Now What?
July 1, 2015
A “Correspondent from an Occupied City” writes:
Apropos of your pointing out that same-sex “marriage” has solid corporate support, I was accosted by an “LGBT” rights campaigner on the street last weekend. Against my better instincts I engaged with him. Never again, it’s not worth it.
I said to him, “You’ve got marriage, now what?” He screamed (yes, screamed), “You can legally fire a gay person or transgender person in 28 states!” I responded that I thought that was fine, an employer should have the right to hire and fire at will, and that I didn’t want a man in the bathroom stall next to me, and went on my way.
I know something about employment law and immediately intuited that he was playing with facts. I looked it up, and it is true that in 28 states (or 29 depending on the website), the “LGBT” isn’t a “protected class”, i.e., doesn’t fall under existing anti-discrimination laws.
It’s impossible to overstate the overreaching nature of anti-discrimination laws. USA** is groaning under the weight of an impenetrable corpus of this legal kudzu, in which the populace is divided and subdivided into various protected classes. The only group that is not a protected class is white men and boys because they are evil oppressors who run everything and don’t need protection.
So yeah, it is narrowly true that as “sexuality” is not protected, the “LGBT” can theoretically be fired for being “LGBT.” Theoretically as in a parallel universe where 95% of children are born to married couples, where 12-year olds aren’t watching porn, where schools teach basic literacy and civics….You know, a world that doesn’t exist.
Of course, in the real world the “LGBT” are favored and cossetted and whether or not they belong to a legally protected class is completely meaningless. If someone accosts you on the street and tries this line on you, say, “Yeah, and so can a white man!”
Those stupid Americans who have supported same-sex “marriage” on the grounds of, “They’ve got what they want, now what?” are in for a big and unpleasant surprise. This is only the beginning.
*I’m using “LGBT” in quotation marks ironically.
**My name for the United States, or America, is USA. We need something that conveys its sinister, gigantic, anti-human quality. To me, USA fits the bill.
— Comments —
Abigail writes:
The reader who wrote the post entitled “Now what?” has made a significant factual error. She claims with respect to anti-discrimination laws in the United States that “[t]he only group that is not a protected class is white men and boys because they are evil oppressors who run everything and don’t need protection.” That is simply not true.
Both state and federal antidiscrimination statutes are written in a gender neutral and race neutral fashion. They HAVE to be. Otherwise such statutes would violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws. Thus, such statutes are written in terms of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and of sex – whatever that race or sex may be. White men absolutely have the right to file suit if they are discriminated against based on their race or their sex. Indeed, I am personally aware of such cases.
Your readers may wonder how this is possible if, under the supposed liberal dogma your reader alleges, white men are the evil oppressors in society? Well, it’s possible because liberal thought is capable of embracing complexity and nuance. Historically, yes, it is true that it was primarily women and African-Americans who were shut out of entire sections of the economy, especially the most lucrative. But we are a diverse country and old mores have been changing for a decades. While white men are undoubtedly still favored unfairly at the expense of others in many industries, there are certainly workplaces where that is not the case, where white men are unfairly disfavored. In such situations, white men absolutely should have recourse under the law in the same manner as women and minorities– and they do have recourse. And yes, as I said above, they at times take advantage of the recourse available to them.
It is also worth noting that gender and race are not the only protected categories in employment law. USERRA is a federal statute that prohibits hiring discrimination against military veterans — a statute that I assume protects men far more often than women since far more men serve in the military. And there are statutes that prohibit discriminating against employees based on their religious beliefs, a statute that very well may be of particular benefit to religious traditionalists like the readers of your blog whose beliefs are outside society’s current mainstream.
I understand that a lot of conservatives will take a libertarian position opposed to government infringement on employers’ hiring and firing decisions to any extent. But it is factually incorrect to state that such infringement only protects certain groups alleged to be especially favored by liberals.
Correspondent from the Occupied City writes:
What I like about The Thinking Housewife is that one learns things from it, and if you put your words out there, don’t expect to get away with lazy mistakes.
So thank you, Abigail, for pointing out my error – protected class doesn’t refer to categories of people, but “a characteristic of a person which cannot be targeted for discrimination.” I goofed – I was lazy in not carefully reading the link I provided. Anger is no excuse.
That said, I’d like Abigail to explain this: “While white men are undoubtedly still favored unfairly at the expense of others in many industries…”
Which ones would these be?
Laura writes:
Racial minorities and women are protected classes because of the constant threat of class action suits, which is why companies impose quotas.
As for discrimination against women, this is an oft-repeated myth. Women tend to stay away from many fields because of the time commitments or because they are not innately suited to them.
