Dear Mr. Moynihan:
I want to bring to your attention a recent decision made by your HR team that I think does not reflect your leadership of Bank of America. Dr. Frank Turek was fired as a vendor for his political and religious views, even though those views were never mentioned or expressed during his work at Bank of America.
By way of background, Dr. Turek is an eight-year veteran of the United States Navy, and he and his wife have two sons serving in the United States Air Force. He has conducted leadership, teambuilding and other training programs for Bank of America on several occasions since 1995. His programs have always earned high marks, hence the repeated invitations.
In late May of this year Dr. Turek was hired to present at a meeting of your Global Business Management & Analysis Team within Global Wealth and Investment Management. The title of his presentation was called “Why Can’t You Be Normal Just Like Me?” The presentation helps participants adapt to diverse personalities to improve productivity and relationships—the essence of inclusion and diversity. The meeting was scheduled to take place at your Merrill Lynch facility in Pennington, New Jersey on June 17.
Three days before the event Dr. Turek was abruptly fired by an HR representative. Why? She explained that someone Googled his name and discovered that he had written Correct, Not Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone. Marriage was not the topic of his presentation, nor has it ever been in all his years of working with the bank. Moreover, as his book reveals (although no one at the Bank is likely to have read it), Dr. Turek treats all people with respect, whether he agrees with them politically or not. Nevertheless, in the name of “inclusion” and “diversity,” he was immediately excluded for his political and religious viewpoint. Mr. Moynihan, please answer this question: Do you have to have certain political or religious views to work at Bank of America?
I know you cannot really believe that free speech and religion rights vanish when one works with Bank of America. I know that you cannot believe that all political conservatives, Jews, Christians, Mormons and Muslims should be fired for their deeply held beliefs. But that is how the Bank of America policy of “inclusion” was applied to Dr. Turek. He was fired because of his personal political and religious beliefs—beliefs that are undoubtedly shared by thousands of your very large and diverse workforce. Or is it really diverse?
I assume the intent of the Bank’s value of “inclusion” is to ensure that people in that diverse workforce will work together cordially and professionally even when they inevitably disagree on certain political, moral or religious questions. Dr. Turek agrees with that value and was demonstrating it. He was being inclusive working with the Bank. But your Bank of “America” was being exclusive by refusing to work with him, even though his viewpoint was never discussed during work.
If you deny that your culture is dramatically tilted toward political correctness, I ask you to consider this: What action would have been taken by your bank had Dr. Turek written a book in favor of same-sex marriage but a conservative employee had complained? Got a bit of a double standard? Or is that somehow “different”?
My purpose in writing is two-fold. First, I ask you to move to correct your culture of exclusion, which is falsely advertised as a culture of inclusion and diversity. Dr. Turek has been excluded now from earning a living with your company. Moreover, I am concerned about the thousands of conservatives, secular and religious, who are employees of the Bank. In my view, such totalitarian political correctness is immoral and un-American, and I doubt it engenders a climate of diversity and collaboration you champion.
Second, this story will be told beyond the confines of Townhall.com. I want to give you the opportunity to respond before it is.
I thank you for your attention to this matter and look forward to your prompt reply. I can be reached at adams_mike@hotmail.com.
Respectfully,
Dr. Mike Adams
For those readers who recall Dr. Turek being fired as a vendor by Cisco for the same reason earlier this year, you may be wondering how these two cases are related. Since Bank of America fired Dr. Turek two days before I broke the Cisco story in my June 16 column titled “The Cisco Kid,” they could not have learned about Dr. Turek from me. It just seems that we have two bigoted California-based companies that independently seek to “out” those who believe what reasonable people have always believed—that the primary reason the government endorses marriage is not because two people of any sex love one another, but because only heterosexual unions can procreate and best nurture the next generation.
Unless Mr. Moynihan stops his company’s unreasonable and un-American politically correct witch-hunt, I’m closing my Bank of America account. Unreasonable, un-American bigots should not be handling my money. They simply cannot be trusted.
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