Qantas has joined other big brands, such as Google, Airbnb, ANZ and eBay in launching the "Until We All Belong" campaign for same-sex marriage.
The campaign calls on staff members and the public to show their support by wearing a specially-designed black ring.
Qantas chairman Leigh Clifford defends same-sex marriage campaign
If you don't wear the ring? What message is implied in the absence of the ring? This is precisely the point of my post
#394 on the [now closed] Gay Colors thread.
Both wearing or
NOT wearing the ring sends a message, you are forced into a binary decision, you must make a stand one way or another AND SIGNAL YOUR CHOICE. You are either for it or against it in a highly public manner. Those that are fiercely one way or the other will not be swayed by this tactic. However, the great middle will be forced to make a choice, and then demonstrate that choice to everyone else in a highly public and symbolic manner.
The obvious answer is that anyone that believes their future job security or promotion is linked to their political views will silently opt in regardless of their beliefs about same sex marriage
OUT OF FEAR.
Employees are in no doubt what so ever about their master's position on this matter, and thus those who are in the middle will be forced to make a decision based on what they believe is politically best for them in the organisation. This is workplace social engineering through politicisation and virtue signalling gone mad. I wonder if it crosses over the line of discrimination? The campaign is very cleverly orchestrated outside any one enterprise to enable plausible deniability. However, any rational thinking individual will realise what they need to signal to keep their master happy, and hence their career.
This is completely unacceptable in a workplace. I was reminded of an essay by a famed psychologist
Philip Zimbardo (
Stanford Prison Experiment),
On Resisting Social Influence, abstract:
The thesis of this essay is that “mind control” exists not in exotic gimmicks, but rather in the most mundane aspects of human
experience. If this is true, it implies that people can learn to resist untoward influences,
which are defined here as influences in which intentions are hidden and the subtle constraints of individual behavior are profound. When information is
systematically hidden, withheld, or distorted, people may end up making biased decisions, even though they believe that they
are freely “choosing” to act. These contexts may thus involve “mind control.” Although resisting cleverly crafted social
influences in not easy, it is argued here that it is possible to reduce susceptibility to unwanted interpersonal controls by
increasing vigilance and by utilizing certain basic strategies of analysis. In this paper, resistance strategies are presented
which are broadly applicable to a wide array of mind-manipulation contexts. Relevant social psychological research, manuals
for police interrogators, and interviews with one-time cult members form the basis for the present arguments, which blend
pragmatic advice with a conceptual analysis of the basic issues on which vulnerability to persuasion rests.