The Daily Caller

The Daily Caller
Politics
 WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 05: Hilda L. Solis speaks during the National Museum of the American Latino final report press conference at the U.S. Capital Mansfield Room on May 5, 2011 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kris Connor/Getty Images)  

Obama’s Labor chief refuses to condemn vandalism of gay rights posters

6:00 PM 06/21/2011
Matthew Boyle
Investigative Reporter

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis remains silent after The Daily Caller reported that her bureaucrats again vandalized posters promoting gay rights.

It isn’t the first time bureaucrats at her Department of Labor (DOL) have defaced materials like this – they did it back in 2009 and The New York Times reported that Solis was furious.

According to a staffer who’s worked at DOL for more than 20 years, Solis is the first and only Labor Secretary to launch campaigns like this, and they are wildly backfiring against her. The staffer, who spoke with TheDC on condition of anonymity, said he and most of his coworkers “roll their eyes” at Solis’s “civility” campaigns, but there’s always something that she’s trying to push.

“We’re always asking ourselves what’s next?” the staffer said. “We didn’t start getting posters in the elevators until the beginning of the current administration.”

But, when something goes wrong, the staffer said Labor employees “have no idea” what to expect next. It’s never clear if she’ll actually address the negativity or if she’ll just willfully ignore it, and seeing as Labor Department spokespeople haven’t responded to TheDC’s requests for comment, it’s unclear if Solis plans to address these questions this time around.

On the gay advocacy front, conservative and liberal groups are upset with Solis’s apparent unwillingness to address the negativity. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), which gave Solis an award for being “a strong and longtime advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights” just a few weeks ago,” thinks this kind of behavior from her employees is unacceptable, and is now calling on her to condemn it. (Labor employees deface posters equating gay rights with civil rights)

“Any vandalism of pride posters in the Department of Labor should receive a strong condemnation from leadership,” Laurie Young, NGLTF’s director of Public Policy and Government Affairs, said in an email to TheDC. “Secretary Solis has repeatedly shown herself to be a strong voice for the LGBT community and we would ask her to continue being that voice by investigating and responding appropriately, as she did in 2009.”

On the conservative side, gay Republican group GOProud’s executive director Jimmy LaSalvia told TheDC that the Obama administration’s DOL staffers should behave better than this while at work. “It seems to me that Obama Administration’s Labor Department employees need to learn how to behave at work,” LaSalvia said in an email. “Vandalizing the workplace, regardless of the reason, is wrong. They don’t appear to be as concerned about losing their jobs as the rest of America is.”

At this point, it’s unclear whether or not Solis actually plans to address this resurgence of gay rights material vandalism, or if she’ll let it continue happening under her watch.

Tags: Department of Labor, Gay rights, Hilda Solis, LGBT
  • cramos

    Guess my comments of yesterday were deleted……so here they go again…..Civil Rights laws have been utilized by speacial interest groups, like the women’s movement to further their causes in the workplace to the benefit of mostly white women.

    I am both a person of color and openly Gay……..working in one of America’s most prestigious financial institution in the 80s and 90s…..people of color were moved around only as part of “special” minority directed programs……I found myself forced to participate in these special programs for promotions….These special programs led to open and continued discrimination because we were percieved not to be able to compete one on one. Also, we were allowed only to compete with other minority men and women for jobs within these special programs to “balance out” our numbers.

    On the other hand white women competed directly with white men for jobs….

    And now we have the Civil Rights laws highjacked to support Gay rights.

    I do not condone discrimination……

    Civil Rights laws were put into place to assist in the remidiation of 200 years of slavery…..the folks who should have benefitted from these laws have not…..everyone gets in line infront of them.

    The people of this country seem to be working out their gay issues….

    DO Not dilute the reason and meaning of the Black struggle in America.

    • qizarek

      Different article, cramos. Not this one.

      I agree on many points you posted – I’ve yet to see a single gay person ask for equality programs, but rather, non-discrimination. Are companies not hiring gays or putting them in special programs? No for the most part and certainly no for special programs.

      Look at the racial issues that affected both blacks and whites: interracial marriage. It discriminated freely to both blacks and whites, just as same-sex marriage does towards both gay women and gay men. Loving vs. Virginia was a victory for all races, not just blacks and not just whites. It allowed two people viewed as sexual deviants to marry.

  • verityquest

    Here’s an idea….. Use the space only for work-related announcements like reminders about holiday closings, or the crapper on the 2nd floor isn’t working, or whoever lost their keys on the 3rd floor, etc. That way nobody will feel slighted that their AGENDA is being overlooked OR PROMOTED, and leave that BS at home and out of the work equation.

    GEEZ.

    VOTE – 2012

  • Pingback: The Morning Links (6/22) | From the Desk of Lady Liberty

  • Iowa48

    The NGLTF, Secretary Solis, the NYTimes and the DC have all jumped to the wrong conclusion on this issue. It obviously had nothing at all to do with the pros or cons of homosexuality at all, nor did it constitute acts of vandalism to the posters. The posters appeared to celebrate Bayard Rustin, a member of the Communist Party USA during the ’30s. At the time, the CPUSA was taking orders directly from Stalin’s Soviet Union. Therefore Rustin was an agent for a foreign power which advocated the violent overthrow of the USA as well as other capitalist countries throughout the world. Therefore whatever happened to the posters in the elevators was a political expression which every loyal
    American can and should support i.e. a protest against a Communist traitor and Communist propaganda witnin a Federal facility. I am sure Secretary Solis was completely unaware of Rustin’s history and definitely would not have promoted a Commie traitor if she had been aware of it. Probably the NGLTF was also unaware of this Commie’s background, however I would not doubt that the NY Times was probably fully aware of it. Anyway, there is no problem with the defacing of Communist propaganda, so it is a non-issue.

  • curmudgeon

    Another Obama appointee that doesn’t understand that it is not right to insult whole classes of people.

    Needless to say Holder won’t take on the obvious attempt at workplace intimidation.

    She needs to go.

  • Huskerbob

    Hilda Solis, another Obama clone completely out of her element. Speaking of her element I wonder what it could be…………. Posters in elevators. That’s what we pay for? Great! We are all saved.

  • Sandy E

    The first red flag in the article should be referring to GOProud and Jimmy LaSalvia as being on the conservative side. They are anything but. They are a single issue group, claiming to be conservatives, which is a knock to all conservatives. They have no other goal then forcing the American population to accept their sick sexual proclivities. They are only accepted by the libertarians, and not by any rational conservative. LaSalvia discredited himself so thoroughly at CPAC this year, they have no voice.

    • qizarek

      I had no idea you were so fluent on their sexual activities. Please explain.

    • didistutter

      Uh oh- it’s Sandy from the sex police. Lock your bedroom doors.

      Get a life and stop your homosexual obsession.

    • captaingrumpy

      Well written Sandy.Notice that they resort to calling names.I agree with you that Gays should be sent to mental institutions and treated.It’s a sickness that spreads and with it goes drug use and aids.

  • thephranc

    The GLT people need to unionize before she will care.