LGBT News The Slippery Slope of opinion

While I am not very sympathetic to the Christian community, I will say that many gay activists are being a little thoughtless in how often they try to get religious people fired for their personal views that don't have anything to do with the job (the Atlanta Fire Chief may have negative views on gay people, but it didn't creep into his job on saving lives). When gay people get guys like this fired, it only makes the world hate us more.

 

Freedom of speech means exactly what it says it means. No one should be fired for expressing such beliefs, but if such beliefs lead to anti-gay and discriminatory actions, then firing is appropriate.

So the question is not so cut-and-dry; when a person is in a position of power, it behooves that person to respect the rights (civil or otherwise) of the people he supervises. By making such statements as:

...the question is begged, what does he intend to do with this belief? If he fires someone who is gay and whose performance was found wanting (having nothing to do with his or her homosexuality), the question will surface: was he or she fired for being gay or for poor performance? By the way, poor performance reviews do not constitute adequate proof of misbehaviour or incompetence in a court of law. Statements like the one he espouses will expose the Fire Department to civil lawsuits, and a bad (but gay) employee could exploit that.

For a person in a position of power, freedom of speech all the way, definitely, but let's be clear, his actions as head of the organization will be scrutinized in light of his opinions, and these are definitely admissible in court.

 

Freedom of Speech only means that you can't get arrested or executed by the state for your opinions. When it comes to more private entities, they can do exactly as they like so long as it follows the constitution. What this means is that someone can get fired for saying homophobic, sexist or racist things, but their boss can't turn them into the police for it, nor can they get the FBI at their door.

 

I have extreme contempt for this concern. We have fired 911 telecommunicators over their racist Facebook posts. I defend this as something we absolutely need to do and keep doing without mercy.

We need to remember that just as people have a right to say what they want, OTHERS have a right to associate as they want and spend their money as they want. Every time we raise a person's liberty interest to be employed despite what they say, we are in equal measure constraining another person's right to refuse to associate. That's not fair.

Also, it's completely incompatible to protect beliefs and groups of people at the same time, when those views are specifically in conflict with protecting classes of people. I cannot, as an employer, protect racial minorities AND racists in my workplace.

His views do raise questions of fitness for the position because his malicious bias makes clear that he can't be trusted not to have a conflict of interest with respect to personnel decisions.

Adrienne

 

That depends on the fire chief and what he thinks should happen. If he says the gay person goes because of what he said, then fine. The only time the issue should really rise (minus the journalism) is if the gay person was turned into the police because of it.

I personally don't think that's what should happen, but private entities are private entities, and they have their rules. So long as they don't conflict with state or federal laws, they're fine. In this case, the "freedom of religion" card can be played. The problem is that LGBT people are being fired for being gay, and the "freedom of religion" card is played, when the circumstance is inappropriate to do so.

 

Trivially answered. Yes, but only if the remarks made against a religious person were on the basis of their being religious. people should be protected on the basis of their class, not their beliefs. That's consistent with my argument. If said gay employee were making remarks about a Christian on the basis of his beliefs as a Christian would NOT be discriminatory if the beliefs held by the Christian made distinctions between classes of people.

 

I think my understanding is complete, although I am curious as to how you are defining class in this instance.

 

Do you have any significant examples of workplace discrimination in the United States against Christians, specifically because they are Christian?

And what exactly are you considering discrimination in this regard?

 

Good question. If we look at employment non-discrimination law in the United States, it tends to protect people on the basis of things I call "belief-based" protections or "class-based" protections. It's common for the law to protect people from discrimination in the workplace regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation (when we're fortunate), gender identity (when we're really fortunate), national origin, ability status, religion, and political affiliation.

Religion and political affiliation are what I would argue to be "belief-based" categories. All the others I call "class-based" categories.

It can be argued that Islam and Judaism blur the lines. I would argue, to allay any concerns, that Jews and Muslims deserve the protection of non-discrimination law, but they get it from protections that obtain for racial and ethnic groups.

