Heterosexuals / caucasians / Catholics / Americans / red-necks / Evangelicals / men / women / politicians / etc. (insert favorite local majority) do not hold a monopoly on virtue and goodness.

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I mean no offense to you personally, but I think that you are grossly misinformed about the gay community and homosexuality in general.

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Dear Joe:

None taken, thank you.

If, by misinformed, you mean believing the activist's rhetoric, who wish nothing more than to advance their agenda, then no thanks, I will remain blissfully ignorant. I'm only going by what I've experienced over several years, dealing with many gay people. I've worked with them, hung around with them, and even roomed with one, and I stand by my contention that they indeed want more gay people in the world.

Not only are they regularly in "recruit" mode, they want everyone to be happy about it, skipping around saying things like, "I'm gay! I'm gay!" I don't go around shouting, "I'm straight! I'm straight!". Some of my gay friends have told me, however, these things are often done to agitate people.

They also call each other all those names we're told are offensive to them. That is the height of hypocrisy.

I have nothing whatsoever against what anyone chooses to do with their life, who they are, what they do in their bedroom, or who they decide to become. Great, I'm happy they're happy. Just don't force it on everyone, especially those who find it on morally objectionable ground.

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(insert favorite local majority) do not hold a monopoly on virtue and goodness.

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No one has said this, John. We're talking about forcing morally objectionable views on the populace.

"...some well deserved violence directed at the homosexuals..." is justified?

Look into your hearts. "Shame, shame on you."

I took the memo mentioned in the article to be a note to management-level staff that basically said, "Hey, this day is coming up and you might have to deal with it. Here's how the company is prepared to help you." If it was anything more than that, then I say that Kodak stepped over the line. As an employee, my employer can stay the hell out of my personal life.

Considering the problems encountered by just being gay, ranging from mild and legal discrimination to outright murder, I just cannot imagine what enticement such recruiters would use to get a hetero to go against their own nature and switch teams. Toaster oven? Must be a nice one!

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RESPECTING others is morally objectionable?

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How do you figure they are respecting others? By endorsing a "coming out day", they are encouraging behavior that is specifically against moral codes outlined by various faiths.* That is NOT respecting everyone -- only the politically-correct. In fact, it's leaving quite a large segment of the population out of the equation.

I realize you're being the company man, but I also believe you know what at least one faith has to say about this kind of behavior.

Try as you might, call it what you will, there is no rationalization for these activities.

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In fact, any true believer in christ would not be offended. In fact they would be sympathetic, understanding, and loving.

My own religeon, the Mormons, up until about 25 odd years ago refused to allow black people to hold the priesthood or any position of authority or instruction. Why our family joined I just don't know. We were always taken for some ethnic minority and treated as such. Hey I guess we were. Bieng Italian, or if you prefer, a WOP, Ginnie, Greaseball, whatever the hell you want to call me, I will just put it on my backbone.

The true problem here is that this is the United States of America. We are not perfect, but our constitution grants that we are all created equal, and deserve to be treated equally by each other. Pinpointing why someone else is damaged in your own opinion, based on whatever you want to base it on, and therefore not granted the same basic civil rights, is not a part of what this country is supposed to be about.

There is a separation of Church and State here in the USA. It provides that this government cannot respect any establishment of religeon, nor can it prevent the engagement of it. However, no church can reign in power in this country. No dogma can be adopted, nor can a pre defined set of mores be placed into law.

there can be however a community list of values, but never should they be religeously influenced. To say that just because the majority is, is to say that a single person should be forced to surrender thier basic human rights of existence or die at the hands of a mob.

You may find this rediculous. It is not. Read our history. Intolerance causes hate. Hate causes fear. Fear causes irrational thought. Irrational thought leads to violation of the very morals that people of the religeous sects claim to uphold.

More violence and death in the history of this planet has been attributed in the name of God. Trust me, God doesn't want that.

Slavery was condoned by God in the Old Testament and Christianity continued to support the idea in the New Testament:

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How do you figure they are respecting others? By endorsing a "coming out day", they are encouraging behavior that is specifically against moral codes outlined by various faiths.* That is NOT respecting everyone -- only the politically-correct. In fact, it's leaving quite a large segment of the population out of the equation.

