In Patterson v. Indiana Newspapers, Inc., (SD IN, March 27, 2008), an Indiana federal district court rejected religious discrimination claims brought by two editorial employees against the publisher of the Indianapolis Star newspaper. Plaintiffs alleged that the newspaper's president and vice president conspired to force them out of their jobs because the executives disagreed with plaintiffs' religious opposition to homosexuality. Plaintiffs also claimed that the Star has more generally attempted to eliminate Christians from its workforce. The court found, however, that the newspaper had other legitimate non-pretextual reasons to take action against plaintiffs. [Thanks to Sarah Pulliam for the lead.]
Friday, March 28, 2008
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When someone uses religion as a shield with which to promote hatred and discrimination, he had better expect opposition from other members of that religion who disagree with his bigotry, and from others who are not members of his religion, but who know better.
Nazi war criminals were not allowed the defense that they were "only following orders." Anyone who cites Jesus or any other biblical source as an excuse/authority for his bigotry puts himself in the same category.
This is a chilling remark from Chimera --consistent with the growing view that religious belief about sexuality is potentially prosecute-able for "hate speech" if hate speech is defined to include any speech against homosexuality, including biblically-based speech.
This is a very large threat to religious free expression if people are discriminated against because they believe the Biblical teaching that all sex outside hetero marriage is a sin and ought not be celebrated or encouraged or sanctioned -i.e.
all extra-marital sex including pedophilia, "shacking up", incest, bestiality, adultery, and homosexuality. Also, the Bible warns against transgendering via transvestism.
I can imagine employees like these in the suit being targeted for firing on trumped up charges.There is such vitriol on the part of homosexuality's defenders.
You have the right to believe what you want. You don't have the right to make your fear part of everyone else's law.
You're afraid of homosexuality. I don't know why -- you've never explained what a gay man or woman has done to make you afraid on a personal level.
But you talk as though you think you should have the right to discriminate against a law-abiding citizen, and deny him his human rights and constitutionally-guaranteed rights to free speech and free association, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (as defined by him and not by you) just because he happens to fall in love with someone of his own gender.
I don't care about what you think is "sin." You don't get to make that a factor in anyone else's life. I don't care where you get your so-called "authority." It does not exist in reality.
Your freedom of speech and freedom of religion has a limit. When it infringes on my freedom, I will stop you.
And hate speech is hate speech. You do not get to hide behind your interpretation of the bible and call it a right. You don't get to use religion as a defense against prosecution. That's not what freedom of religion is about.
And there's vitriol from both sides. You are full of it.
No, I am not full of vitriol just because I believe that the only rightful place for sexual intimacy is within hetero marriage.
I don't hate people who are confused in their orientation. I feel sorry for them. But I don't feel sorry for them if they entice people into relationship who would otherwise be normal, and I know that happens. Young people can be lonely and vulnerable to "any port in a storm" of adolescent insecurities --and be vulnerable to homosexual seduction. So often it is the older inducting the younger into this lifestyle.
I'm not afraid of gays either --except for the belief you express here --that the religious are guilty of hate speech (and thus, crime) if they speak out against gay marriage, etc. That's a scary idea from the left that would squelch the free speech and religious teaching of centuries on the sacred nature of hetero marriage.
The authority is God's authority which you reject as a myth --not real. But to millions His authority and His Word ARE real.
But putting that aside, there is nothing that the gay men can do together that is healthy. They are extremely promiscuous. Marriage won't make them stop that --and they don't expect it to. Take Geo. Michael and his partner --still going to park rest rooms for quickies --and the first couple to marry in New Jersey (I think it was) who said marriage didn't mean monogamy to them.
How crazy is it that a man should be allowed to abandon his wife and children, marry a man in the church and rise to a bishop's position in that church? Very crazy. Very immoral. Very much a reversal of good and evil. As though his need to be having abnormal sexual relations was so noble! that we his church would excuse that while still recognizing that we probably wouldn't allow that for a hetero man.
I realize there are promiscuous heteros and some monogamous lesbians --not so sure you can find very many gays (males) who have had few partners in their lifetimes. Promiscuous is part of the lifestyle for the men, for sure. Medical stats recorded 2 stranger encounters per week for the average gay in the height of the GRID epidemic(later called AIDS.) GRID --gay related immune disease)
"No, I am not full of vitriol just because I believe that the only rightful place for sexual intimacy is within hetero marriage."
If you were to keep it to yourself as a belief, I would agree with you. You can think whatever you want and no one can stop you.
But when you actively try to force your opinions and beliefs on everyone else, you are engaging in hate activity.
How is it possible that a married gay couple prevents you from exercising your freedom of religion, speech, and conscience? If marriage is so "sacred", then it is sacred for all, not just those few who agree with your view of it.