I argue that a distinction needs to be made between belief- and class-based protections, because the need to protect them arises for different reasons. We protect people on the basis of class because their belonging to any given class doesn't entail any lack of fitness for the position. A Jew or a native American are just as fit as anybody else, provided they have the experience and qualifications. The way we protect people for their beliefs, though, is different. We protect people's beliefs because it is thought that minority views ought not to be punished in the workplace when their views do not conflict with the work they need to do, and their views do not cause disruptions in the workplace, and their views do not raise the possibility of a conflict of interest with clients, the public, or coworkers; whatever the case may be.

The reason for this distinction becomes much clearer when we consider, what happens if you have a racially (and gender, etc) stratified workforce (that represents the actual population distribution), and you have a Klansman who is, say, a middle manager? Well, it's pretty clear that in this case, although most of the time it could be said that his being a Klansman is "off the clock," "not on company time," and so on, the very fact that this manager is a Klansman means he has a conflict of interest in any personnel dispute or disciplinary matter directly or even indirectly involving any of the following types of employees on his payroll: African Americans, Jews, Muslims, women, gays, lesbians, bisexual, and transgender people. This is an instance where his views by themselves raise serious questions about his fitness for the position.

They raise such questions because we rightly recognize that classes of people are more worth protecting than a few people's opinions. We couldn't protect women if we allowed sexist views in the workplace. But I would also argue that sexist managers and even sexist "rank and file" employees who are strong personalities or happen to enjoy the preferential treatment of confidence of management also pose a problem for the protection of women in the workplace.

As I previously mentioned, there was already an instance of a 911 dispatcher mouthing off racist shit on Facebook. Her ass got fired, and rightfully so. She's in a public safety position, and two critically important facts hang in the balance: some of the public is black, and they have emergencies; and her workplace is one in which black people need to feel safe.

And again, as I previously pointed out, a lot of Americans like to take First Amendment extremism to such lengths that they suffocate a whole lot of other freedoms in the process, including economic ones. What liberty interest is it exactly that should staple my face to my employer's payroll teat?

 

Absolutely brilliant Pret Allez! Thank you for that incredible response. I have nothing to add at this point. Astonishing....

 

He was being hypothetical. He doesn't need to provide an example.

---------- Post added 31st Jan 2015 at 11:04 AM ----------

As for this thread people shouldn't lose their job for what they say unless they do something dumb like yell "Fire!" when there is no fire.

If someone likes to spew around the n-word and insults any black person that walks into the room I'd fire him just because he's not getting along with the other employees and therefore hurting the quality of work, not because he's being racist. Same if there was a black guy doing this for white people, or a straight person throwing around gay slurs and being a dick to gay people because they are gay, or a gay person being a dick to straight people because they're straight.

If someone is being harmful with their opinions then they should be fired, but just because you think their opinions themselves are harmful doesn't mean they're being harmful with their opinions.

 

I mean you have entire religions trying to kill Christians, so yeahh.
People like to draw things black and white, us vs them, he said she said, and in their contempt they become blind to the truth at hand.

 

Trailrider addressed some important questions to me. I will do the best I can to apply the principle of charity found in philosphy and rhetoric to answer. Therefore, I hope he will correct me if I have misinterpreted his questions and their implied arguments. I would argue at the outset that what I'm outlining is topical, because this thread and the particular news item invites a discussion about the propriety of currently existing non-discrimination law.

I take his first question to be "why did you enumerate exactly two religious groups that deserve protection and call those class-based distinctions rather than belief-based distinctions?" The answer to that question is simple. When I make a distinction based on belief and class, that now raises the sticky issue for me that I have to come up with a good account that explains why religious groups deserve any protection at all under non-discrimination law. Otherwise, I'm forced to say "come to think of it, all the major religious groups can go suck it, and while we're at it, Republicans can fire Democrats, and Democrats can fire Republicans." Regardless of whether that account has a forceful argument in its favor, it's still likely to be unpersuasive to a largely religious and largely Christian public, and one deeply polarized between two spectacularly inhumane viewpoints. Instead, my argument for balancing belief-based and class-based protections against discrimination has to provide a way of saying "we want to protect people whose beliefs are in harmony with other people's civil rights, but we don't want to allow any religious group any belief." So, to restate myself, I need a way to say that the content of the belief that, say, virgin births and resurrections from death actually occur, is harmless to the civil rights of others, and that those who believe such things must be protected from being fired, while not biting the other bullet, which is, "if a person claims to believe something as a religious person, then we need to protect him from being fired regardless of the belief, simply because that person is religious, and religious groups are protected by non-discrimination law."

