Apparently, employee unions don’t always appreciate it when an employee receives accomodation of her religious beliefs:
Future requests will follow the same civil-rights law applied in this case, which says employers must accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs unless it brings "undue business hardship," he said.
But Michelle Sommers, Local 1005 president, isn’t so sure.
"Our union tries to represent all diversity — whether it be religion, cultural, race, sexual orientation, any of that," she said. "…the union does not agree with the decision to allow drivers to pick which bus they drive based on an advertisement."
The issue: MetroTransit has allowed an employee, who complained on religious grounds, to drive only buses that do not carry a particular advertisement on the side. Good for them.
MetroTransit buses carry ads on the side. About 25 of the buses — one out of six — are displaying an ad for a local newspaper aimed at the gay community. That in and of itself isn’t a problem, if you ask me; I’m surrounded by ads for things I don’t like or aren’t interested in, it’s just a fact of life. The image on the ad is indeed innocuous; it’s just a photograph of a young man, smiling. I can’t complain about that. It doesn’t touch Cosmo in terms of provocation.
But the text of the ad has me scratching my head. What exactly does it mean? What are they trying to say to their target audience? Because the text is, "Unleash Your Inner Gay."
I can understand not wanting to drive around with that text. I’m tired of looking at it, myself. It seems like one out of every six buses I pass is telling me to Unleash My Inner Gay.
Who is the target for this ad? What image do the advertisers hope to put into the minds of the target audience? Because if the target is the general public, I don’t think the juxtaposition of "leash" and "gay" is doing them any PR favors (I can already imagine the kind of search engine hits I am going to get after I post this).
If the target is people who already self-identify as gay, which seems more likely, I wonder what that message is supposed to mean. Is there, for instance, a difference between the "Outer Gay" that the advertiser supposes they are showing to the world, and the "Inner Gay" that they keep in the closet, er, I mean, on a leash? And exactly how is picking up a copy of Lavender going to unleash it?
And why did this GLBT magazine, in these highly visible ads, choose to ignore the LBT people? Are they already off the leash? Perhaps they’ve been trained to heel.
Does the advertiser think the Twin Cities needs something equivalent to a dog park? Only for Inner Gays?
Anyway, I think I will be slightly less irritated by the ads now that I know MetroTransit at least respects their employees’ objections to them. Even if the union doesn’t.
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