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Hmm... I don't think they're encouraging the behaviour as such - as John pointed out, either you're gay or not. But what they certainly are encouraging is to bring that behaviour into the workplace, which is another thing altogether.

And the religion issue is just one reason why doing that is very problematic. The most obvious example of this at present is Islam - the Koran specifically calls for physical torture, mutilation and the death penalty for acts which are not even a criminal offence in Western countries, e.g. sexual intercourse outside marriage. So on the one hand you have politically correct morons like Blair telling us to respect Islam and that all Muslims aren't terrorists, yet on the other there are Muslim citizens of the United Kingdom who, in all seriousness, are working to impose a legal code that would result in two of my closest friends being stoned to death for sleeping with their partners. Yet anyone who says that these extremists are wrong is liable to be branded a racist and an Islamophobe.

What this boils down to is that there are no such things as 'rights' on their own. Every right carries with it a responsibility. If you have the right not to be murdered, you also have the responsibility not to murder anyone. If you have the right not to be persecuted because you're gay, you also have the responsibility not to persecute anyone because they hold a moral belief that homosexuality is wrong (unless of course they manifest that belief in the form of persecution against you). And if you have the right to observe your religious beliefs, you also have the responsibility not to impose them on people who do not hold those beliefs.

IMHO, celebrating a 'coming out day' within a corporate environment fails to strike the balance between those rights and responsibilities. It accords rights to one minority group, but fails in the parallel responsibility toward others.

Let me postulate a question and you may use slavery as the example if you wish but I think it has broader application than that.

The question is - what should a man do when forced to choose between what he truly knows in his heart to be right and what is written in the scriptures of the religeon he subscribes to? Although the Bible has various scriptures that could be interpreted as condoning slavery I do not believe that I could ever support slavery in any form.

To me the above illustrates the problem with fundamentalism of any kind. By that I mean choosing to follow the literal word of a religeous text rather than recognising that any text written by man, even one inspired by God, could be flawed by the shortcomings of the writer. To me many fundamentalists delight in using religeous text out of context to justify points of view sometimes founded in hatred, self-interest or fear.

I much prefer an approach which is exemplified by the following page
here

namely

"Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."(2Corinthians 3:5-6)

To put it another way given the choice between what is right and what is written in text, right should win out. Further in reading religeous texts such as the Bible I believe that one should seek to ascertain the moral principles being enunciated in the text (the spirit of the law) and put these into practice rather than seek to be shackled by the the strict letter of biblical text which is just another way of creating a new law for oneself to be imprisoned by as many fundamentalists seem to do. Beware of pharisees!

As far as homosexuality goes I admit to finding the whole subject difficult to work out. But I know in my heart this much - that any interpretation of scripture that would cause me to hate someone, gay or straight, isn't worth the paper it is written on. God may well disapprove of such behavoir but that is a matter between God and the individual to be sorted out. Only when an individual causes some harm to another, or threatens to in connection with their beliefs need it concern me. In the meantime I'm happy to cut enough slack to individuals who aren't straight so that they can get on with their lives and do some good in the community rather than be victimized in the name of a particular God which is in itself a great evil.

In terms of the workplace issue I must admit to having some difficulty with the idea of mixing personal issues with the workplace. The workplace is a place to do work. It reminds me a bit of the rule about not mixing personal and business matters. Doing so just creates problems. I favour the view that one comes to work to do a particular job and that if one's views, right or wrong, political, religeous or otherwise are going to interfere with the smooth running of the enterprise then, in deference to the employer who has paid you to get a job done, one should leave such views at the door and pick them up again after work on your way home. An employer should likewise not bring personal issues into the workplace.

That's my best shot at an answer to this problem but I freely admit to not having all the answers and I defer to those wiser than myself.

cheers Peter

I'd say that the idea just plays into the hands of the homophobes, sending the message that they've got to grit their teeth and put up with it for one day a year, but that the rest of the time it's quite alright to behave in as bigoted a way as they like.