Below is an Op-Ed I was asked to write by the Richmond Times Dispatch. To see an online version Click Here.
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Virginia Federal Reserve Takes Side In Culture Wars
The Richmond Federal Reserve Bank has decided to take sides in the culture wars.
Its decision to fly the homosexual, bisexual and transgender rainbow flag under the American flag on Fed property is imprudent and conflicts with the Fed’s own code of conduct.
Its policy states: “Federal Reserve Banks have a unique need to protect their independence from the political process … an employee may not engage in political activity while on duty or on Bank premises, and must be extremely cautious to avoid any suggestion of Bank sponsorship or support of such activities.”
The U.S. Supreme Court in Texas v. Johnson (1989), recognized that flags can be used to make political statements. The Fed flying the homosexual, etc., flag is a political statement.
Federal Reserve banks are not corner convenience stores that we can choose to not patronize. They are not mere private entities. The Fed was chartered by an act of Congress in 1913. It is subject to portions of the federal Freedom of Information Act.
The Fed notes that: “The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is a federal government agency. The Board is composed of seven members, who are appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.”
The president and U.S. Senate do not appoint and approve the CEOs of McDonald’s or Wal-Mart because they are privately owned and controlled.
The Richmond Fed website states: “As the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve sets monetary policy, supervises and regulates member financial institutions and provides an array of financial services.”
The Federal Reserve’s secretive, behind-closed-door actions can make or break national economies.
There is no logical link between banking and sexuality. Yet, the rainbow flag was placed on the Richmond Federal Reserve flagpole by unnamed operatives of a public agency with enormous coercive powers granted by Congress.
When I asked a Fed official who authorized the flag, I was told the Fed was flying the rainbow flag to show “inclusion and acceptance.”
I then asked, “Does the Richmond Federal Reserve ask prospective employees about their sexual inclinations? Or has this been done in the past?” I wanted to know if this flag was some kind of a “remedy.”
I was told, “Thank you for the additional questions. Those will be reviewed with your letter.”
Flags are very powerful emotional symbols used as rallying points in warfare, as standards in armies, as proclamations signifying dominion, legality, nationhood or ownership. Americans pledge allegiance to our American Flag.
The Fed’s action is unnecessarily provocative and is not merely the placing of a piece of cloth on a metal pole to show workplace “inclusiveness.” Homosexual persons were already hired and are working there now.
This act is loaded with coercive implications for individuals and businesses. Will member banks be required to fly “rainbow” flags or adopt employment or business loan policies that force “inclusion and acceptance?”
As partisans in the values war, the Federal Reserve cannot be a fair umpire of the economy because it refuses to recognize moral cause of some economic problems — and calls some “problems” panaceas.
If the Fed cannot be trusted in the things we see, how can we trust them behind closed doors?
Institutions are lengthened shadows of their founders. A Federal Reserve System founder, Virginia Rep. Carter Glass, was the force behind the poll tax in the 1902 Virginia Constitution to “protect” Virginia’s self-appointed elites.
Official notes record Glass as saying the poll tax “will emancipate the mind and make free the action of the dominant race … restoring to us the natural right … of independent thought. … This plan of popular suffrage will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State. … And next to this achievement will be the inability of unworthy men of our own race … to cheat their way into prominence.”
At a time of economic uncertainty and growing mistrust of the Fed, our skepticism is certified by the Fed’s in-your-face action.
George Washington, in his first inaugural address noted “the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.” No one is perfect. Calling vice a virtue does not alter the nature of things, but it does call into question the judgment of those making such declarations.
Upholding “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” is love of our neighbor.
Again, I urge Richmond’s Federal Reserve Bank president, Mr. Jeffrey Lacker: Take down that flag.