My central worry here is that if beliefs are universally protected, classes cannot be protected. This argument doesn't follow from any review of the Constitution, federal statute, or case law. It's a simple consequence of logic. We've protected in my view, too many things at once, so now we have to deal with the conflicts that arise from such ill-considered policy. While I don't think no beliefs should be protected, I do think some beliefs absolutely can't be protected if we at the same time claim that minority groups are also to be protected.

When I enumerated Judaism and Islam, my point was not to specifically exclude Christianity as worth protecting, but to point out how my view doesn't injure them, which is an important part of persuasiveness. Christianity, not Judaism or Islam, represents the majority set of religious views in the United States.

His second question is "what part of the Constitution creates economic freedoms?" There are two important economic rights implicated by any discussion of unjust termination. The first is whether a person can be forced to associate with someone else. The second is whether a person can be forced to transfer property to another. For when someone says "I have been unjustly fired," one is really making two claims, which is "under certain circumstances, including my good job performance, my boss must associate with me, and further, my boss must pay me." This person is then seeking constraints against the right of free association, found in the First Amendment, under the component "to peaceably assemble" (and no it's not to petition the government for a redress of greivances. That's entirely separate from assembly.) Assembly ceases to be peaceable if I am forced into it. The other economic right implicated is the right not to be deprived of property without due process of the law found in the Fourth Amendment. A forced transfer of wealth by way of continued employment of an individual management does not want constitutes a deprivation of property, and thereby raises a due process question. That question is simply this: is a non-discrimination law prohibiting firing an employee on the basis of a belief sufficient due process? I would argue no, it is not sufficient due process, because there is a conflict of law itself. A manager cannot know if she is in compliance with the law, and therefore cannot know when she has violated it. She therefore has no way of knowing, if at any time, keeping an avowed sexist discriminator on staff creates a tort liability down the line, or if her attempt to mitigate the civil risk by firing that person creates a civil rights violation.

His third question is "what makes me believe the First Amendment protects a class more strongly than beliefs?" I believe I addressed that adequately ealier when I pointed out the simple conflict of law raised by trying to protect both beliefs and classes equally.

Finally, I would need a more specific question about my interpretation of law and the ethical foundation behind it that raises an issue different from the above in order to respond to any issues needing clarification. I hope that my position is fully explained at this point. I would have great difficulty explaining it in a substantially different way that avoids repetition.

As an addendum, I would also ask that we avoid talk of "raping" the First Amendment. For one, when we use that word in such a flippant way, we devalue the brutality of that experience for those who have endured it.

 

Also, when we talk about discrimination against Christians, what do we consider that to be?

Is it discrimination against Christians for their being so, or is it hostility in response to certain beliefs some express?

Even if we wish to include Christians as a protected class, that doesn't mean that what they express ought to be immune from censure if it causes harm to others. Responding to the original post in this thread, it's quite clear that his Christianity was not the reason for his dismissal; it was the degradation of people who worked with him and whom he was charged to protect along with everyone else. This Christian's life was not ruined because of his Christianity; his writings made clear that he intended to discriminate in the workplace. “Vile, vulgar and inappropriate at work", is how he described homosexuality. In saying that “my faith influenced my leadership style", we have clear confirmation that he did intend to discriminate, as his argument against homosexuality clinches from his religious beliefs.

