Ohio Catholic schoolteacher fired for being gay

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Did Christ preach tolerance?

Is there nothing about that which worries you at all, makes you feel a little uncomfortable? As a shop owner, you would refuse to serve someone because he is black?

So far as I am aware, the only protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment in Ohio are limited to employment by the state.

All of this discussion is a complete waste of bandwidth unless and until the state of Ohio enters into the 21st century with the rest of the civilized world.

Sadly, I have to agree.
I thought all of the USA was better than this, but some states appear to be stuck in a time-warp...

Wouldn't change my position, as I'm consistent in my belief that it is not the job of the state to enforce tolerance or "fairness".



If it was a government agency, I'd feel differently, as they are bound by different standards, but as a private institution the school is not forced to abide by the same rules. It does suck, it's not fair, and if people want to make a public stink about it and try to shame the school into changing it's policies, that's fine, but legally speaking, there isn't a problem.



Discrimination does have alternate meanings, particularly in outside the political context, but even if I were to grant you your definitions without argument, none of that translates to illegal. If you want to argue that it should, that's a different kettle of fish, and one that will cause me to invoke the quote in my signature involving powers granted to the state and the uses they're invariably put to.

I didn't say there wasn't an argument, I said good arguments are seldom preceded by insults, and I'm still waiting to be proven wrong on that one. Twisting peoples words is usually not a sign of clear thinking either, someone with a real point doesn't need to. Structuring my posts to allow myself to address individual facets of your "argument" is not a reflection on it's quality (quite the contrary), but is simply the best form for my posting style. Nor is my presence in addressing you an endorsement, I simply dislike posts that assume their opinion is common sense and that they know what is best for other people; if I thought you had a point but I simply disagreed with it, the tone of my posts would be much different.



Nice strawman. Did I say that I was unaffected by information derived through the media? Also, you don't know where I get my information and how I process it, so all you're going on is assumption and speculation, which I'm coming to learn is par for the course here. What I objected to is your bad faith argument that the only reason someone would hold an opinion like mine or Raptors is because of propaganda; your rant is completely off target.



You really don't believe that someone could come to those opinions on their own without outside manipulation? Again, that's the arrogance of thinking your own beliefs are so self evidently true that the only way someone could disagree is misinformation or ill intent. I can't speak for Raptor, but my beliefs have been far more influenced by coming from an entrepreneurial family where both of my parents have owned multiple small businesses than from any outside source, but according to you, that's just not possible.



Do you really not understand the difference between emotional reasoning and an emotional utterance? Enacting a law because of how you feel instead of what you think is different than angrily saying that the law is f*cking stupid while providing a rational basis for the opposition. I'm arguing with obvious annoyance because I'm annoyed, you're trying to manipulate emotions to support your position, e.g. how would you feel if you were fired for being Aspie. Big difference.



What do economic growth policies have to do with workplace discrimination laws? Economic growth generally favors minimal business regulation, so I'm really not sure why you're invoking it here.

Because it's a political document created by people, not a principle or philosophy unto itself. It would be like me, if challenged on why I believe I should be able to own a gun, pointing to the 2nd Amendment and claiming that that settled the argument without any further support. I don't accept the declaration of human rights as anything more than a political statement, and it's certainly not something I'll accept in lieu of actual argumentation.



Why? I'm allowed to choose who I do and do not invite into my home, the premises of my business is an extension of my property, so why do I lose the right to associate or not associate when I declare my space to be open for business? Support your position, don't just proclaim it as being inherently correct.



And? It's a Catholic school, right? Homosexuality is an abomination to them? Why should they be forced to work with someone who through, admittedly no fault of her own, makes them at best deeply uncomfortable? Why does the idea of "fairness" trump a the right of a business to choose who works for them?
It's the school's loss if they indeed fired a good employee for reasons unrelated to the job, but it's their right to do so.



*sigh*

How do you get to slavery and the Holocaust from allowing businesses to choose their own employees based on whatever criteria they want?

Way to call people who simply believe in property rights racists. Please try and call me a racist, that would make my day.

Discrimination should not be allowed because it severely harms those who are discriminated against. The act of discriminating against someone on the grounds of sexuality (or race or gender or...) has negative utility. Additionally, it reflects badly on society. Allowing a group facing discrimination to continue to face discrimination risks turning them into a downtrodden underclass.

I would also like to cite John Rawls' Original Position. If I knew nothing of my social standing, race, etc., and I was creating laws for the whole of society to live by, I would include protections for groups who are irrationally discriminated against, such as homosexuals and black people. To be honest, this amounts to little more than a utilitarian argument- the harm done by discriminating against a minority outweighs any benefit to the discriminator.

I would add that I feel humans have a basic right to freedom from discrimination, but I cannot substantiate this view.

She's a methodist who was teaching at a catholic high school? Sounds to me like this woman is confused in more ways than one.

Well, lets finish the first point because you already destroyed your argument. You were implying that I had no good argument with your first declaration. Then you admited it is possible to have a good argument and insult at the same time (although unlikely). So all that amounts to declaring that I don't have a good argument. Ok, then. It was implied in your discussion, no need to go that way.

