Krispy Kreme's have been a big hit in San Francisco. Even Cop-Watch activists eat 'em.
>...That bastion of equal opportunity hiring, Cracker Barrel.
<URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/printitem.cfm?itemid=14302 > Cracker Barrel cracks Bill Berkowitz - WorkingForChange 12.31.02 - Batten down the hatches, Grandma -- and get ready for another evangelical tornado. The Board of Directors of Cracker Barrel recently voted to add sexual orientation to the company's written non-discrimination policy, and some on the Religious right are fuming. Cracker Barrel has been a tough nut to crack for gay rights activists. "This small step has enormous significance for every gay or lesbian employee who has ever experienced job discrimination," said Human Rights Campaign Education Director Kim I. Mills, who oversees the organization's workplace advocacy project, HRC WorkNet. "Cracker Barrel has undergone important cultural changes in the last 10 years, but until now has resisted rewriting its non- discrimination policy. This long-awaited change is a watershed and we welcome it." According to GayToday.com, the board of CBRL Group Inc., the parent company of Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores and Logan's Roadhouse restaurants, a national chain of more than 450 restaurants, "voted unanimously to change the non-discrimination policy after its annual shareholder meeting November 26." Randy Sharp, special projects director for American Family Association, was particularly upset by Cracker Barrel's decision. According to an AFA Alert, Sharp said that the company's decision "proves adopting this policy was never about dealing with discrimination," since company officials had previously stated that its policy already prohibited discrimination in the workplace. According to Sharp, "Homosexual activists prompted this move to further their agenda. This was not about equal opportunity employment, but rather the procurement of another feather for their social-restructuring cap." The AFA's Sharp has a fanciful imagination: See "'Porn & Coca-Cola': American Family Association lambastes Coke for getting in bed with 'hard core' video chain", for his response to Coke's deal with the Movie Gallery video chain as an example. This time around, Sharp is claiming that Cracker Barrel could be placing itself in a "precarious situation": "What will happen if a homosexual waiter decides to show up for work in a waitress' dress because of his sexual orientation? According to their policy, he'll be waiting on tables, and that's certainly not going to be good for business," Sharp added. The action by Cracker Barrel came on the heels of similar policy change put into effect by Lockheed Martin Corp, the nation's largest defense contractor. According to Concerned Women for America's Culture & Family Report, in an e-mail sent November 21 to the company's 125,000 employees, Vance D. Coffman, Lockheed's chief executive, "said that the decision to extend benefits and recognition to homosexuals was made by the executive council. Coffman convened that council earlier this year to address discrimination issues, following a scathing report from the Human Rights Campaign," the nation's largest gay civil rights organization. "We have always had a firm commitment to treat all employees at Lockheed Martin with respect and dignity," wrote Coffman. "In this spirit, we have added the words 'marital status,' 'family structure,' 'ancestry' and 'sexual orientation' to our Corporate Policy Statement on nondiscrimination... We have also decided to offer domestic partner benefits for health, dental and vision-care coverage next year. The guidelines are now being developed and will be communicated as soon as they are finalized in 2003," he added. The Culture & Family Report's Martha Kleder writes that Lockheed spokeswoman Meghan Mariman told the Washington Post "that one reason for the change was fear of losing key program managers. Competitors like Honeywell International, Boeing Co., Raytheon Co., International Business Machines Corp., and Microsoft Corp. have all added 'sexual orientation' policies and domestic-partner benefits." Tracking workplace progressIn August 2002, the Human Rights Campaign's WorkNet project issued a report titled "The State of the Workplace for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Americans 2001", which rated 319 of the nation's largest companies, including firms from the Fortune 500 and Forbes Private 500. The report indicated that 13 companies received 100 percent scores as gay-friendly employers, according to an HRC index. Eighty-two other employers ranked close behind with scores of 86 percent, the group said. According to a report in the Washington Post, HRC revealed that "about 92 percent of the firms surveyed prohibit workplace discrimination against gays and lesbians, even though they are not required by law to do so in most of the United States." The Post reported that HRC had ranked companies based on whether they "had written policies banning discrimination based on sexual orientation; whether they offer workplace bias protection for sexual-identity issues, such as rules affecting transgender workers; and whether they offer health insurance coverage for same-sex partners of employees. Last year Lockheed, along with CBRL Group Inc. /Cracker Barrel and the Emerson Electric Company, all received zero ratings on HRC's 2002 Corporate Equality Index, a ranking of "gay-friendly" companies. The top-ranking companies included Aetna Inc.; AMR Corp., the parent of American Airlines; Apple Computer Inc.; Eastman Kodak Co.; Intel Corp.; J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.; Nike Inc.; and Xerox Corp. Leading Christian investment firm softens screening criteria Anti-discrimination policies put into effect by Cracker Barrel, Lockheed Martin and other companies appear to have caused The Timothy Plan, the nation's largest group of so-called pro-family mutual funds, to "soften its investment screening criterion on homosexuality," writes Martha Kleder and Peter LaBarbera in the December 11 edition of CWA's Culture & Family Report. According to its website, "The Timothy Plan is a family of mutual funds offering individuals… a biblical choice when it comes to investing. If you are concerned with the moral issues (abortion, pornography, anti- family entertainment, non-married lifestyles, alcohol, tobacco and gambling) that are destroying children and families you have come to the right place. "The Timothy Plan avoids investing in companies that are involved in practices contrary to Judeo-Christian principles. Our goal is to recapture traditional American values. We are America's first pro-life, pro-family, biblically-based mutual fund group." However, in what seems to be a change in policy, Timothy Plan President Art Ally told the C&F Report that "Nondiscrimination policies that include homosexuals by themselves do not qualify a company to be screened out of our fund. However, when a company begins to offer health benefits to homosexual partners, that sets off red flags for us," he added. "That news starts us to digging, looking for other signs of blatant promotion of homosexuality like mandatory sensitivity training for employees or the sponsorship of homosexual groups and activities." Ally's equivocation worries Robert Knight, director of CWA's Culture and Family Institute. "The problem here is that as day follows night, the adoption of 'sexual orientation' policies leads directly to new demands by homosexual activists to adopt further 'reforms,'" said Knight. "The adoption of 'sexual orientation' is the beginning, not the end, of homosexual activism in the workplace." ©Working Assets Online
URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=14302 -- Michael Pugliese
I got an axe-handle pistol with a graveyard frame. It shoots tombstone bullets wearing balls and chains. I'm drinking TNT. I'm smokin' dynamite. I hope some screwball start's a fight, 'cause I'm ready, ready, ready
Muddy Waters, "I'm Ready."