What do you get when you combine homosexuality and Catholicism? A good halftime show.
So the LGBTQ community and its supporters at John Carroll University want the administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Policy to include sexual orientation. This addition would ensure that the University doesn’t base its employment practices – including hiring, firing, promotion and treatment – on real or perceived sexual identity.
But the Board of Directors isn’t going to let that happen. And so the poor Rev. Robert Niehoff, S.J., is caught between a rock and a hard place.
But don’t worry Bobby, I got your back.
Over the weekend, I did some brainstorming, and I came up with a couple ideas that might be able to get the Board on board with some type of compromise.
My first idea is pretty simple. I call it “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Under this policy, the administration simply wouldn’t ask the sexuality of any of its faculty members. It could then assume that everyone on staff is straight, and therefore protected by the EEOP clause. Sure, it would be basically asking members of the LGBTQ community to live a lie and deny their true feelings, but it would be for their own good.
There’s only one problem with this idea: it already is John Carroll’s policy. And since it obviously isn’t working, I guess you can strike it off the “good idea” list. But don’t worry, I have more where that came from.
My next idea is a little more concrete. I call it the “three-fifths compromise.” What this policy would do is extend the EEOP protection to cover three-fifths of any member of the faculty that is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning.
Now I haven’t exactly figured out which three-fifths of a person the policy would actually cover – I was thinking maybe both legs, an arm of his/her choice, the torso and most of the face – but the specifics can always be worked out later.
Unfortunately, however, this policy has a problem too. It’s not exactly fair – the Board only gets two-fifths of what it wants. A good policy would benefit both the Board and the LGBTQ community equally, which brings me to my final proposal. I call this one “separate but equal.”
With this policy, all we would have to do is build a separate John Carroll for LGBTQ’s – JCULGBTQ, if you will – where they could be protected as equally as they would be at the real JCU if they were straight.
Sure, this policy might be a little pricey, but it would be worth every penny. And I’m sure we could find a gracious donor or two who’d be willing to drop a couple million for this noble endeavor.
Of course, if we wanted to save a couple bucks, we could just let them have Bohannon. No one uses it anyway.
So there you have it. A policy that takes the position of both sides involved and meets them halfway. The perfect compromise.
Boom, problem solved.
