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This Is How King County, WA, “Honors the Diversity” of Its Workforce
Here are the rules for decorating your desk this season, if you are a King County employee. Quotes from an article by Jason Rantz on MyNorthwest.com.
Gloria Ngezaho, Workforce Equity Manager for the Department of Human Resources, authored a memo titled “Guidelines for Holiday Decorations for King County Employees”
“Before adding any decorations to your workspace (including your virtual workspace), consider the likely effect of such decorations on all of the employees in and outside your work group,”
“Some employees may not share your religion, practice any religion, or share your enthusiasm for holiday decorations. Displays of religious symbols may only be displayed in an employee’s personal workspace. Religious symbols should not be displayed in or as a background to an employee’s virtual workspace,”
The memo says you cannot include Nativity sets or menorahs. But the list of symbols banned from virtual display extends well beyond what you would display for the holidays: stars of David, a cross or a crucifix, and images of Jesus or Mary.
To ensure that HR isn’t accused of focusing exclusively on Christians and Jews, even though that appears to be the intent, the memo warns against the dharma wheel, crescent and star, aum, khanda, and a nine-pointed star. None of these symbols are displayed for the holiday season.
Yeah, that’s really a great way to “honor the diversity” of your workforce. Prohibit any and all displays of diversity for the holiday season. And the far-Leftists who run the county are totally unaware of their behavior being anti-diversity.
Published in Culture
And burqas and hijabs are banned, too, right?….. Right?
This discriminates in favor of atheists.
Yup.
Our church has been a voting location for a couple city wards for as long as I can remember. In the room where the voting booths are set up, there were some posters with scripture verses on the wall. Some of the poll workers decided to take them down during the election “so that nobody was offended.” (They also didn’t take them down gently. They just threw them on the floor and the tape on the back of them kind of stuck them to each other.)
But seriously, City Elections Office, if you want to continue using our building as a polling place, you don’t get to modify the decor at your whim.
This was, of course, all on the poll workers, who tend to be old lefties.
King County has a large Somali population. Many Somali women have government jobs and wear their hijabs at work. They veil their five-year-olds.
“This place doesn’t cease to be a house of worship just because you Godless lefty losers spent time in here. We won’t have to exorcize the place because of you.
“Fumigate it maybe, but no exorcism.”
The purpose of progressivism is to eliminate joy.
If this really were an issue, the correct response would have expected been to ask the Church to remove the posters, or to cover them with paper for the day. But the law in most states is that displays that support a candidate or party are banned. In Texas this was recently changed to only those on the ballot. So, when I had a voter enter the polls wearing a shirt that said Tater Porter for President I enquired who that was but did not have to ask her to remove it. Your Church should complain to the elections office and ensure that doesn’t happen again. That isn’t hard if your elections clerk has a smidgen of integrity.
The Religious Freedom Restoration Acts are relevant to this issue. I don’t know much about them, but I have also heard them called the “freedom for religion acts.”
The First Amendment protects us from the state imposing its religion on us. However, people have confused that with the right of individuals to practice their own religion publicly. People just seem incapable of sorting out the differences between a government forcing a particular religion on people from individual citizens or groups openly practicing their religion. This is not complicated.
It’s very upsetting that King County is doing this to its employees. I’m sure it’s happening elsewhere. I don’t understand why Americans are doing this to each other.
How bizarre that we have gone from classroom programs for children that encourage them to tell the other kids all about their culture and religion to effectively barring such activities. Now we must hide our religion. This happened in Europe too. I feared it would come this way. Some poor guy was arrested for wearing a t-shirt with a cross on it. Apparently, this offended some gay guy who saw the shirt.
It is so completely screwed up. And it is not going to end well.
What’s really disturbing about this is how the world must look to children. Main Street has become a place for sexual declarations on every corner but there’s no religion anywhere.
How weird is this world becoming.
Yes, quite. Only the terrible stuff is allowed because it’s “not religion.” This is disgusting and actually should be another thing we have to challenge in court.
I wonder if a worker could display an LGBTQI2A+ creche with a Trans Mary and a gay Joseph along with some barn sex workers and a boy shepard in drag?
Imagine a state of disbelief so fragile that evidence of another’s belief leaves you so devastated.
That brings to mind another meme.
Today Mrs. Tabby and I toured some of the artwork in the New Mexico capitol in Santa Fe (on our way from our daughter’s house to our son’s house). It really is an extensive collection, with hundreds of works displayed. The plaque next to a work that included several wooden screens with depictions of Jesus in different forms, the explanation included an extensive disclaimer that displaying this piece of religious art did not imply any endorsement of its religious message. Mrs. Tabby noted that we saw no such disclaimers on any of the many art works depicting aspects of various Indian (“Native American”) religions.
If it’s any comfort on the “diversity” issue, keep in mind that very recently several major corporations honored “diversity” by eliminating from their packaging minority people, including the black woman who sold pancake products (Aunt Jemima), the black man who sold rice (Uncle Ben), and the Indian girl who sold butter (Land o’ Lakes). Apparently “diversity” consists of removing from view all differences (but somehow elevating those differences behind the scenes to be outcome-determinative).
Trans flags welcome though. They’re everywhere here.
Isn’t it blatantly unconstitutional to prohibit the free exercise of religion by a government entity?
Isn’t this exactly what the left has done wherever it has gained power, eliminated the practice of any religion? No surprises here. The only religion they respect is leftist wokeism. All others are banned.
Mixed feelings on this kind of thing. Zoom meetings mean that you and your desk visually represent the company and at that point vanilla pays.
But I don’t get the impression that King County is doing a lot of multi-national meetings.
I have known Christians who kind of ‘lord’ it over Jews around this time of year and I can’t really support that. Personally I wish work was a lot less personal than it is – and that goes for birthdays as well. Businesses would do well to end Christmas parties and bring back Christmas bonuses.
:: waves towel and cheers ::
Why not both?