Why is someone else's marriage any of your business, anyway? Do you honestly believe that every gay man is like George Michael? That your definition of marriage is the only one that should be allowed?
Gays aren't confused, Barb. They're people with different tastes and appetites from you. They're not interested in forcing you to have sex with them. Leave them alone.
I AM leaving them alone. But I don't want to see them parading their activity and preference on the streets, role modeling to the nation's youth there and on TV kissing each other, ETC.
I don't want these boston educators reading books about two men marrying and two moms marrying to the kdgtn. I don't want kids to hear about homosex until they are out of their insecure, confused adolescent years --but i know they will.
I want them to at least know what God's Word says about it --and what the public health and other stats tell us about this disordered appetite and lifestyle that is a mental aberration --not something normal and not to be desired.
In fact, I believe people should feel about same sex the way they feel about incest and pedophilia --TABOO and unthinkable --or at least the way they would think of adultery --as a temptation to resist --so they will not linger if that temptation comes knocking at the mental doorway. There ought to be a filter in the mind that keeps out such abnormal desires. Because it is not a path to happiness. And it's not society's disapproval that makes that life unhappy. It's often the relationships themselves --the fact that it is a sex-focused lifestyle --not family or child-centered.
Actually, as a Christian, I find that gays and liberals hate us for our beliefs. I don't hate them back. I find they are a miserable unhappy group. The Christians are not miserable--and it's not because we have society's approval, because we don't. There is something inherently wrong and miserable about the homosexual life. I think there is an innate guilt --and they think it's because Christians are trying to impose guilt. If we'd only approve and treat them like heteros, and remove all stigma and embarrassment from the label, they could be happy. they think.
I doubt it-- because God didn't design us for homosex and His word does say He hates it. NOt the people --the choice. The indulgence in the wrong direction sexually.
Why do I care about it? I think it's a growing trend, a fad, and that many are going to be misled and have their happiness short-circuited by it.
Spiritually, I believe the Bible which says clearly that it is a sin --and to be saved for Heaven we need to renounce our sins.
"...I don't want to see them parading their activity and preference on the streets, role modeling to the nation's youth there and on TV kissing each other, ETC."
And I have no problem seeing them do that. So if you don't like it, don't look.
See, the difference between your attitude on this and mine is that I'm only interested in governing my own life, and choosing things that are agreeable to me -- not in preventing you from choosing the entertainment or activities that you prefer that are not agreeable to me. You, on the other hand, want to regulate what I can watch and do. And I am NOT going to let you do that.
It's a shame that we live in an X-rated world anymore --such that parents have to stand over the TV and find ways to filter that and the internet --and have to watch when we go to Disney that it's not "gay days" and have to be careful about when and where we go lest we run into a gay pride parade with people behaving obscenely --all because unwholesome things are being demonstrated and promoted that should not be viewed by children.
You say all you care about is seeing what is interesting and entertaining to YOU. And the rest of us can just beware all the time.
Should the porn purveyor or the gay activist, either one, have the right to flood the world with the obscene --such that children are exposed to it because there are no restrictions --and no self --restraint by people who, like you , care only about your own desires and tastes --rather than what is good for children.
and you'll say, "Who's to say what is good for children?" Hopefully, enough good parents will rise up to tell you and prevent the complete public licentiousness that you are willing to see , justifying your rights on the basis that none can decide what is moral for society or for children.
We ought to make sure that "adult entertainment" is not accessible on TV, radios, phones, internet, strip joints and streets --shove it back into the closet where the innocent cannot be caught unaware and corrupted, lured into a sex addiction. There has always been sleaze --but it was limited and restricted to certain areas --where the really determined and jaded would have to seek it out --and not be confronted with it in their homes or on outings with the kids.
Barb,
You add men kissing to the behavior you don't want your children to see. You don't want kids to know about homosexuality until out of their teen years (how long is that?), and maintain there is something "inherently wrong" with them. I suspect you don't feel quite the same about heterosexual kissing or sex. You preach that being gay is immoral, and that gays should be shuttered from children's sight. To seriously claim you don't hate them is disingenuous.
Are you actually in Boston, Barb? Do you have kids in kindergarten there?
I didn't say I was in Boston. I just know of a case going on there where two sets of parents were infuriated by the kdgtn. program and the refusal of the school to exempt their children from gay propaganda. I believe they've sued the school.
I think hetero kissing is at least normal and OK for kids to see if that's all there is to it --explicit sex behavior on tv is just as harmful to culture as to gay behavior of any kind.
You know that culture has become much more permissive in their entertainment --and I don't think it's a trend for the good.
I don't dislike anybody as a person -- but I think we are doing something very wrong when we depict any sex behavior outside hetero marriage or the growing intimacy of courtship, hetero kissing, etc. as something normal and desireable. It's giving kids an idea that hardly any of them would think of on their own --unless influenced by parents, peers, media, and educators. Most would not think lustfully toward their own peers except that their own self-image has been twisted. We rightly seek to help kids have a normal self-image and orientation.
