It should be against the law, especially for a public institution, to dismiss someone based on their sexuality.

I agree. I know that meshes with your libertarian sensibilities. However, sexual orientation is not a protected class under Title VII, except at the Agency level in the Federal Government. There is no right of action in District Court for such claims. Its wrong. If she was a losing coach, fire away! But she shouldn't be dismissed for her sexuality. Plus she won. I guess there are somethings that even sports-crazed Texas cannot stand.

>This is exactly why anti-discrimination
>laws need to apply to gays and lesbians

But she won the lawsuit. Seem like the argument for adding sexual orientation to anti-discrimination laws it would be made in this case if this lady had actually failed to get judicial recourse/relief?

Rob,

Read closely. She settled the lawsuit. She didn't "win." Let me tell you, there's a huge difference. She didn't get to keep her job. I am 100% certain the suit was not brought on Title VII grounds because it would be almost immediatly dismissed on the pleadings. I'm certain there are other laws they brought the suit under. Title VII would give her a claim for relief for the discrimination based on sexual orientation claim.

Correction: Title VII currently does not allow for relief for intentional employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. It should.

If Title VII included sexual orientation, would it not also be applied to religious private school's hiring of a teacher or even a church where that church or private school believes that homosexuality is wrong? (and regarding such a church, where would the line be drawn... office staff? program coordinator? minister?) How about the boy scouts? Would they be forced to accept homosexuals as scout leaders?

Don't just tell me I'm being ridiculous and these will never happen... (though I suspect that you're thinking, "its about time for these things to happen")... give me something solid that shows a clear dividing line where that lady in your story gets more protection from Title VII, but WITHOUT the things I mentioned above happening.

Not having litigated that particular issue, my understanding is that it would not apply to that situation. Religous discrimination is allowed in limited situations when the employer is a religous body. To see an example go down to my post on Benny Hinn's security guard ad http://ironmouth.com/PermaLink.aspx?guid=a5155b2a-3d1f-46de-8c47-d75a117a709a
That shows a bit of what I'm talking about.

But your example is small relative to the problem and shouldn't be given priority. The numbers of people directly employed by religous groups is quite small.

Fact is it isn't right to discriminate on the basis of homosexuality outside the religous employment area. Its not right there either, but people have the right to practice their religon as they see fit.

Scout leaders are not employees.

RobW:

Good answer... except... in many of the pro-homosexual articles I've read from many pro-homosexual advocacy groups, a central tenet of the pro-homosexual advocate's position is that one's homosexuality is biological and unchangable, thus, according to this argument, one's homosexuality is as fundamental and unchangeable to one's "personhood" as one's race/ethnicity?

Therefore...

Is a religious organization **legally** able to openly discriminate purely based on race/ethnicity? (of course, I don't support their right to do so, but I'm just checking to make sure that they can't... surely the answer is "no")

In fact, I have "caught" you a few times in comments sections of blogs calling (what you perceived as) anti-homosexual actions or beliefs or statements "racist". By calling such "racist", are you not siding with those activists who unequivocally place one's homosexuality on equal footing as one's race/ethnicity?

If "yes", then my original question still stands and your answer is not adequate.

Or, reworded, let me ask again:

How can we be sure that religious freedom will prevail in court cases if Title VII included sexual orientation given that advocates of adding sexual orientation to Title VII consider sexual orientation to be as fundamental and unchangeable to one's personhood as one's race (and they use this argument extensively as the main reason WHY sexual orientation should be added to Title VII)?

Since Title VII does not cover this particular class, it really doesn't matter right now. As for the racist thing you were talking about my answer is ???????. Please edify.

But just to get your position straight, you think that Title VII should not be expanded to cover gays because a religion's ability to hire for religious reasons might be inhibited? Since you injected race into it, should the fact that a white racist skinhead church (Aryan Nations, that Church of Creator thing etc.) is opposed to hiring African-Americans be a sufficient basis to scrap the Title VII laws? I think not. Therefore the fact that some religons might be adversely affected in hiring under Title VII isn't really a good reason not to extend benefits either.

I'm pretty sure that if a gay person was excluded from the religon, they would be excludible from employment as well by a religous employer. Now the ability of any random Christian to say--I won't hire becasue they are gay would be compromised as much as an African-American person who said that his religon prohibited him from hiring whites.

>does not cover this particular
>class, it really doesn't matter
>right now

In other words, lets add it now, and work out the details later. If Christians or Catholics or other religious groups get steamrolled or sued into non-existance, "oh, well, good riddance". (Nice lawyerly answer, BTW)

>should the fact that a white racist skinhead
>church (Aryan Nations, that Church of Creator
>.thing etc.) is opposed to hiring
>African-Americans be a sufficient basis
>to scrap the Title VII laws?

No. And you are comparing apples to oranges.

