The United States Department of Agriculture (informally the Agriculture Department or USDA) is the United States federal executive department responsible for developing and executing U.S. federal government policy on farming, agriculture, and food.

Well duh, Chris. How do you expect them to do their jobs properly unless they undergo gay-sensitivity indoctrination?

On a related note, I heard a debate from Saturday on the Unbelievable Radio show between an orthodox Christian and a homosexual secularist from the UK. The secularist kept saying as how people can rightfully be terminated for wearing visible religious symbols, since that’s “not part of their job”. He was appalled at taxpayer dollars going to support religious schools in the UK, since not everyone belonged to those denominations.

I wonder how he’d feel about forcing people to submit to this when it has nothing to do with their jobs, and doing it at taxpayer expense.

Wait, wait. The Department of AGRICULTURE???

Maybe the USDA should get its own house in order… What have they been doing to sensitize farmers, ranchers, and pet owners to the possible sexual orientation(s) of their animals?

Makes perfect sense to me. What other department is concerned about fruits and nuts?

Very soon, people who believe that the Bible means what it says will be considered morally deviant:

How nice.

I retired over 3 years ago from a career at USDA. The beginning of the end came during the Clinton Administration, when the promotion of homosexuality was essential codified with the establishment of June as “Gay Pride Month”.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration failed to reverse the damage, and the current administration is making sure that any objection to the homosexual agenda will be forcefully squashed.

USDA is well on the way down the sewer when it comes to morality, and Mr. Skaggs has been leading the way for years.

Photo says it all.

It is time that normal people – yes, I said normal, and I mean it – take control of our country once more.

It is time that government do what it is supposed to do. I cannot recall one phrase in the founding documents of this country nor in the Constitution that says anything about championing trends or pushing moral depravity on everyone.

guilty of “heterosexism.”

Guilty as charged.

Allen
“… insure *domestic* Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general *Welfare*, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our *Posterity*, …”

Cheers

Geosez,
“Wait, wait. The Department of AGRICULTURE???”
Fertile ground.

It says people who view marriage as being between only one man and one woman are guilty of “heterosexism.”

I thought in most states it remains illegal to marry two people of the same gender? Does this not put USDA people in a bind: believe in something that is illegal, or be “guilty” of heterosexism.

Seems like being guilty of obeying the law.

And what is with the word “one” appearing twice in this article. Are they jumping the gun en route to polyamorism ? Or worse? What have these folks in the USDA been doing with the sheep when we weren’t looking?

It is crap like this which causes so much waste, inefficiency and corruption within the Federal bureaucracy. Obviously these people have too much free time on their hands.

So this means that Christians can’t work for the USDA any more, if they are going to be subjected to offensive and coercive retraining and probably fired if they refuse. If this spreads, we will have an unChristian government. This may be the goal.

The correct approach is the Pentagon’s. Their training will emphasize professionalism and respect. Well, certainly I can behave with decency towards people whose private beliefs and behavior are not what I approve of. I have done so on many occasions. What does a person’s private life have to do with his performance as an accountant, or his performance with my local chorale? Our private lives and belief systems become an issue only when we attempt to push them on others and force them to agree with us. I’ve seen situations in which a supervisor has had to warn employees about spreading Mormon tracts or evangelical Christian tracts on work time. This homosex promotion should be on the same basis. Believe it if you want to, but leave your fellow employees alone about it.

A logical progression from the word “heteronormative” which is the sin of believing that heterosexuality is normal, homosexuality is not.

I once asked during a discussion about the Glad to be Gay week when the Delighted to be Diabetic or the Happy to be Hemophiliac weeks were. It was not well received.

[...] Hattip to Christopher Johnson at the Midwest Conservative Journal.  I would note at the outset that this is not one of The Onion parodies I like to play from time to time on this blog.  With the Obama administration however, the nation each day resembles more a Onion parody.  The United States Department of Agriculture, yes, you read that correctly, is pressing for mandatory gay rights training: [...]

Unfortunately, the Bush administration failed to reverse the damage

Fitting in with Chesterton’s definition of conservatism. Unfortunately, I don’t think any action by the Bush Administration would have made a difference. Bureaucrats (especially the leftist/liberal variety) have a tendency to resist any change they don’t like, either passively or actively.

What in hell happened to one’s “sex life” being a private matter?
And the work ethic should be, show up on time, do your job, dress appropriately, don’t discuss personal affairs on the job, behave as if you were raised with some manners..
I know, I know, how “old fashioned of me”.. but it is the TRUTH and we all know it.
Grannie G.