I support no call to cruelty --we don't discriminate against adulterers (except in church hiring and sometimes politics)--and we also have no call to be cruel to people who have the mental abnormalcy of homosexual attraction. But neither do we have a good reason to legitimate this condition and call it good, harmless, and as good as its main alternative.
what is it with people that they think we have to either hate homosexuals or celebrate and encourage their confusion? I will do neither.
Homosexuals are not confused, Barb. They're homosexuals. Nothing confusing about it.
"You say all you care about is seeing what is interesting and entertaining to YOU. And the rest of us can just beware all the time."
Yes. Why do you have a problem with that? Are you not a grown-up who is capable of making your own decisions?
If I don't want to see something I find offensive, I don't look at it. I don't go to places where other people are doing it. I look out for my own interests.
Why should I look out for anyone else? Should I think they're idiots who cannot make up their own minds? Why do you?
Well, like it or not, we are our brother's keepers.
We are not to stumble weaker brethren or enable our culture to do that by extreme licentious permissiveness. Weaker brethren might include children, the immature, the emotionally weak, the poorly parented, poorly educated, unintelligent and all who are merely easily tempted.
The opposite of concern for others is selfishness, as expressed when you ask,"Why should I look out for anyone else?"
I care if kids are roped into pedophiles' traps, porn addiction, homosexual addiction --and miss out on the full blessings of their God-given sexuality with the possibility of children and grandchildren and a life long hetero partner.
the best mental health institution, the best economic stability, the best hope for physical health --comes in the families founded by monogamous hetero parents --who are functional.
That's not to say all hetero parents are heading up functional families; obviously not, in fact. I believe it is the breakdown of the family unit that contributes to the jaded view people have toward traditional marriage these days. So many come from divorced homes and it has really damaged our culture and people's attitudes toward sexuality and marriage.
If they have not come from good marriages and happy homes, they see no reason to prefer the traditional.
"Well, like it or not, we are our brother's keepers."
No you're not.
The opposite of concern for others is indifference. Selfishness is simply a survival tactic.
Best to look to your own mental health before you go intruding on someone else's life. Your assumptions are wrong unless they are applied only to yourself.
My mental health is fine, actually --thank you for your concern. !
Indifference is a child of selfishness.
You've heard it said that "the sure way for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
But what makes those "good men" believe that they are good? By whose standards?
Sometimes, when men do nothing, it's because there's nothing to do. Sometimes, we just like to kick back and listen to the birds.
You go ahead and kick back and let the bats flap in your belfry!
That question, "by whose standards," is the one that liberals can't answer because they have no answer --they have no God or Bible --therefore they are moral relativists and can't tell right from wrong with any consistency.
You're equivocating and generalizing.
Want to answer the question?
But what makes those "good men" believe that they are good? By whose standards?
What is YOUR answer?
Can we agree on the golden rule by Jesus? "Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you."?
Your standard would be "MYOB" --but then no one will defend the oppressed and the helpless, the widow and the orphan and the prisoner --Jesus said we should do those things.
If you just MYOB, then wrongs toward young people will occur; falsehoods will be taught in our culture; destructive drugs will be sold to our youth; older sex-o-philes of various kinds will think our inexperienced kids are fair game for their molestations and seductions. The standard of mutual consent will be taken advantage of by older people toward younger who are at the height of their self-doubts, confusions, emotional and sexual volatility and insecurities of all kinds.
Porn and violence and themes of justified rebellion will be unavoidable on TV and internet, movies and lyrics.
No one will be able to control young people whose parents don't know how to parent. and no one will help, because we are all Minding our own business.
I dunno what you're smoking, but please stop. It's making you paranoid.
You're still not answering the question for yourself, and you definitely haven't answered it for me.
Good men don't say that they are good and ought not think that they are good. However, they can know what is good and what is evil; On the one hand, the Bible says man knows this --it is written on his heart --on the other hand, it says that man will be deluded by Satan and call evil, good, and good, evil, in the last days.
That's what we see happening today.
My husband was telling me he saw a PBS tv show about some homosexuality among penguins --and told how the story was being used, I think in fiction, in children's book, to teach them to be accepting of homosexuality
But what is found in nature is not to be imitated by us in every case; as I have said before (somewhere) some animals eat their young, their feces, kill their mates, abandon spouses and offspring, smell people, hump your leg, and lick their genitals. So just because a few confused animals behave homosexually, does not make it something for humans to condone or emulate.
That is one example of the evil in our day that is being called good.
I think most evil we still call evil--but when people JUSTIFY murder of those who proselytize, they are calling evil, good.
"...a few confused animals..."
ROTFLMAO!!!
ba da BING! I thought the whole paragraph was good myself.
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