Also, by using this argument, you are further admitting that you **personally** equate discrimination based on sexual orientation to be exactly the same as discrimination based on sexual orientation. (Also, reading between the lines, it suspect that you are 100% convinced that you're position is 100% correct and that all who hold differing views are ignorant, bigotted morons. Correct? That would explain your "who cares about the mess" attitude.)

Moreover, the problem here is that (1) a majority of Americans would likely disagree ..and.. (2) The science which determines that ethnicity is biological and not chosen (and that such differences are biologically negligible) is irrefutable ...while... the science that makes the **same** claim for sexual orientation is EXTREMELY refutable with much controversy and disagreement. Heck, while browsing pro-homosexual activist web sites from well-known and respected organizations.... they can't even agree on HOW/WHY sexual orientation is purely biological and not a product of choices/environment. They give a wide variety of answers.

>But your example is small
>relative to the problem
>and shouldn't be given
>priority. The numbers of
>people directly employed by
>religious groups is quite small.

I don't have the exact figures, but I would bet that more people are directly employed by religious groups than there are homosexuals in our country.... and I doubt either group tops 3%.

Of course, such small numbers percentage-wise doesn't take away from the seriousness and importance of getting this right! In fact, both percentages are likely higher than the percentage of Jews in Germany (<1%) just before the holocaust.

Also, the number of people effected by their child's private Christian schools or church being forced to hire a lesbian teacher or homosexual administrator would **dwarf** BOTH of these other numbers if such a situation became commonplace.

>if a gay person was excluded from the religion

For the record, keep in mind that my examples involved LEADERSHIP positions, not mere attendance or membership.

>Christians or Catholics
excuse me, I meant "Protestants or Catholics"

>**personally** equate discrimination based
>on sexual orientation to be exactly the same >as discrimination based on sexual orientation

I meant:
**personally** equate discrimination based
on sexual orientation to be exactly the same
as discrimination based on race/ethnicity

(I'm going to have to start slowing down and proofing better.)

Rob, public and private..two different things. See the BSA decision.--s

And what exactly does "pro-homosexual" mean?

>"pro-homosexual"
A quick way to reference those who believe in expanding the "rights" and "protection" (beyond what is already available) to people based on sexual orientation. Is there a better term to reference such people without using a whole sentence each time?

>See the BSA decision.
http://www.lowenstein.com/new/High_Court.html
That was a 5-4 decision. Not very comforting.

(1) Suppose that "Boy Scouts of America v. Dale" went the other way? What would THEN prevent the scenarios that I described?

(2) If inclusion of sexual orientation into Title VII gives sexual orientation the "same footing" as race/ethnicity, then the BSA decision and the public/private arguments are mute point. (Scott, please re-read my posts above... (typos and all) ... I think that you are missing some of my points)

(3) Surely there are **better** assurances that the nightmare scenarios I describe above couldn't happen? (But I'm afraid the answer is "no")

Rob, I'm not missing any of your slippery slope arguments, I've read each comment. --s

J. Scott--public and private are two different things--yet you can't deny a person a job in the private sector based on their race, age or sex, (note age and sex come with caveats regarding the physical differences.) Sex and Age discrimination are also protected classes and you can't discriminate against people of those classes either, unless there is some basic reason, intrinsic to the organization that has something to do with sex or age. Public and private are not different when it comes to employment discrimination.

Fact is this religious stuff is a red herring. Gay people should have the right to work where they want. If a religion decides to discriminate against gays as a part of their religion, that's fine, I can see an exception worked into religious employment. But there's no reason why a gay person should be denied a job by a regular employer because he or she is gay. None. Chucking out the whole idea of protections because religion might be affected is b.s.--protections can be written in.

Note, Rob, that your apples and oranges point is wrong--you are saying religion should get a pass because of its beliefs. OK, fine but if a religion's beliefs include racial discrimination, is that reason to wipe out all of Title VII. No one thinks so. That's why a Jewish temple can require its employees to be members of the Jewish religion. It only makes sense.

Also the number of religious jobs and the number of gays in the population are unrelated as far as this question goes. Gays should have rights to the full panalopy of jobs, excluding bona fide religious organizations who exclude gays.

As for the stuff about "reading between the lines, it suspect that you are 100% convinced that you're position is 100% correct and that all who hold differing views are ignorant, bigotted morons. Correct? That would explain your "who cares about the mess" attitude." Um, no.

Do I think I am 100% right when it comes to the issue of letting gays work where they would like without fear of prejudice? How could I not think that? Of course I think I am right.

As for your evidence on whether people are born gay, well, let's see some peer-reviewed papers on the subject from reputable medical journals or biology journals.

But even if it was a chosen behavior, why should people have the right to discriminate against others for that behavior? Choosing to marry or sleep with someone of a different race is a chosen behavior, yet I would bet that you think it would be wrong to discriminate against someone for marrying or sleeping with someone of a particular race, no?

