6th Circuit: Diversity Trump's religious freedom

[_Droopy]

The complicating factor here is that the state is also running a business and businesses do normally reserve the right, depending on anti-discrimination law, to term at-will employees for publicly embarrassing them.

Exactly. Which is why I support their actions.

No, I suspect you support their actions because you are a totalitarian leftist who worships power and glories in the ability of institutions who think and view the world as you do to crush individual dissent.

The core problem of campus speech codes (which, it should be remembered are almost solely the creation of the academic Left) has nothing to do with embarrassing them (which is pointedly laughable given the strong compartmentalization and alienation of modern academia from mainstream American society), being an employee, or any other procedural or technical matter.

The crux of the matter is that speech codes of this kind, which have been prominent across American academia for roughly 30 years now, are utterly incompatible with both a free and open society and the mission of an institution of higher learning within that society.

Indeed, The University of Toledo appears to be, not to mince words, pc central:

http://thefire.org/spotlight/codes/1289.html

[_EAllusion]

The core problem of campus speech codes

This issue has nothing to do with campus speech codes. Either you're a well programmed bot or a even better programmed human.

[Guest]

Dixon was dismissed from her university post after she wrote a personal letter to the editor of a local newspaper objecting to the characterization of homosexuality as being the same as race.

This is directly related to the university administration's regulation of acceptable speech and expression of viewpoint as codified for employees and students in its official student speech codes but which extend, through codes applying to the entire campus community, to that entire community, including professors (unless they are politically correct professors, in which case they are released from any such observance); these are rules, regulations, and injunctions setting the limits and constitutions of conduct on that campus.

Codes, in other words. Dixon was quite clearly yet another victim of on-campus intellectual Leninism that always flows in only one direction: from the ensconced, tenured academic Left and controlling administrative authority, against conservatives/libertarians. They would have canned her if she were an administrator, a student, or a janitor.

[_lulu]

I think the courts are wrong on this one. But as a matter of fact, the employee had few problems to overcome.

1. She had the burden of proof and legal presumptions were against her.

2. There's a Sup. Ct. opinion that backs up the 6th Cir.
"Dixon must then show that under the Pickering balancing test, her 'free speech interests outweigh the efficiency interests of the government as employer.'"

3. There was a 6th Cir. case too, the Rose case.
"The Rose presumption dictates that 'where a confidential or policymaking publicemployee is discharged on the basis of speech related to his political or policy views, the Pickering balance favors the government as a matter of law.'” emphasis mine

So the case turned on whether she was a "confidential or policy making public employee?"

Job description "Specifically, this duty requires that the Associate Vice President '[p]rovide leadership in recommending, implementing and overseeing human resource policies and procedures that support the university’s strategic direction; reflect fair and equitable practices; and that are a model for innovative regulatory compliant and contemporary practice.'”

Furthermore, the employee had authority to make her own personnel appointments.

The whole decision is available at

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case? ... i=scholarr

Looks like it was a 3-0 decision.

[_subgenius]

All this woman did is express some views on homosexuality that suggest she's a bigot.

exactly how does "objecting to the characterization of homosexuality as being the same as race" suggest bigotry?
She did not express intolerance or prejudice for homosexuality did she?
or did you mean bigoted towards people who compare homosexuality to race?

[_Jaybear]

All this woman did is express some views on homosexuality that suggest she's a bigot.

exactly how does "objecting to the characterization of homosexuality as being the same as race" suggest bigotry?
She did not express intolerance or prejudice for homosexuality did she?
or did you mean bigoted towards people who compare homosexuality to race?

The word "suggests" was well used.

The statement "suggests" bigotry, because homophobic bigots will often make the claim, despite all objective evidence to the contrary, that homosexuality is a choice.

Ergo, the fact that she made the same widely discredited factual claim, suggests quite clearly that she is a bigot.

Your inability to grasp this simple concept "suggests" that you harbor the same view but aren't willing to admit to yourself, that you are also a homophobic bigot.

[_Droopy]

exactly how does "objecting to the characterization of homosexuality as being the same as race" suggest bigotry?

Notice how EA suggests his own less than subtle bigotry here? What this woman did was openly express a perfectly reasonable alternative view that is, however, incompatible with the Left's reigning bigotries relative to the nature of homosexuality.

She dared to express views which the Anointed have declared outside legitimate discourse.

When will those commoners learn to keep their place...

[_Droopy]

The statement "suggests" bigotry, because homophobic bigots will often make the claim, despite all objective evidence to the contrary, that homosexuality is a choice.
Ergo, the fact that she made the same widely discredited factual claim, suggests quite clearly that she is a bigot.

The claim that homosexuality can be simplistically reduced to a genetic essentialist argument for a definable, empirically isolatable "cause" of homosexual ideation and perception has not the slightest scientific evidence to support it, and never has (nor has this, by any means, always been the primary argument of homosexual activists and intellectuals in the U.S.), nor is there any really compelling reason to believe this is even plausible.

The "born that way" argument has never been anything more than an argument constructed for public consumption for deployment during the culture war necessary to legitimize homosexual behavior and culture and destroy the older Judeo-Christian (and gospel, broadly speaking) norms and boundaries.

This isn't about "bigotry" but about civilizational survival, which is more threatened, perhaps, by the legitimization of homosexuality and the "gay" lifestyle and sub-culture as a sub-set of the broader sexual revolution that began with Kinsey and metastasized in the late sixties, than any other challenge facing Western civilization as its settles itself in the trough of a "pride cycle."

Your inability to grasp this simple concept "suggests" that you harbor the same view but aren't willing to admit to yourself, that you are also a homophobic bigot.

Bigots like Jaybear are the past masters of projection. They have no rational, philosophically substantive ideas or arguments to bring to the marketplace of ideas, and hence can only stand on the periphery of that marketplace and call names.

The original Korihor was of the same kind: bold, brash, presumptions, pompous, sanctimonious, and intellectually sloppy.

But he was popular, which is, after all, all the really matters.

[Guest]

The "born that way" argument has never been anything more than an argument constructed for public consumption for deployment during the culture war necessary to legitimize homosexual behavior and culture and destroy the older Judeo-Christian (and gospel, broadly speaking) norms and boundaries.

So, you are saying that you could be convinced to be homosexual if your Christian "values" are shown to be false or called into question...So much of your posting history makes more sense now. No wonder you seem so bitter and confused...

[_Jaybear]

...
This isn't about "bigotry" but about civilizational survival, which is more threatened, perhaps, by the legitimization of homosexuality and the "gay" lifestyle and sub-culture as a sub-set of the broader sexual revolution that began with Kinsey and metastasized in the late sixties, than any other challenge facing Western civilization as its settles itself in the trough of a "pride cycle."

Just as I suspected. As I said:

Your inability to grasp this simple concept "suggests" that you harbor the same view but aren't willing to admit to yourself that you are also a homophobic bigot.

Bigots like Jaybear are the past masters of projection. They have no rational, philosophically substantive ideas or arguments to bring to the marketplace of ideas, and hence can only stand on the periphery of that marketplace and call names.

Did you learn that retort in first grade. "I am rubber, you are glue?"

The "born that way" argument has never been anything more than an argument constructed for public consumption for deployment during the culture war necessary to legitimize homosexual behavior and culture and destroy the older Judeo-Christian (and gospel, broadly speaking) norms and boundaries.

So, you are saying that you could be convinced to be homosexual if your Christian "values" are show to be false or called into question...So much of your posting history makes more sense now. No wonder you seem so bitter and confused...

Self loathing would explain quite a bit. Almost makes me feel sorry for him.