Reason number eleventy-hundred why I like living in Massachusetts.
Gordon College in Salem, Mass., wants the government to allow it to discriminate against people based solely on their sexual orientation. The mayor of Salem says no, you can't discriminate based on sexual orientation.
At one time people with "sincerely held religious beliefs" discriminated against interracial couples, and Jews, and Mormons, and Catholics, and anti-slavery groups. However, religious beliefs do not give people the right to deny other people their Constitutional rights.
Bravo to Mayor Driscoll and the city of Salem, Mass. (where my children were born).
"The mayor of the city of Salem, Massachusetts doesn’t regret her city’s decision to sever its ties to Gordon College, the Christian university that asked the federal government to grant it a religious exemption from workplace protections for LGBT employees.
In fact, in a letter she posted to the city’s Facebook page, Mayor Kimberly Driscoll pledged to donate five dollars to an LGBT youth charity for every angry phone call her office gets from conservatives bent on harassing city employees over the decision.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s historic decision in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case, Gordon College President D. Michael Lindsay joined a group of other Christian leaders who sent a letter to President Barack Obama insisting that their “sincerely held religious beliefs” compel them to demand exemption from federal nondiscrimination laws.
Gordon College, Lindsay argued, is “an explicitly Christian institution,” and as such, should be allowed to fire or to refuse to hire individuals based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Some students and faculty reacted angrily, saying that Lindsay was making their school sound bigoted and backward.
The New England Association of Schools and Colleges announced earlier this week that it is considering pulling Gordon College’s academic accreditation over its insistence on adhering to discriminatory policies, regardless of their religious foundations. Then came the city of Salem’s decision to cut all contractual ties with the college until its rules match the federal government’s."
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I've read many an essay about people who wish to discriminate against the LGBT community based on their sincerely held religious beliefs and how we who do not share those beliefs should be more understanding and respectful of their feelings on this specific issue.
I've also read that people with sincerely held religious beliefs love the sinner but hate the sin. How is discrimination against the LGBT community, which forces people into second-class status through shaming and rejection and limits their employment opportunities,"loving the sinner?" What some religious people see as loving the sinner and hating the sin other people see as bigotry. And their sincerely held belief is as legitimate as anyone else's.
This Is How Progressives Should Deal With a Post-Hobby Lobby America
I keep arguing for a speed limit exemption because of my strong Velocitarian beliefs, but so far I'm getting nowhere. I guess the Feds would have to establish my faith -- in which I am very devout -- as a legitimate religion and there is the constitutional problem, of course. Apparently the Apaches aren't legitimate enough, because even though they were here before Moses lost his sandal, they still don't get to use Peyote any more than the Rastafarians get to smoke Ganja mon. The Supreme court has been adamant about that while allowing Christians to claim exemptions based on their bizarre notion of "Sin"
ReplyDeleteThis isn't God's country: your's mine or anyone else's. It's our country. It may be apocryphal but Justice Brandies is supposed to have said that"Morality is not the government's business, it's God's business. God can handle it." I agree and if you don't think God can handle it you don't believe in God.
"Free exercise thereof" needs to be defined and limited with clarity and specificity lest these five ultra conservative Catholic men succeed in that ancient effort to establish Christian states all over the world. Perhaps we should spend less time trying to negate the second amendment using a false syllogism and do something about the first? We will not be a free country until we stop allowing gods veto power over our doings.
No matter how sincerely held the religious belief that bigotry is sent from God, there is nothing in the establishment clause that supports the "right" to engage in discrimination. It's a new and baseless interpretation of the Constitution. Certainly religions have engaged in and supported discrimination in the past but they didn't go so far as to claim a secular justification in the U.S. Constitution but asserted that their religious beliefs superseded the law. What's really scary about the Hobby Lobby decision is that the highest court in this land did the unthinkable and disregarded the separation of church in state.