RW:

You've created a strawman to argue against in your last post and that strawman bears little resemblance to me and my points.

But I'm glad you are now open to the idea that "protections can be written in"... I'm just not so optimistic that this is what the majority of gay rights activists have in mind. Also, the details do matter... what language do you propose for such "protections"? Can you point me to a single web site or journal or organization which advocates adding such "protections" into their proposed laws which would extend gay-rights? (Not that they'd intrinsically care... but maybe they'd do so for the sake of gaining support or minimizing opposition?)

I should make it clear that it is NOT my mission or intent to harass gays or to make their lives more difficult. Frankly, that story from the NY times appalls me as much as it does you. I find that behavior of that school system reprehensible. Just so you'll know, I had a gay person work for me a few years back when I ran a small department of a small company. He and I got along great and I treated him just as I did other employees. Back in college, I recall staying up really late one night outside the Student Union building spending **hours** talking about such issues with the President of the Gay/Lesbian Student Union... we didn't agree on much, but we had a very engaging and civilized conversation.

I mention these things because I know that so many liberals have been brainwashed into thinking that everyone who doesn't accept homosexuality as normal is a "homophobe". This is often NOT the case. We aren't looking to stamp out all instances of sodomy in our neighborhood tonight... we just don't want "Heather has Two Mommies" read to our 1st grader at school the next day.

Nevertheless, while I'm not too worried about gays being open about their sexuality in public high school teaching situations, I do have concerns about even **public** ELEMENTARY schools in regards to teachers being openly gay... particularly in those cases where the community at large is against it and the State doesn't specifically have a provision for it.

But there are two good solutions:

(1) a full-blown voucher system (where everyone can **choose** what school they want based on their own education preferences and their own values)

and/or

(2) a return to State/local control of education where Massachusetts can have their schools run with their values and South Carolina can have their schools run with their own values.

>let's see some peer-reviewed
>papers on the subject from
>reputable medical journals
>or biology journals

I've seen enough politics disguised as science where the researcher had a pro-gay agenda to start with and/or the scientific study was full of botched methodology ...these have make me very skeptical of just how "reputable" these studies in "reputable" journals are.

But, as I said, nevertheless, the pro-gay community is all over the map on their "scientific" points... there is no coherent science to this... often, they take **one** study and act like a single study settles it for all time... and/or they a studies's results and assume that one of the possible causes for the results is the ONLY cause, ignoring the other possible causes.

I'd be happy to explore this more... but I think that the ball is more in your court on this one.

I start from the basic premise that noone should be fired based on their sexual orientation period. I would make exceptions for religous organizations, private non-profit organizations, etc.. If a person follows all of the decorum and expectations of heterosexuals in the workplace yet he or she is fired based on their sexual orientation, it's obvious that the firing is discriminatory and should be handled as such. If life worked that way, I'd fire all the damn University of Florida alumni at work and hire only beer-swilling 'Noles fans who smoke.

What Scott said combined with a full-blown voucher system (where the voucher funds would be **treated** as if they were private funds) would probably be the most reasonable compromise that would make the most people happy and get everyone those things that all sides view as most critical to their own interests... but, again, I'm VERY skeptical that the gay-activist lobby and their left-wing allies would settle for such a compromise.

I'm opposed to vouchers. That's my tax dollars supporting your religious school. Not with my money.

As for religous exemptions, they are already in the Title VII universe. Note that no Catholic Priests are women. Title VII cannot remedy that because it is a bona fide religious exception to the rules.

Similarly, if a religious organization refuses to admit practicing gays into its fold, then it should not also have to hire them as well in its orgainizations. We'll leave the question of "cured" gay people who backslide for another day.

However, no private employer not affiliated with a religious institution should be allowed to discriminate against gays. That should be the law, period. And I'm not just saying that as an employment lawyer.

RobW:

Do you have a problem with the fact that the GI bill after WWII allowed many former soldiers to cash this in on a religious seminary education where some even used this for training to become ministers? (No one seems to have had any 1st amendment objections back then... maybe because we are now reading new things into the 1st amendment?)

BTW.. its not YOUR money... its EVERYONE'S money. and under a voucher system, since everyone decides for themselves... the choices made reflect the people's preferences, not the governments. Therefore, you have no leg to stand on. The 1st Amendment's highest priority is to not allow the Federal Government mettle one way or the other. But your position does exactly that. It seeks to establish Government preference of specifically non-religious education over the choices of Americans. In fact, the Supreme Court has ruled that such is true several times.

I have to disagree with your points Rob. Non-religious education is exactly that, non-religious. It isn't anti-religious. It chooses not to discuss the question, feeling it is better left for private matters. As for establishing a preference for non-religious education--there is nothing wrong with that. Government money should not go to any religion.