Well that's a nice tatic. Declare what others are saying as speculation and move on with it. Well, to a degree, it's true: I assume you're human; I assume you are not an amish, so you have contact with the media. Am I allowed to assume that? But lets read what you've said before: "Two things; you're assuming "right wing propaganda" informs our opinions based on nothing but your own biases, and you're assuming that you know what's in our best interest better than we do. Both of these things are incredibly arrogant, and both of these things are completely wrong. You have no way of knowing the source of my opinion or of Raptors, and [i]I decide what's in my best interest, Raptor decides what's in his, not you, not some politicians, just us. I could care less who has the power, I'm going to argue the side that I believe is right."[/i]. The italics are used to make emphasis, so you were emphasising that you made your own choices, thus denying that it had to do with right wing propaganda. That is equivalent to saying you're unnafected by right wing propaganda. Now can you please say which way is it? Are you or are you not afected by right wing propaganda? Completing this paragraph, yes, I think the only way for a person to defend something that is obviously against his interest is through being the target of propaganda (in this case, right wing).

What you're saying is that you were raised hearing and internalising the viewpoints of business owners. Well, that, combined with right wing propaganda, justifies your position. But again, if you imagine yourself being discriminated against for being an aspie and you say you won't feel anger towards the discriminator, that means that you hold the interest of the employer who just fired you above your own. That kind of atitude can only come from ideological dogmatism. This ideological dogma of the free market is a product of our times, especialy in america. But you were the one who created a strawman. I didn't say people are robots acting only acording to the software in the system (the software being the propaganda). And that of course means that I didn't say that whoever disagrees with me must be because of propaganda. There's a degree of independedness in all people. But of course some people are more independent than others and a sign that one is not very independent is the defense of things which are in plain contrast with their interests.

I didn't understand the first part of the paragraph, so I'll adress the part I understood. I'm not trying to manipulate anything. I'm trying to put you in a situation where you have to confront your beliefs with what you feel and then either grow or be obstinate and defend what's against your interest. Beliefs are based on how you feel about things. It's natural that a victim of bullying will strongly believe that children should be somehow punished when they bully another. It's natural that people who come from a poor background will believe more in equality than those who come from a wealthy background. Your beliefs are completely interconnected to what you feel about something. One thing is to decide to punch someone in the face with rage (not a rational decision in general), another is to learn new ways of thinking through what you feel (which can be completely rational). I'm sure you can understand that a previously antigay christian can change his position on the rights of homosexuals if he finds himself having feelings towards other men. Now, it's interesting that you felt that I was trying to manipulate (interesting choice of word) emotions in order to prove a point. Are you having emotions contraditory to your beliefs?

Just like the government must act in order to make the economy grow (because it's the interest of the overwhelming majority), the government (or the senate, in your case) must make laws that protect the interests of the large majority and that interest is to not be discriminated against. Just because there are a handful guys who say that their interest is that the boss who just fired him solely on the basis of prejudice, can have his way, that doesn't mean that the government should protect the employer. The overwhelmig majority has the power to decide. That's democracy.

Well first of all let me quote this: The Universal Declaration was adopted by the General Assembly on 10 December 1948 by a vote of 48 in favor, 0 against, with eight abstentions: the Soviet Union, Ukrainian SSR, Byelorussian SSR, People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, People's Republic of Poland, Union of South Africa, Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It's a document that's pretty consensual in the world, with all its different cultures, except for dictatorships. So it's not the same as quoting the second amendment of the american constitution to validate a point. So if you are the one making the extraordinary claim, you're the one who has to argue for it.

Well, that's the whole thing we are discussing. I was just reafirming the statement.

I think you said it all in this parafraph. You value more the rights of private businesses than fairness. Why would I try to convinve someone that that's wrong? If you say that 2+2=5 I won't argue against you. So the next post will be my last post. I have more important things to do than convince someone that 2+2 is not 5.

You were playing with semantics changing the word discrimination to being picky. I was trying to measure what you consider being picky and what you consider to be discrimination.

Actualy quite the opposite. The purpose of this post was reductio ad absurdum, which needs the direct confrontation between the belief in equality of rights between races and the belief in the absolute rights of private business owners. If I thought you guys were racists, there would be no reductio ad absurdum. But if you want to know, I really believe you are less sensitive to racial equality than me, or else you wouldn't be staunchly defending the absolute rights of the private business owners.

It's certainly a more rational view than the view that private businesses can do as they please.

While discrimination really ticks me off, I think that any type of privately owned business should be able to fire or refuse to hire anyone for any reason. They should be able to fire you because they don't like your shoes or because they don't like your new hair color or even refuse to hire someone based on religion, race, sexual orientation, political or sports affiliation, etc. I do not think it's right to refuse to hire someone over things like that and I would certainly boycott businesses that did that but I think they should be legally allowed to dig their own grave like that, because I bet a lot of people would boycott them.

Are you aware of Chick-fill-A?

The free market fundamentalists have a simplified and linear view of society/economy: the less regulation, the more freedom. We can agree that too much regulation is synonim with less freedom. What we don't agree with is that little regulation generates the highest freedom. Little regulation protects (idealy) from the opression of the state. True. But little regulation, on the other hand, encourages opression from private companies. And this is such an example: Chick-fill-A opressed the LGBT community and made profit out of it. If everybody did things like that it would be opression all over the place. The state must be interventive to optimize the level of freedom, which is not at its optimal "value" in either the extremes of too much regulation and little regulation.