Grannie G and Katherine -
You are both correct. But the LGBT has to cram their beliefs and lifestyle down our throats (bad pun, I know!). Otherwise, they will never be satisfied.

These things are always, ultimately, about power. If they cannot coerce us, then they have not achieved their goals.

But the Federal government has no business in that area. This is another instance where the Federales have gone off the rails trying to enforce PC attitudes.

Fighting discrimination is one thing; actively promoting a degenerate and abnormal lifestyle is another. But these crusaders do not seem to be able to distinguish the difference. This is a case for Congressional oversight. But I am afraid that such oversight would be rife with political posturing. So we will continue to see such violations of the 4th Amendment.

the work ethic should be, show up on time, do your job

If government workers have time to gossip over their own or others’ sex lives, there are too many of them.

I’ve been going through a season of unemployment. Some folks have asked me why I haven’t pursued opportunities with the federal government. Now you know one reason.

[...] “patriarchal hegemony” did in feminist circles. Ooops! See Chris Johnson’s entry here: U.S. Department of Agriculture activists want to impose their intense brand of homosexual [...]

O fer the…

I only just made a comment a few hours ago that I thought that ideas like “oppresive heteronormative hegemony” would never really catch on. What did I know?

Also, anyone remember where they first heard “heterosexism”? I do. It was from the manual for implementing “Safe Zones”. These cropped up on college campuses across the nation virtually unopposed during the late 90′s. See if any college professors have safe-zone stickers on or around their office door.

As a Catholic, I’m painfully aware of the Test Acts, but I really think a de facto version of these are coming for every Christian and frankly, I don’t know what to tell you to do about it. The current onslaught against chastity appears unstoppable.

It’s the attempt to equate ‘heterosexism’ with racism that interests me here. I think that is the left’s next big strategic goal. The goal is to stigmatize ‘homophobia’ in the same way racism has been stigmatized.

Although I’m usually pessimistic about these matters, I don’t believe they’re going to succeed at this for two reasons: the Roman Catholic Church and natural law. THe RCs are just a little too big to be pushed around so much as to declare a fundamental element of their worldview to be analogous to racism and make that stick all throughout polite society. If it was just a few tens of millions of snakehandling fundamentalists, that the left wouldn’t worry about it.

And natural law tells us that ‘heterosexism’ is fundamentally healthy, while it doesn’t say the same thing about racism.

Well said, Toral. And note this: progressives long cheapened the shock of racism by pestering innocent people with pseudo-religions narratives of guilt and redemption and appealing to the intangible harm that racism does to society. Yet, if we suggest that homosexuality also causes harm to society, all of a sudden those same people become hard empiricists demanding scientific proof of harm to society.

Sorry, Toral, it’s not the “next step”, but has been a staple of the gay rights argument for a long time. First there was the genetic link, which turns out to questionable (perhaps bogus; I haven’t kept up), but gives cover to those who want to claim they had no choice, or that God made them that way, or something. Well, I’ll admit that same-sex attraction is not a choice, but they different from saying that those with same-sex attractions have no choices.

Anyway, the claim that sexual preference is innate begs the question of whether it is a normal variant of our humanity or a disorder. People with Down Syndrome are born that way, and while we love and cherish and protect them, only the hopelessly sentimental regard DS as inherently good and normal. The gay rights people shriek at ever higher decibel levels that their sexual preference is just like eye color or hair color, but they do so without hard evidence or facts.

It’s a sad fact that the media is in the tank for the gay rights people, but once in awhile they let slip the pique of some relatively liberal black activists at having their cause co-opted by the gays.

I am left to wonder does this intensive sensitivity training of personnel extend to the A.I. men?

And if so, I can see some potential conflicts in the exercise of their duties. Is it heterosexist to only inseminate heifers? What about gay bulls?

“I really think a de facto version of these are coming for every Christian and frankly, I don’t know what to tell you to do about it.”

Recognizing the problem is the first step.

There’s already a de facto ban on morally conservative businesses (including media businesses) and labor unions because anti-sexual orientation discrimination laws passed in the big cities starting back in the 1980s.

And these were enabled by anti-sex discrimination laws in the 1960s which de facto banned non-feminist institutions (and made lesbian women overrepresented in organization leadership, since they were more likely to be the careerist pioneers).

It’s quite freeing to realize one does not live in a marketplace of free ideas. Argument then becomes secondary to organization and action.

Next up: the Dept. of Agriculture will give each cattle farmer a breeding pair of gay male bulls.

What’s that you say? They can’t what? HOMOPHOBE!!!

I suppose soon enough the expression “Where men are men and the sheep are nervous” will no longer be a joke but the title of a training seminar.