As for the "Government" meddling--I hate to break it to you and all of the other movement conservatives, but, as Abe Lincoln said, its a "government OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people." It is us. We are the government. Our votes elect the government--arguing any other way demeans our own civic responsibility to determine the course of our polity. Why do we have huge deficits? The people want them. Why do we have the problems we do? The people want them. The problems that exist exist because Americans are unwilling to confront the difficult choices that face us. They want more prisons, but not in their backyard. They want the government to save money by closing military bases, just not "their" bases. They think government spending is bad, unless it is money spent in their congressional district or state.

The same goes for religion. They want to have vouchers to attend their religious school, but they don't want to pay for a Buddhist university or Louis Farrakhan. Americans can't have both. That's why the Constitution was written the way it was--to protect people of all religions by not injecting the state into religious matters. Why do you want to take the government's money and spend it on that? We can't even pay for up-armored Humvees, let alone the religious schooling of millions.

The proper libretarian view is to say that the Government should not be engaging in teaching religion to children, directly or indirectly.

>Why do you want to take the
>government's money and spend it on that?

Because it is just plain wrong to expect Christians (or anyone else who desires **any** type of religious-oriented education) to have to pay DOUBLE... privately for their own children's education... and also for other's secular education via their taxes. (This is also a burden that forces people into choices which favor RobW's values at the exclusion of their own values.)

During the 1st 75 or so years of our country, this problem was solved because education was almost completely privately funded at that time. In the mid to late 1900s, we switched to a public education system because about 5-15 percent (depending on which part of the country) were not getting educated. Ironically, MUCH MORE students today are dropping out of school and/or cannot hardly read/write after graduating from high school.

During that time prior to schools being public, a huge number of schools were religious based (by choice, btw). In fact, it is a very post-modern concept to have children educated in a strictly secular environment. For thousands of years, religion was often interwoven with education. (I know, you're thinking that this leads to "world is flat" thinking... true in some unfortunate cases). But, MORE often, it also leads to an appreciation of values and ethics and accountability to God as students learn their various subjects. Often, this takes place simply by using the Bible for reading/writing assignments. And if one truely believes that God created the world, why should God be so compartmentalized for that family? Especially since it is incredibly hard for parent's limited time at nights/weekends plus time in Church to compete with 35-40 hours of school.

If public schools were truly as neutral as you say, you might have a decent point... but I have a mountain of evidence demonstrating that schools are NOT neutral and often aggressively pursue a distinctly atheistic/humanistic agenda that sets itself up against the tenets of faith. Very often, students are imparted world views and paradigms that conflict with many religious faiths.

(would you like for me to present some of this evidence?)

Finally, I still don't see how allowing individual families to make their own choices constitutes "establishment of religion" from the government. In such a system, everyone is free to make their own choices and the choices made overall reflect what the taxpayers overall desire... not what some politician wants to impose on the people.

Not only are you wrong on this point... but also, the courts have consistently ruled on my side in this matter:

http://www.allianceforschoolchoice.org/media_20050317_evt.php

Rob, I think we have different notions of citizenship and your logic is flawed. If you think it is unfair for Christian parents to pay twice to educate children in the way they want, then it must be doubly true for me, a non-Christian, who has no children whatsoever. Thus under your logic, you can only stand for NO public education at all, not public funds to go to individual Christian families to educate their children in religious schools.

I disagree. I think it is our DUTY to support the public education of our citzens-they fight in our armies, drive our streets, interact with other citizens and work in our government and businesses. Thus education is a PUBLIC GOOD, much like POLICE AND FIRE DEPARTMENTS AND THE ARMED FORCES. Thus it is entirely appropriate that the people of the country have a DUTY to support public education financially, whether they have children or not.

As for your evidence, sure I'd like to see it, but I won't accept it uncritically. I would guess that it consists of people teaching and saying things you don't like, especially on science. That's not a religous/atheistic bias at all--for example, the Catholic Church has long held that the theory of Evolution is fully compatible with their brand of Christianity. Thus the largest Christian church is just fine with it. How are we supposed to teach science now? Just because American fundamentalist Christians disagree with one part of modern science doesn't mean that the schools should change the way the stuff is taught. Now I think you'd agree that it is impossible for the schools to try and teach around every single religion, and indeed, there would be places where it would be impossible.

Just because a school doesn't teach exactly what you want doesn't make you a victim of it. But the schools must teach something--and paralyzing them because you don't agree with it is wrong. If you don't agree with it, you should take your kids elsewhere. I shouldn't have to pay for it either.

Regardless of whether the courts agree or not, that doesn't mean that I have to pay for it. I can fight any legislative proposal I choose. And I will.

I've kind of over done it on blogging for the past week or so. I need to back off for a few days... but I'll be back on this thread soon with some interesting information which will answer your questions (and, btw, evolution is but one small, thought significant, piece of this puzzle).