I’m telling you though - that’s not how it plays out. This is something I’ve lived through - I’ve been asked not to talk about relationships at work because they aren’t heteronormative.
It’s not a hair-splitting thing, I’m explicitly asserting that there are people who will twist it this way; at least they have in the past and I don’t see how it’ll be different now.
Even if this policy were intended to be used this way, or winds up being used this way, (which I don't support), it still seems better than the alternative. If you reference your husband and somebody says "Aaah, political, can't say that" - do you want to be sharing personal details with this person? Would you prefer they engaged you in a debate about gay marriage or told you their anti-gay feelings? Prefer they sit in silence stewing with hatred of you?
If you have anti-gay coworkers who buzz you for anodyne references like this you could just not talk to them or buzz them for their references to wives, girlfriends, whatever. You could escalate to management or HR if you felt they were treating you unfairly.
If the corporate policy permits politics at worse, that would seem to make situation worse, not better.
> Would you prefer they engaged you in a debate about gay marriage or told you their anti-gay feelings? Prefer they sit in silence stewing with hatred of you?
I would prefer that corporate policy not give them this new, shiny tool to harass me.
The problem, in this instance, isn’t the banning of political speech per se - rather it is that the ban can be cruelly weaponized against regular speech you just don’t want to hear because it offends your own “political views.”
That’s going to remain true as long as anti-gay views are legitimately held by a mainstream political party here, which is very much still the case today.
It’s not a hair-splitting thing, I’m explicitly asserting that there are people who will twist it this way; at least they have in the past and I don’t see how it’ll be different now.