Jacqueline writes:
The issue I have with the LGBT activist mentioned is that, to my knowledge, there hasn’t been anyone fired based on their sexuality. Like the writer said, in theory it can happen, but in my lifetime I haven’t seen it actually practiced. If it ever does happen no doubt that employee fired will have the immense advantage given the atmosphere in today’s courts (see Boy Scouts of America for a similar case).
In response toAbigail: “Your readers may wonder how this is possible if, under the supposed liberal dogma your reader alleges, white men are the evil oppressors in society? Well, it’s possible because liberal thought is capable of embracing complexity and nuance.”
The arrogance that permeates this statement is astounding.
“And there are statutes that prohibit discriminating against employees based on their religious beliefs, a statute that very well may be of particular benefit to religious traditionalists like the readers of your blog whose beliefs are outside society’s current mainstream.”
And what beliefs are these? You talk with such legal confidence, yet you fail to even list any of the readers’ beliefs.
“USERRA is a federal statute that prohibits hiring discrimination against military veterans — a statute that I assume protects men far more often than women since far more men serve in the military.”
This is a dishonest depiction of the USERRA.The main purpose of the USERRA is to protect the rights of those in the reserve components by not getting them fired due to long absences if they are (1) deployed, which can be anywhere between four months to an entire year, and when they have (2) mandatory training such as drill weekends once a month. The employer and employee are both stuck between a rock and a hard place — these situations are never easy to cope with on either side. It is also used to help re-integrate returning soldiers so they can get up-to-speed with the current projects at work.
Also, your assumption is bizarre. You are cherry picking and expanding the original meaning. You try to depict women, automatically, as the victim in the hiring process. No one really is the victim here. Nowhere in the USERRA does it state that a military veteran will be hired or favored strictly on his military experience; it states that a person with a military background cannot be automatically disqualified based on that given fact. He may not even get the job. He may not even get pass the first round of interviews. The employee can play favorites (if you replace military service with a school, say the employee went to Stanford and hires a Stanford graduate, or a candidate from some equally prestigious institution, then that’s playing favorites), which is unfortunate, but then again being in the military is awfully unique, and it does give the candidate tangibles that may not be present in the non-military candidates, regardless of sex, and may see the military background as a plus.
It is good not to use such an Act to foolishly prove that women, somehow, are unfairly treated when met with competition. Do not blame society for the fact that men tend to enter military careers more than women. Those that are familiar with the Act, mostly Reserves and National Guardsmen, are familiar with the Act for good reasons. They don’t use it as some sort of political tool.
Joe A. writes:
Abigail lives in a parallel universe where human civilization developed only to screw with her life, not because of aeons of costly trial-and-error paid in human tears and blood.
Paul L. writes:
I think that it is human instinct to always fighting the last big war. For the left, the temptation to use the template of the civil rights movement in expanding “gay” rights must be irresistible even when it simply does not fit. The civil rights act arose to combat a massive refusal to contract with and render service to blacks in public accommodations both government and private. Preserving the rights to freely contract would have meant that blacks would have a severely restricted ability to freely contract with in many parts of the country due to the pressure from segregationists. Whether or not you support the civil rights act of 1964, this is the backstory. Nothing even remotely similar is taking place against “gay” people. The people who are refusing to serve gays are so utterly small in number,that they do not really impact a gay person’s right to contract. That is not to say that “gays” are specifically favored by employers, excepting certain corners of politics, academia and the media. It is immensely difficult to win a discriminatory hiring lawsuit even if you do belong to a protected class. Most employers who do not wish to hire certain classes of people do not leave much evidence that they are discriminating.
Josh F. writes:
Perhaps it merely rhetorical, yet, it still signals the residual of resignation. Mr. Auster taught of Liberalism’s desire to destroy the particular and unfortunately here we are predicting the next “act” of radical autonomy. It was Mr. Auster’s good friend Mark Richardson that brought us “autonomy theory” as the idea that Liberalism’s desire was self-creation through destruction of those things not chosen, ie., race, sex, religion, nationality, etc. “Now what” we are seeing is radical autonomy AND self-annihilation in full force. Western Man’s “highest value” is his right to self-annihilate… Seek and obtain Final Liberation. Of course, this reality goes well beyond just whites and essentially encompasses ALL non-Christians. ALL non-Christians are some variant of radical liberationist and thus self-annihilator. This desire has passed the critical threshold. We’ve crossed the event horizon. Western Man measures his freedom in the metric of self-annihilation and daily grows closer to more primitive “man.”
