Will the LGBT progressives who condemned Trump for choosing Ben Carson to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and attacked his other appointments now praise Trump for selecting Rex Tillerson to be his Secretary of State?
Tillerson has come under fire from the religious right. Tony Perkins, who heads the anti-gay Family Research Council, pointed specifically to Tillerson’s advocacy to allow openly gay youths to join the Boy Scouts of America, “calling the nominated secretary of state the ‘greatest ally’ liberals would have in the forthcoming Trump administration due to the oil and gas executive’s stances on social issues,” reports the Washington Times, which notes:
Tillerson served as president of the Boy Scouts from 2010 to 2012. In 2013, the scouting organization voted to extend membership to openly gay youths. Mr. Tillerson was “instrumental” in lobbying the board to make that change, the Dallas Morning News reported in 2014.
Two years after allowing openly gay members, the Boy Scouts lifted the ban on openly gay leaders and employees. … Mr. Tillerson still sits on the Boy Scouts’ national executive board.
Perkins accused Tillerson of “risking the well-being of young boys under his charge in an attempt to placate radical homosexual activists.” Let’s see if “radical homosexual activists” come to Tillerson’s defense.
More. And, but of course, directly on cue: Exxon faces anti-gay bias lawsuit as Trump taps CEO for State. It’s “news” straight from the DNC, including this helpful observation:
Richard Johnson, a professor of public administration at the University of San Francisco, said the appointment of Tillerson as secretary of state with a lawsuit against his company alleging anti-gay discrimination “is lunacy and could provide long-term problems.”
“Though Exxon has a new set of LGBT protections [adopted in January 2015], it is not clear as to the role Tillerson played in this new outcome for Exxon, or its motivations,” Johnson said. “The new secretary of state will have an active role in helping to shape foreign policy, especially on LGBT rights worldwide. I am not confident that Rex Tillerson will be the person to stand up to countries where a person can be imprisoned or killed for being LGBT. Indeed, his track record on stopping human rights violations is dubious at best.”
And just when did you stop beating your spouse, Prof. Johnson?
Furthermore. I should have clarified above that activists didn’t, in fact, find an actual employee or job applicant for this suit. Instead:
The basis of the lawsuit is resume audit testing in which Freedom to Work sent two fictitious resumes to the company for the same job in Illinois. One was from a more qualified applicant who outed herself as LGBT by noting work at the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund; the other was a less qualified applicant who gave no indication about her sexual orientation or gender identity.
The Blade reports that:
Rena McDonald, a Las Vegas-based attorney and member of the LGBT workplace equality group Executive Pride, said the anti-gay policies of Tillerson are “further emphasized” by the Illinois finding “Exxon discriminated against a potential new hire who was better qualified for a position, simply because of their affiliations with the gay community.”
As if Tillerson himself had ordered a hiring manager in Illinois to discriminate—if that’s what it was— against this (fictiious!) job candidate. ExxonMobile, the world’s largest oil and gas company, has 83,600 employees and this is the worst that “advocates” can come up with?
ExxonMobile scores “85”on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. If it provided health and other benefits (fertility treatment is noted in the survey) to U.S. employees’ unmarried partners, same sex and opposite sex, as HRC champions, it would have scored higher.
Given Tillerson’s support for gay-inclusive scouting, you might think LGBT activists would seek to work with him on gay-persecution issues. Instead, many choose to condemn him as…wait for it…anti-gay. As always, it’s Party First!