Friday, July 08, 2011

Cisco Vendor Fired for Writing Book Against Same-Sex Marriage


Christian leaders and organizations have come in support of former Cisco vendor Frank Turek who was fired from the company for his personal views on marriage as expressed in a book he wrote.

In a statement released earlier this week, the Rev. Mark D. Boykin, senior pastor of Church of All Nations, and Anthony Verdugo, founder and chairman of the Christian Family Coalition of Florida, condemned the actions taken by Cisco for firing Turek who wrote a book that said that keeping the current marriage laws would be best for society.

They said they were launching a nationwide campaign to tell Cisco Chairman John Chambers that firing a Christian based on their belief was discriminatory and intolerant.

Dr. Turek had been a consultant with Cisco Systems in California since 2008. In the past three years, Turek had designed and conducted a leadership and teambuilding program for a number of Cisco managers. His training programs have been reported to be “excellent,” according to Greeley Gazette.

Earlier this year, one of the managers in Turek’s session “googled” his name and found out that his trainer is also the author of a book entitled Correct, Not Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone. The manager, a homosexual, took offense at the book that critiqued same-sex marriages and phoned in a complaint to Marilyn Nagel, senior director of inclusion and diversity for Cisco. Turek was fired soon after.

“The guy who saw the book never read it – he just didn't like the fact that I was against same-sex marriage," Turek told OneNewsNow. “And he told the in-charge director there about it and they fired me within hours, without ever even looking at the book or even ever asking me a question. They just fired me without ever talking to me.”

To read more, click here.

3 comments:

Arch said...

Cisco is in the business of making money. Harmony is good for business, controversy is not. Turek fomented controversy when, while a Cisco trainer, he repeatedly and publicly argued that gay marriage is wrong and that gays and Muslim extremists are allied in a plot to destroy America. While speaking with Bryan Fischer, Turek stated that the two groups are collaborating because “they both hate Western Civilization” and “hate Judeo-Christian natural law values.” Understandably, most corporations prefer to disassociate with such controversial worldviews.

Robin G. Jordan said...

Is the allegation in the previous comment credible or is it an attempt to deflect criticism away from the corporation and back onto the consultant it fired?

Note that it is made by someone who is using a pseudonym. Click on the pseudonym and it leads to a link that when clicked on leads to the home page of Echo, a web site that sells “highly social real time apps.”

Note that the person making the allegation claims knowledge of the firing that those reading the article do not have yet he does not identify himself. We have no way of ascertaining whether he has more than a casual interest in the matter. As far as we know, he might be the person who fired the consultant or another employee of the corporation who is seeking to discredit the consultant’s account of what happened and to negatively influence readers’ perceptions of the consultant.

Note that the person making the allegation offers no corroborating evidence to support the allegation in the form of unedited audio and video recordings.

Maintenance of harmony in the corporation it must be noted has been used as justification for the firing of employees in a number of cases with similar circumstances—an employee said or wrote something that the corporation construed as anti-gay. The employee fired has in many such cases been a Christian.

It must also be noted that gays and Muslims are two favorite underdogs of liberals and an accusation of hostility on the part of the consultant to both gays and Muslims is likely to evoke a sympathetic response from liberals toward the corporation in its firing of the consultant. Homosexuality and Islam are also hot button issues.

It must be further noted that someone can make what may be remarks on various occasions and someone else may at a later time take them out of the context in which they were made, connect these remarks together in a way that the individual making them did not intend, and then put his own spin on them, thereby misrepresenting what was actually said and the real views of the person who said them. This misrepresentation of the person’s views is passed on to others who in turn pass it on an ever widening circle of people as if was an accurate representation of the views of the person in question.

We all are aware how quickly misinformation can spread on the Internet—go viral. We also are aware how more and more individuals are using the Internet to disseminate misinformation for a variety of purposes, including shaping public opinion.

I leave readers to draw their own conclusions about this explanation of the firing.

Karl said...

Robin, is it too much trouble for you to do a quick Google search to see if Arch's allegations have any credibility? If you took the time to do your research instead of making strange ad hominem attacks against Arch, you'd find many reputable sources verifying Arch's claims. For example, check out this site, dated a couple months ago. Next time, do us all a favor and contribute something valuable to the discussion instead of vomiting your irrelevant annotations about Arch and liberals all over the page.