If he wishes to hold discrimination as an integral part of his religion, then he may hold those beliefs. However, he cannot sabotage others' careers and risk causing discrimination in the provision of an emergency service because of those beliefs. He is protected in his right to have those beliefs, but not in expressing them at the cost of and with the explicit purpose of harming others in a position of power is completely unacceptable. His rights are incompatible with others'. His right to be Christian is not being questioned, merely his decision to bring that intolerant branch of Christianity into his work.

 

"Reed has contended he didn’t fire Cochran because of his expressed religious viewpoints but for not obeying rules, including not getting clearance to write the book and failing to remain quiet while the city investigated him."

Also, the investigation, which Cochran wants us to believe as far as finding no incidence of anti-gay discrimination on his part, also found that he did distribute the book unsolicited to his employees, and he did NOT get permission from the mayor or the ethics office before writing the book, and identifying himself as AFD Chief in it.

 

The inherent problem that's always there when it comes to sexual orientation vs. religion that somehow never really seems to be brought up is this:

If I am gay, straight, bi, pan, transgender, otherkin, whatever, that doesn't harm you in any way at all. This also applies to race.

If I subscribe to a religion, specifically a Semitic religion, the goal of that religion is to get more people to subscribe to that religion, and everything it stands for. Last I checked, the wishes and actions of those religions in the name of those religions have harmed too many to count. Another problem arises in these religions, as some people say there are some certain things you have to subscribe to, and other people in that same religion say there are other certain things you have to subscribe to (basically think badass Jesus vs. Hippie Jesus, if you wish. Or Nice God vs. Armageddon God).

Basically, one is a trait of a person, and the other is an idea. Ideas don't need protection, but people do. Why don't ideas need protection? Simply put, ideas really are bulletproof. An idea can die out for a long time, and still be revived. This is simply not true with humans, and I don't need to explain why.

The last part of this is the obvious: That you can change your religion, and that sexual orientation is not a choice. I hear stories of people converting to and from Christianity all the time, but even on the rare occasion when a story is put out that someone's sexual orientation is changed, the question still arises upon whether it was ever actually changeable in the first place.

 

There is nothing that I can really add to this thread that I have not already said in the other thread, or has not already been said by others in this thread. However, I will point out that your argument is horribly fallacious.

You are asserting that:
(1) That some gay people want to discriminate against Christians. (Discrimination here is being defined as firing individuals who hold bigoted and hostile views against LGBT+ people.)

(2) That in doing so, Christians will rise up and retaliate against us.

(3) Since we do not want Christians to retaliate against us, we should not fire individuals who hold bigoted and hostile views against LGBT+ people.

Your argument falsely assumes:
(1) That all Christians agree with bigoted and hateful individuals who also self-identify as Christian.

(2) That he is being fired because he is a Christian, rather than a bigot. (And attempting to link the two effectively means you are arguing that ALL Christians are anti-gay bigots, which is false.)

(3) It can be proven that he was not fired for being a Christian, as the majority of people employed by the Atlanta Fire Department no doubt self-identify as Christian, including the people who fired him.

If your argument were true, then it would have also applied to shutting out racist bigots. It is actively ignored that the overwhelming majority of racists, particularly in the south, justified their racism through their religion. There would not be an uproar had this Fire Chief made hateful racist remarks, and placed them in a religious context. The majority of people, primarily Christians, would have viewed the decision to fire him both justified and sensible.

The problem we face at the moment is that there are people like you, who swallow the Religious Right's line of argument. You are essentially embracing the notion that Christianity and Anti-Gay bigotry are the same thing, to the point that they are inseparable. As a result when individuals like this say bigoted things, and then attempts to hide behind his religion--people like you come out to defend him on the basis of his religion.

However, I am hopeful that we will get to a point when Christians, such as yourself, will no longer self-identify with bigoted oppressors, and will instead find a more enlightened path and start to identify with the oppressed. As a result, when a Christian says some bigoted nonsense, people like you--instead of stepping out to defend him in the name of Christianity--will instead come out to denounce him in the name of Christianity, declaring his views un-Christian. After all, either bigotry is compatible with Christianity or it is not.

That is something Christians are going to have to work out for themselves. In the mean time, the rest of us do not have to tolerate bigotry in the workplace.