The MOST Persecuted Frank Turek
So now we come to the end of our little journey through the latest creation of Maggie Gallagher. Maggie is the former Board Chair and President of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), but she recently left those posts to create an off-shoot group called the Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance, because you know, the good Christians like Maggie are being persecuted because they slowing losing their right to discriminate against whole classes of people under the civil laws of this country. Maggie started this group up with a guy named Frank Turek. Frank’s story was one of the first NOM started trotting out to try to show that people who believe in unequal treatment were being treated unequally.
Turek’s the author of several books, the most recent being a book about how gay marriage is bad. It was cited (eventually) by N.C. Senator James Forrester as the basis for introducing the anti-equality marriage amendment in the North Carolina legislature (You read about that craziness here).
So Turek’s complaint is that someone “Googled him,” (damn those inter-tubes), and was “outed”, and he was “fired” for being, “somebody who has a traditional marriage view-point.” With that setup, we launch into the scary music theme.
First, we need to start clearing something up for Frank. Frank, you weren’t “fired.” You had been hired as a consultant. Consultant’s don’t get fired, the company just ends their contract with you, or elects to not sign another contract for more work. As a consultant myself, it happens all the time.
But Frank’s got a good story to go along with it. However, his story doesn’t follow a very linear story line, and my experience is that this is usually caused when a person is being less than honest. Especially about something this important.
First, Frankly starts out saying that he done some training for Cisco, “for many years.” Well, all of this happened in late 2010 or early 2011, and Frank goes on to qualify his statement saying, “since about 2008.” Well Frank old buddy, let me explain something to you…in the world of consulting, two years does not qualify as “many years.” My company has contracts we’ve been on for as much as 15 years. You might call that “many,” two…not so much
And here’s where his story starts getting even more inconsistent. He says that during 2010, when he was doing his second training class for Cisco (so, one class in 2008 and another in 2010 does not “many years” make), someone in the class went to HR during the class and said, “Frank’s class is great, but he’s written this book, Correct, Not Politically Correct; How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone, and since Frank doesn’t live up to Cisco values, he’s against same sex marriage, he can’t work here.” Then there’s a “cutaway and we come back to Frank claiming, “He said I’m gonna call HR and try to get Frank fired.” So Frank, you went from someone calling HR during a break, to apparently hearing from someone who he heard someone say this about you. Which is it?
So now Frank apparently knows this is about to happen (not that it happened during a break), and he calls his buddy who had hired him, and clues him in. The buddy tells him to not worry about it, that he’ll take care of it. Then Frank gets a call from his buddy later that day during another break, and the guy has to come over to talk to him when the class is over. The guy comes over, and after having a woman in the class tell him it was the best class ever at Cisco, he has to take Frank into another room, and tearfully fires him. Frank goes on to claim that even the liberals at Cisco thought it was an injustice, but doesn’t explain how he knows this.
Frank then goes into a lecture about the reason THEY decided to go public with this, as if the people at Cisco support him in doing this video. I wonder how they’d feel about this? Frank says “it’s just un-American to have to have a certain political view in order to work.” Frank, you don’t have to have a certain political view to work, but companies get to hire contractors especially based on the contractor’s compatibility with their culture. They’re not obligated to hire you or not hire you based on anything they want.
But that’s not the end of the story. It gets worse for Frank. His wife starts worrying it may happen with other clients, as Frank tells us.
Well, it has happened with other client’s, but Frank says not as a result of going public about what happened at Cisco. Even though he mentions his wife being worried about it happening AFTER his contract ended at Cisco, he claims it happened with Bank of America also. He does presentations at Bank of America and been hired over and over because his presentations are always so well received. But suddenly, and coincidentally, just two days before he went public with the big news about what happened with Cisco, he gets a call from Bank of America. Like at Cisco, it was the HR director telling him that because he’s against Same Sex Marriage, he can’t work at BofA again.
So, in all my experiences as a consultant, including security clearances, I have never had any interaction with a client’s HR director. When you are a consultant, you’re hired by the person responsible for the project on which you are working, but suddenly, at these huge multi-national companies, the HR Directors are involved with this one single consultant. Frank, I’m just buying the story. There are inconsistencies, things that just don’t follow with my experiences, and most of all you have spent way too much time and energy telling us how great you did, and how much everyone at these companies loved your presentations.
As we get toward the end of the video Frank gets all fired up as is claiming that the problem is, if you don’t believe that same-sex marriage should be legal, “you’re a homophobe, a bigot, and you need to be fired.” Then it gets interesting. He blames on the silent Christians, then starts comparing his situation to that of the founders, and talks about how many of them died for religious freedom, but we’re all afraid to speak up because we might not get or promotion, or not get that job we want…”puhhff,” puhleaze.” Ah, so frank, the founders fought and died for their beliefs. You partner up with one of the biggest bigots in the country, and whine about a company putting into practice their beliefs.
Again, they never realize this whole freedom thing always cuts two ways. They have the freedom of their beliefs. Companies have the freedom to decide who they want to do business with based on whatever criteria they want. Frank, you don’t get it both ways. You seem to expect that you should have the freedom to write and say whatever you want, but companies should have to hire you, and make judgements about whether you are a good fit with their culture. I suspect Frank wouldn’t do a training program for the Human Rights Campaign, so he gets to choose, but the HRC would have the right to not hire him.
What a tool.