You know the whole idea of concern over opinion and political positions is a little odd. It always seemed to me that part of a critical role was to own the politics all the way down.
There are consequences and implications to ideas that don't appear on the surface, but are rather discovered through interaction with the world and other people. Some of these consequences are personal and have to be felt, that is registered in the living stuff. If there is a social, political or economic consequence and that is leveraged on the person, then that is a kind of pragmatic test of the idea and the society. Obviously the US public and its business culture are much more provincial, reactionary, and intolerant than either like to pretend. And in general the principle of don't ask, don't tell functions as a mask for this pretense of tolerance.
The more this principal is used the more intolerance it allows and it actually greases the mechanisms of oppression. And in the given silence, what prevails are the mythological or fabricated identities promulgated by mass media. By simply wearing the cloths and carrying the demeanor of one of these fabricated identities, one appears to be synomous with it. Then, violating these identities by creating a look and demeanor that is hostile to them, unmasks their pretense.
These exchanges can be and are worked from either direction, so that I can use them to ease my own existance in a blue collar world where in fact I am an alien---an alien of the worst sort (do real men wear puce, was the joke of the day on Friday in the shop). Blue collar life around here is actually more tolerant than its high bourgeois cousin--but I suspect that is entirely a regional and historical phenomenon pecular to the SF-Oak area. It would never occur to my employers to wonder at my politics or personal opinions, since these are present in abundance without ever consulting any source other than their own eyes and ears.
Chuck Grimes