Ohio Catholic schoolteacher fired for being gay

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That would make it a whole lot easier to know who to boycott. The thing is, bigots will use other reasons for refusing to hire, or firing someone. I'd rather they just tell their real reason and get it over with. That way the people who agree with them are free to go there and spend all they want and the rest of us can avoid them like the plague. It's a whole lot better to know which people are actually a**holes and which ones aren't.

I do think though, that people should have a legal right to pick and choose who they want to employ based on whatever crazy criteria they want to use. I also think that those who are fired or who aren't hired in the first place should have a legal right to take them to court and also to publicize it so most people would quit going there.

OK, look at the nuts from Westboro Baptist Church. They are so in your face, up front with their bigotry nobody would start going there and then later on find out what they were about. That's why it's so small. Cause they are nutcases and I think most people see that and dislike how they do. I say let the school fire somebody for their sexual orientation and let them publically say why they did it so the parents of the kids could pull their kids out of that school or make such a ruckus over it that they change their policy.

I went to an all white private school in Alabama in the 70's and first part of the 80's. My grandfather sent me to that school because of the whole bussing and desegretation thing. I had no choice in the matter. This was in the middle of West End, which quickly became a predominately black area. Having an all white school there was not the result of an inspired genius to say the least. The way they actually got away with it was to give kids an entrance exam. White kids got one test, black kids got another test. They were always really full up too so the black kids were put on a waiting list. Most of us who went there thought that was horrible but we couldn't do much about it, and also most of us also had racist parents and we didn't really know any black people so some of the kids actually believed the things that were told to us to in order to make us afraid of them or to dislike them. Oddly enough, the school had the opposite effect on us, luckily. Most of us that had gone there grew up to be not racist at all. Do I think my school was right? No, not at all. Do I think they should have had the right to do that, yes I do. I think anybody should have the right to include or exclude anyone for any reason. Government should not, nor should monopoly businesses like the power company, etc but other businesses should but they should be required to publically state their intentions so we know.

I think that most people are not bigoted anymore and that most people would boycott businesses who discriminate. Sure there are the fringe nutcases who think it's good to discriminate and they hate a particular group so they would patronize the business but I doubt it would be enough to keep it afloat, and even if it was, by the time the next generations is grown that kind of stupid hatred should be a thing of the past.

So, I say give them enough rope to hang themselves and a public billboard to advertise about it on and let natural selection take place. I'd happily see signs that say "No <whatever>" because I would turn right around and walk out after a few choice words to the management about why I refuse to patronize the business. As would I think most decent people.

I'm very aware of Chick Fil A. As much as I love that boneless chicken I won't buy it because they are a**holes. They have the right to be a**holes. They are up front about it, so I give them that at least but that still doesn't mean I'd buy their chicken ever again. Same with Cracker Barrel. They had this thing about not hiring gay waiters and it was a huge stink and lots of people quit going there. Sure they are still open and either patronized by people who agree with them or who just don't care, but they have that right. Once when I lived in DC I did not get a job because of my accent. For real. The guy told me they didn't hire "rednecks" which at the time I wasn't, I was from Bham not out in the country but my accent made him think I was some barefoot inbred redneck. I was furious at him but I do not think he should legally be required to hire me.

People will find a reason to not hire you or to fire you and make it look like something else. As I said, I'd rather them be up front about it so I can boycott them.

No one has a right to a job. We have the right to seek a job. I live in a very small town where people only hire relatives and friends at the few places here that hire people. I am not a relative or good friend of anyone who works at those places so therefore I do not get a job even if I'm more qualified than someone else. It ticks me off but that is their right. Just as it's my right to choose which businesses to go to and to be vocal about why I choose not to use some of them.

Last year we had a thread on Chick-fill-A that lasted for a month of bickering and arguing.

Well if it's a catholic school then yes, it makes sense. You can't really be gay and follow catholic beliefs at the same time.

Well you can, but it's not recommended. Why you would choose to work for someone who finds your existence to be a crime against nature is also beyond me, but then again so is religion in the first place.

One of my best friends (who Mindsigh knows I bet you, Joey) is a very devout Catholic who is gay and who is really conflicted about it. He's like extremely gay and exrtremely Catholic too. He goes to OLS like everybody does in Bham.

