The thought police over at JP Morgan seem poised to repeat Mozilla Firefox's recent treatment of Christian conservatives. According to a report on LifeSiteNews, the banking giant asked employees in an annual survey whether they identify themselves as "LGBT," or better yet, "an ally of the LGBT community."
The survey was leaked by Princeton Professor Robert George at the Mirror Justice blog where the professor posted an email from a friend who also works for the company. The email begins with the following:
I've worked at Chase for the past 11 years. Yearly (sometimes skipping a year though) the bank will send out an Employee Survey to gauge how the employees feel about the bank and the management team they report up to. Every year that's all the questions ever related to: the bank in general and management. But this year there was a question that had many of us scratching our heads.
This is a company wide survey. All lines of business have the same survey. There was a question where it said to check the boxes that were applicable to you.
What exactly were those questions? The usual stuff with a bit of political correctness to spice it up. The employees were asked whether or not they fit into the following categories:
- A person with disabilities;
- A person with children with disabilities;
- A person with a spouse/domestic partner with disabilities;
- A member of the LGBT community;
- An ally of the LGBT community, but not personally identifying as LGBT.
In response to the last option, George's friend stated, "“What?! What kind of question was that? An ‘ally’ of that community? What's the alternative if you don't select that option? You're not a ally of the LGBT community?”
“This survey wasn't anonymous. You had to enter your employee ID,” he added. “The worry among many of us is that those who didn't select that poorly placed, irrelevant option will be placed on the ‘you can fire these people first’ list.”
A spokesperson for Chase said they only ask for the employee ID so they know only employees are partaking in the survey. They have not issued any comment about why the question appeared in the first place.
Writing on the blog, Professor George voiced strong concern a survey like this could be used as a pretext for JP Morgan Chase to pull a "Brandon Eich" by firing all employees who aren't in lockstep with their political thought.
"The message to all employees is perfectly clear," George said, "You are expected to fall into line with the approved and required thinking. Nothing short of assent is acceptable. Silent dissent will no longer be permitted."
