Top Cisco employee reportedly fired for defending marriage, family
Image via WikipediaThe American-based multinational corporation Cisco Systems, a company that touts its “inclusion and diversity” strategies, has come under attack for the recent firing of a top employee, reputedly over his off-the-job work defending true marriage.
Earlier this year, the company fired Dr. Frank Turek, Cisco’s leadership and teambuilding program co-ordinator, after receiving complaints from a homosexual manager with the company regarding Turek’s authorship of a book on homosexuality and marriage, entitled “Correct, not Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone.”
According to Cisco management, Turek’s work with the company had received nothing but praise. In fact, in the manager’s complaint to the company he commended the leadership program lead by Turek as “excellent,” but took issue with his political and religious views, which he considered inconsistent with the values of the company.
“I was fired as a vendor by Cisco for my conservative beliefs about sex and marriage even though my beliefs were never expressed on the job,” said Turek, a periodic columnist for the conservative paper Townhall.
Townhall columnist Mike Adams reported that Dr. Turek took up the job with Cisco to design and conduct a leadership and teambuilding program for about fifty managers in 2008.
Turek received high marks and in 2010 he was commissioned to design a similar program for about 200 managers globally.
Following one of these sessions, the homosexual manager called a human resources professional at Cisco with his complaint, after apparently searching Turek’s name online.
According to Adams, even though neither the manager nor the HR professional had read Turek’s book or heard him speak on matters of same-sex “marriage” or homosexuality, Turek was fired within hours, and the HR professional commended the manager for “outing” Turek.
“Notice that Cisco did not have a problem with my behaviour,” wrote Turek in a recent column. “My job performance was deemed excellent, and I was ‘inclusive and diverse’ by working in a respectful manner with people of all moral, religious and political views.”
“Cisco had a problem with my thoughts,” he continued. “Although I certainly accepted homosexuals, I committed the thought crime of disagreeing with homosexual behavior and homosexual political goals. So despite all their talk about ‘inclusion and diversity,’ Cisco deemed my thoughts about something irrelevant to the workplace as grounds for immediate exclusion.”
Turket said that Marilyn Nagel, Cisco’s chief “inclusion and diversity” officer, could not explain the meaning of the terms to Turek during a phone call regarding his firing.
“Because we believe that it has to be an employee environment where everyone is welcome, we do discourage discussions around strongly held political beliefs or religious beliefs in group settings within Cisco other than certain forums,” Nagel reportedly told Turek. “We’re very sensitive about protecting our culture of acceptance of everyone, we don’t want anyone to ever feel excluded and that means all opinions.”
However, according to Adams, one such “forum” for “inclusion and diversity” that was held June 13 was decidedly “one sided,” with solely same-sex “marriage” advocates for speakers.
The speakers included a Member of Parliament for the Netherlands, Honorable Boris Dittrich, who helped his nation lead the way in recognizing same-sex “marriage” and a former U.S. mayor, Honorable Evan Low, a gay man and activist. .
“Why didn’t Cisco’s relentless emphasis and training on ‘inclusion and diversity’ serve to prevent [my firing]?” asked Turek. “Maybe it’s because ‘inclusion and diversity’ means something different to corporate elites than to normal Americans.
‘Inclusion and diversity’ to corporate elites actually means exclusion for those that don’t agree with the approved views.”
Meanwhile, Peter La Barbera of the pro-family group Americans for Truth warned that anyone could be the next victim of such “homosexual intolerance.”
“If it’s OK to fire Frank Turek merely because he disagrees with homosexuality and ‘same-sex marriage,’ then you, too, are vulnerable,” said La Barbera.
“Christians and all defenders of sexual normalcy: we have no other choice but to fight back against the emerging liberal homo-fascism — unless you are content to live as a muted serf in the land of the ‘free.’”
Contact information:
Mr. John Chambers
Office of the President
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Mail Stop SJC10/5/4
300 East Tasman Drive
San Jose, California 95134
Office of the President
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Mail Stop SJC10/5/4
300 East Tasman Drive
San Jose, California 95134
Phone: 408-526-4000; hit “0″ for operator