Wait, he goes to OLS now, but he went to St john Bosco for a long time and that took some doing.

Do you really think that my entire argument was "I call ad hominem, you lose!"? I made a claim, and then I substantiated it with further argumentation of my own attacking other aspects of your post. You seem awfully proud of debunking a claim I never made...



I do believe you've verged into war crimes territory here, having tortured logic to the point that it's unrecognizable. As far as I can follow, you seem to think that by claiming that I obtain some information through the media but form my own opinions, that I'm somehow contradicting myself and rendering my criticism of you moot. Is that about the size of it? Do I need to spell out every way in which that argument fails? I'll stick to a simple one; what do you consider to be "right wing propaganda"? I'm getting the distinct impression that to you, that term encompasses all information that contradicts your opinion and worldview, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Reversing the argument, to what extent would you say you are influenced by left wing propaganda? I think I could make a pretty strong case based on your willful disbelief that people could hold opinions opposite yours without some bad actor involved, or your own logic that everyone who is exposed to the tiniest bit of media is tainted by propaganda. But let me guess, it's only "propaganda" when the other side does it...



And you wonder why I keep using the word arrogant. I'm also going to add presumptuous and lacks imagination to the list. First, again, still, you don't get to decide what is an isn't in someone elses interest, you have literally no way of knowing that, and less than no right to tell them what they "should" be.
Next, there are myriad reasons why someone might actually act against their own interests; charity, sentiment, ideology, spite, libido, those are just off the top of my head. Are you going to say that "propaganda" causes a man to flush his marriage and career down the toilet by having an affair with a coworker? It certainly wasn't in his interest to do so, was it?
Finally, the very word "propaganda" and your usage of it seems to indicate that you view any dissenting viewpoint as so self evidently wrong that no one could possibly believe that stuff in good faith. That is arrogance personified.



It's called having another perspective, not "internalizing viewpoints" coupled with "propaganda". Seriously, this idea that no one could honestly arrive at a different viewpoint is downright offensive.



Maybe it means that to the uncritical thinker, what it means to me is that I have principles that I stick to, regardless of my own emotional feelings at the time. I don't think stealing from you should be punished any differently than stealing from me, even if I have a different emotional reaction to theft from me. The business is the property of the employer, and he enjoys all the rights and privileges that come with that, just as I would on my own property. I happen to hold very strong property rights views, and I don't compromise them just because I might be constrained by them as well. There's a word for people who want rules but don't think they should apply to themselves: hypocrites.



You can't even comprehend that I don't view discrimination and interests the same way you do, but you want to tell me how I think and why... It's that A word again.

You've also repeatedly said, throughout this thread and in this very post, that exposure to propaganda is the only way people could come to a certain conclusion, e.g.

What was that about a straw man again?



That's a false dichotomy, and it's YOU who simply will not or cannot accept that not only did I come by my beliefs honestly, but that I'm prepared to live with the consequences of them, as I've made the comparison to the alternatives, and find those alternatives lacking. Maybe moral and intellectual consistency are foreign concepts to you, but that's hardly my problem.



Do the bullying victim's feelings somehow affect whether or not punishing bullying was actually effective? If I did a test and discovered that rewarding children who didn't bully was more effective at reducing bullying than punishing the bullies was, would the bullying victim accept that, or allow their feelings to override their logic? What do you think the better way is?

Poor people desiring equality has also lead to some pretty hideous outcomes over the years, with populist demagogues able to rise to power on a class warfare platform and engage in murder and oppression on an industrial scale. But we have to respect those feelings...

A self aware person analyzes their feelings and tests their legitimacy before making decisions based on them; sadly, most people are not self aware.



Not sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds contradictory to much of the rest of your postings.



Is that the only way you think that position can evolve? I would say that far more previously anti-gay Christians have changed their tune because of the out of the closet movement, and no longer being able to think of gay people as this invisible other who you didn't know and could ascribe all sorts of vicious rumors to. It's much harder to cling to a stereotype when there are glaring violations of said stereotype all around you.



