Sheriff Lupe Valdez surveys her employees on homophobia

By Matt Pulle | Thursday, September 18th, 2008

At a recent training session on diversity, employees of the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office were handed a survey about their feelings on homosexuality. As most people know by now, their boss, Lupe Valdez, is lesbian, and her election in 2004, coming at a time when voters around the country were rushing to ban gay marriage, was seen by many as a bright moment at a dark time.

But still, the department survey strikes us as a bit odd. It asks respondents whether they agree with statements such as, “Bisexual (sic) are actually completely gay,” and, “If my favorite sports hero turned out to be gay, I would stop supporting him/her.”

Wouldn’t this type of questioning be grounds for a lawsuit at most workplaces?

What’s the point of the survey anyway? Can’t the sheriff–or a representative–simply tell everybody, “Listen, you all need to treat everyone fairly and respectfully, and if you don’t, it’s your ass.”

Anyhow, we’ll have more details on the survey to come. For now, you can read it here.

Contact Matt Pulle at matt@texaswatchdog.org. Get all the latest news from Texas Watchdog by putting our RSS feed in your MyYahoo! page, Google Reader or other newsreader software. And Twitter users can follow us at texaswatchdog.