Who Gets to Harass Who?

Please picture this scenario....

A group of professionals - public employees with jobs of which they are proud - being asked to join a celebration which makes them very uncomfortable. Not just as participants, but as one of the main attractions. Oh wait, they are being not asked, but rather ORDERED by their boss to parade down the street through a gauntlet of men making lewd and obscene comments and gestures; making a mockery of the career to which they have dedicated their lives. These underpaid, overworked employees do not the option sit out this indignity as their supervisor is a major supporter of this particular event.

Who are these recipients of innuendo and crass behavior? The secretaries at City Hall? Nope. Young nurses from the municipal hospital. Way off! How about the underrepresented female police officers being paraded as pieces of meat? Closer but not quite.

These victims were, in fact, the members of the San Diego Fire Department and they were all MEN.

Last month John Ghiotto, Jason Hewitt, Chad Allison and Alex Kane were ordered by their openly lesbian Chief Tracy Jarman to march in the cities gay pride parade as representatives of the SDFD where they were subjected to “obscene gestures, uttered inappropriate remarks and displayed lewd behavior that made them uncomfortable.”

I must emphasize that Chief Jarman was extremely receptive the men’s complaints of harassment, but this was after the “damage was done.” There is no way to be an active participant in most cities’ gay pride parades and not realize that most of the language, imagery and behavior demands at least an R, if not NC-17 rating. She may not have intended for her employees to be the subject of harassment, but she is could not be shocked by the behavior of her fellow activists. There is some question as to whether this is the first time that complaints have been filed with the SDFD for required participation in this parade.

The men are bringing a law suit against the department, but I must applaud them as the suit appears to ask for exactly $0 in punitive damages and only insists that participation in events such as this be explicitly voluntary.

I hate to always resort to the “double standard” argument, but there is no way to argue that a straight, male fire chief who required female firefighters to participate in an event with similar results would be fired if not sued or jailed.

I would like the record to show that I completed an entire post about gay pride and firemen without making a single Village People comment. You can now congratulate me in your comments.