Clutching at straws. I simply called out your clumsy attempt for what it was, nothing more. I would say that you should skip the attempts at psychology and stick to arguing, but I really can't in good faith endorse either course at this point.



Here we go again

You misstate the interests of others
Argue from populism
Beg the question
Mistake the roll of government.

It's like whack a fallacy with you.

Asking out of interest rather than to argue, but Dox, why do you value "property rights" over freedom from discrimination?



Personally, I imagine my boss firing someone because they're black, and then imagine a government official telling my boss he's not allowed to do that. I feel that the first is a violation of rights by a person in a position of power, whereas the second is a person in a position of power standing up for rights. Do you essentially think the same, but the other way around?

You're actually the one making the extraordinary claim, that a UN document should be treated as axiomatic, and all you've done so far to make that case is point out that a lot of people signed it. Further, even though all those people signed it, it's not exactly the law of the land in many places now, is it? I respect the framers of the US Constitution a hell of a lot more than the signers of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, so if you want to treat it as a proven concept, you're going to have to do a lot better than that.



Still not grasping that I have a different view of fairness than you do, and that you don't have the power to define such a subjective word as you see fit. I don't think it's fair to force someone who's taken a huge risk and provided myriad societal benefits to hire or retain employees against their will, I see allowing them complete freedom in that regard as the lesser evil to employing the force of the state to interfere.



Social questions are not math, there is no one correct answer, and yet again you're being so arrogant as to presume that you're view is the only correct one.

I'll also take your continuing participation in the thread as evidence that you don't, in fact, have anything better to do.

No, that's not what you did at all. If you'd stuck to questions of workplace discrimination, that would fit your description, but you took it to slavery and the Holocaust, which was extremely hyperbolic, not to mention supremely dishonest. You can't even be honest here about that, and the evidence is right there in your post.

Protip: Lying works better in the verbal medium than in the written, where a transcript exists for everyone to look at.

It doesn't seem from the article that there's any discrimination coming from the school itself; rather, the 'troubled parents' whose voices were apparently important enough to be taken into account. The school didn't want any scandal and acted based on that.

There is no right to not be discriminated against.

Maybe these two articles will help.

Discrimination in the Modeling Industry

Why discriminate?

Do you see that line in my signature, the one that says "any power the government has to do something you like will invariably used to do something you abhor"? That sort of sums up my views on power in general, which leads to me wanting to grant as little of it as possible because I know that it will inevitably be misused.

I know I've argued with you before on speech restrictions, so I'll use that as an example.

I oppose hate speech laws in any form, not because I think verbally abusing people is a good thing, but because I know that politicians will control what is and is not considered hate speech, that the police will enforce the law according to their own whims and views, and that the courts will selectively prosecute it according to which groups are currently favored and disfavored. You could spend even more time and money attempting to make a law and law enforcement apparatus capable of enforcing such a law "fairly", or you could simply not grant the state that particular power.

Same principle with discrimination laws, they're so open to interpretation and easily abused that I'd rather we just not have them on the books, and deal with openly bigoted businesses with societal pressure. Money talks, even to bigots, and it's hard enough to make it as a small business these days without hanging an albatross like open racism or homophobia around your own neck.

Neither did I lie, neither did I say that all other opinions different from mine are as saying that 2+2=5 (only your opinion that fairness is less important than private property rights) and finaly I stoped trying to argue with you specificaly (not anybody else) about something that is as obvious as this, so I will continue to do what I please in this thread including, if I have nothing better to do, debunk your constant misinterpretations and strawmans.

PS: Protip? Not arrogant at all!
PPS: Please, please, please say that you won the argument because I'm not trying to argue with you anymore!

Do you defend the existence of private property rights? If so, why does one exist and the other doesn't?

Why state the obvious?

Property rights are much easier to define and apply law to.
Fairness is much more subject to individual interpretation.
Yep, I value property rights over "fairness" and I don't have all that much property.

Personally, I've observed that most people who place so much more value on fairness and little to none on property either have little to no property and are too sorry (or think they are) to obtain any more or they've had everything handed to them and don't know or care to know the value of it

So, yes, someone does (and should always) have the right to eject others off of their property at will and without regard to fairness.