Written: 9/23/2012
Sometimes I’m a bit self-involved. I don’t mean to be, but it happens. And I certainly try not to be, but like I said, it happens.
So I feel bad that I missed this story from before. But a bisexual woman was fired by the Salvation Army, only because of her sexual orientation. The story is heart-breaking on so many levels:
She cried the entire time we went through the paperwork, continuously apologizing to me and saying that firing me was “the worst thing [she’s] ever had to do.” Captain Bill said that he was only allowed to say what the Salvation Army told him to and that since he was forbidden from revealing his own personal opinion, he would not say another word.
And for the rest of the time, he didn’t. He just sat there with tears in his eyes.
I said that I greatly respected them both and that I had enjoyed working for them. I told them how much I appreciated the fact that they saw me as the person I am, and how grateful I was for their understanding that my sexual orientation in no way changed, diminished, or devalued, or impacted the great work I did for them in any way. They promised that they would recommend me highly to future employers and would help me and my family however they could.
That was a theme that I felt time and time again, that my sexual orientation had no way changed any of the great work that I did.
But it did, at least for me. I think that I pushed myself further, to go out of my way to prove that being an LGBT employee didn’t change the fact that I did amazing work. So in the end, I was easily one of the best employees on the council’s support staff, because I had something to prove, even if it was something that was never revealed.
That may not have made sense. But I’ll try to explain it more going forward.
All my best,
The King of Spades