ReplyDeleteMayor Driscoll is to be commended for using common sense and bravely standing up to those who want to discriminate in the name of the Lord. There's no group more dangerous than one who declares its beliefs to be sincerely held, as generally that means that reason or rational thought plays no role in the exercise of those beliefs. Dr. King said it best: "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
Capt. Fogg: "This isn't God's country: your's mine or anyone else's. It's our country." But you're fogetting the Tea Party's mantra "I Want My Country Back!" That was chanted only 2 1/2 months into Mr. Obama's presidency. Somehow they've latched onto the idea that this is their country and no one else's. The hell with what a majority of Americans voted for.
ReplyDeleteSheria: "There's no group more dangerous than one who declares its beliefs to be sincerely held, as generally that means that reason or rational thought plays no role in the exercise of those beliefs."
Yes, and September 11, 2001, proved that statement to be true.
There seems in fact to be some kind of resurgence of hate and not just in the US and perhaps it's been simmering underground all along while fools like me thought it was fading away. The grotesque anti-semitic riots in France the other day, for instance -- pretending to stem from anger at the Hamas Vs. Israel fighting as though Parisian shopkeepers had anything to do with it. The world seems to be some kind of game board where people move scapegoats around in an effort to win. Muslims, Jews, liberals, socialists, gays, immigrants "takers" and of course people of African descent. The disgusting thing is not so much that this ancient game goes on, but that it seems to work so well to preserve the crookedness, the evil, the tyranny, the persecution and the preservation of power. Why are we so sincere and conscientious in our ignorance?
ReplyDeleteSincerely held beliefs indeed and never is there any question that bad or ugly or false or anti-social beliefs need to be treated with respect while decency and compassion.get trampled and crushed under "faith."
I've said it before and I'll say it again: that sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity are sincere and popular beliefs and there needs to be a standard of right and wrong that beliefs must be measured against to be considered free exercise of religion. That's the job of the courts and they're evading it. We must indeed make allowances for individual conscience but as we both agree it's not a license to harm or persecute or marginalize or interfere with other people and their "unalienable" rights.
The courts are simply pandering to power -- the very thing they were supposed to protects us from.
Perhaps one way to expose this fraud, this blatant power grab, is for some other corporation or business to refuse to hire Christians or even a certain kind of Christians. Put up some signs like "no Baptists need apply" and claim God told you to do it. Refuse to hire anyone who eats pork, for instance -- anyone who eats cheeseburgers. Fire employees who use the wrong kind of thread to sew the buttons on their shirts. No divorced people, no people living together without being married.
ReplyDeleteLet's see how long we can get away with not hiring people who have other God's before Yaweh or who own pictures of any living thing or who charge interest on a loan because all of that shit is in that Bible the idiots claim is the basis of all law.
the Bible is not about happiness or freedom or human rights. It's not about government being derived from the consent of the people or the right to elect leaders without the approval of religious authorities. It's not about freedom of speech or thought or worship and to talk about freedom when you believe otherwise is fraud.
So much for the "narrowly defined decision that will only affect Hobby Lobby." Ha! Not like any of us did not see this coming. It is my sincere religious belief that all misogynistic, racist, homophobic, Hispanophobic, Islamophobic cretins have no business breathing the same air as those of us who love our neighbors (or at least bear them no ill will), and couldn't care less if you dress up in your wife's clothes or love someone of the same gender or your skin is white, pale, brown or almost black. Therefore I am asking the Federal Government to establish a Martian colony for those people who just cannot get along with ALL the inhabitants of Mother Earth and give them all one way tickets to Mars!
ReplyDeleteWasn't there an Ed Wood movie Mars Wants Assholes? Kind of a negative rapture - I like it.
ReplyDeleteMy fervent hope is Islam never gains gains influence and acceptance in America beyond an acknowledgement the cult exists.
ReplyDeleteShould it ever happen there will be a full scale war on women. Among other wars. My opinion and I'm sticking with it.
Comment not to be construed as support for Hobby Lobby. Simply an observation and recognition of what could happen if our eyes are not wide open.