moral code of conduct are more a matter of choice than sexual orientation is. I believe that orientation is absolutely inherent in humans and in any animal that sexually reproduces, and I believe that the data substantiate this.
For instance, on March 9, 2004, Reuters reported that U.S. researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine found certain groups of brain cells that were different in the parts of brains in rams and ewes that control sexual behavior.1 Animal experts have found that about 8 percent of domestic rams display preferences for other males as sexual partners. These differences are documented not only in the construct of the brains of homosexual versus heterosexual animals but also in their hormonal constructs.2
In Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity (1998),3 Bruce Bagemihl documents homosexuality in more than 450 species of sexually reproducing animals and plants that he chose to study.
One could certainly ask, âwho cares?â and in all honesty, that question occurs to me quite regularly. When people fully incorporate their sexual orientation in their lives, it takes on a meaning that can be described only as trivial. If I were to ask 100 heterosexual people what they thought about being heterosexual, more than ninety-five of them would tell me that they give it little or no thought at all. I know this because I've done it.
On the flip side, ask 100 fully incorporated gay people what they think of their sexual orientation and they too will say that they don't think about it much. Again, I know this because I've done it.
But the truth is, for better or for worse, people do care about the origins of sexual orientation, and it does seem to matter to some whether a person's orientation is determined by nature or nurture or choice. In declaring, with no doubt at all, that I believe orientation, like race, handedness, eye color, skin color, hair composition, and so on, is absolutely hardwired in the genetic makeup of a given individual, I have to face two matters that are also very certain. First, nothing about humanity or nature is that simple; and second, if there is a genetic disposition of human sexual orientation, then some extremely disturbed people will try to find it and eradicate it as if it were a disease.
Science has been looking for a âgay geneâ for a long time. Absent a genetic connection to sexual orientation, scientists and sociologists have similarly been seeking an explanation for why some people are straight and why some are gay.
The most famous study having to do with sexual orientation was done by Alfred Kinsey, as presented in two books: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).4 Whereas many people purport that Kinsey found that 10 percent of people are homosexual (or words to that effect), he stated no such thing. Rather, Kin...
