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The Chicago Tribune reports that the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals—which sets precedent in Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin—ruled
that workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The plaintiff, a college teacher, said she was reprimanded for kissing her girlfriend, then was not given full-time work at the college and was dismissed. The college denied that it discriminated against her.
MP3 audio of the oral arguments is available.
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LGBT Workers in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin Gain Protection
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To be a kind of moral Unix, he touched the hem of Nature's shift.
-- Shelley
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @12:05PM (35 children)
Government cannot lead society; government can only follow society.
If you want to force people to associate with you, then you yourself are a jerk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @12:16PM
Those who have authority backed by guns sometimes don't pay much attention to a festering public until it starts getting out of control.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:40PM (23 children)
Nobody is being forced to associate with anyone else. This is about discrimination in employment, housing and customer service. You do not have to associate with your employees, your bosses, your neighbors, your renters, your landlords, your customers, or your vendors. Most of these, except neighbors, are simple business transactions.
Example: Alex and Bob want to contract with Evila Hatings to bake a wedding cake. This is a simple business transaction. It does not mean that either party "associates" with the other. It certainly does not mean that either party endorses, supports or condones the views of the other. I'm sure Alex and Bob would not want to be seen as endorsing Evila's hate based hateful hating. Similarly Evila Hatings would not want to be seen as endorsing or condoning any act between two men that does not involve guns and killing.
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(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:53PM (17 children)
'Nuff said.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday April 06 2017, @03:32PM (16 children)
So I am 'associated' with the person at the grocery check out aisle?
I am associated with the person who mows my lawn? With the person who puts a new roof on my house?
And moreover, I somehow can be seen to endorse all of their personal views?
I don't think so.
Maybe 'associated' is the wrong word here and was introduced to deliberately obfuscate the issue. I'll stick with the idea of endorse their personal views. Just because I shake hands with someone, conduct business with, live next door to, rent to, rent from, or otherwise engage in ordinary everyday activity with someone does not mean I endorse their political, religious or other views. And our differences in views should not be a basis on which to discriminate against people in ordinary every day casual interactions.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @04:21PM (14 children)
You're talking about other people's interpretations of your associations; I'm talking about one's own interpretation of one's own associations.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday April 06 2017, @05:10PM (13 children)
Whose interpretations of associations is irrelevant.
What matters is that people cannot discriminate in economic matters against people they hate. Especially for employment, housing and commerce.
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(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @05:40PM (12 children)
Government cannot lead society; government can only follow society.
If you want to force people to associate with you, then you yourself are a jerk.
Get it, yet?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday April 06 2017, @06:37PM (4 children)
No. I don't 'get it'.
What I get is that people are free to hate all they want. What they cannot do is discriminate against the people they hate. But feel free to go on hating.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @06:43PM (3 children)
amirite, mate?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @09:16PM (1 child)
Keep stretching that mental layer, I will be amused when it finally snaps.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday April 06 2017, @10:02PM
You seem to believe the snap will occur at a point in the future rather than the past.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @11:47PM
"Haters gonna hate to associate!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @07:35PM (6 children)
I like how whenever somebody disagrees with you you just repost your exact same opening statement as if expecting that somehow settles the matter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @08:55PM (5 children)
You're just too stupid to see the logical connections.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @09:24PM (3 children)
Government cannot lead society; government can only follow society.
If you want to force people to associate with you, then you yourself are a jerk.
No one is being forced to be friends with anyone else, but everyone IS being prevented from discriminating against people in the economic realm: "workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
I think you're too stupid to get over your own "moral" hangups and see the bigger picture. Do you think we should still have segregation? Should some hardcore feminists deny you coffee because they think you're a turd? Should people be denied job opportunities based on their skin color? How about all white males are no longer allowed to hold full time jobs? Is that fair? What level of discrimination are you saying is OK?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @09:42PM (2 children)
Interesting choice of words, there, particularly when defending your own moral hangups.
Segregation was bad, yes, and it was bad when either government or private parties enforced it. Should a hardcore feminist deny me coffee because she hates my white male meatbag: absolutely, as she is no one else's property and can make her own choices. Same goes for any other privately-owned enterprise, be it beverage, service, retail, food, housing, etc.
If you object to privately-owned property being subject to the owner's whims, then please inform me of a convenient time for you to meet the several people I will send your way to take up residence in your "obviously underutilized" dining room.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @10:18PM (1 child)
Annnd you can't see the future impact of allowing such decisions. It 100% results in discrimination and segregation, which incidentally is why we have these laws.
Thankfully "geniuses" such as yourself are stuck complaining about it while most everyone else thinks "Yay society is getting less horrible!"
Does this meet your troll quota for the day? Or will you continue like a gleeful fat little kid getting more cookies?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @10:43PM
So, your rebuttal is "people are too stupid to govern themselves, so I want someone I like to rule over them"? Otherwise your retort looks like a baseless assertion.
The story deals with a matter germane to the USA, and thus the concept of "I exclusively own the body I inhabit and all derivative works thereof" may be foreign to you. Its shorthand reference is the word freedom. Honoring freedom is hard. Doing anything correctly is hard. It's so much easier if you can just treat other people as chattel property, but I for one am firmly against slavery.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @11:53PM
And your just too logical to see the stupid connections! Naayaaa, nyaaaa!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @06:24PM
So I am 'associated' with the person at the grocery check out aisle?
Not really. You may be associating with the grocery store's owner (assuming for simplicity it's a sole proprietorship), and they're definitely associating with the person they hired to run the register.
I am associated with the person who mows my lawn? With the person who puts a new roof on my house?
Probably. Maybe. (Assuming those are both independent contractors, rather them employees of a larger lawn-care/roofing firm.)
And moreover, I somehow can be seen to endorse all of their personal views?
Sure, I suppose you can be, since anyone can see anything any way they like... but what the FUCK does that have to do with association?
Maybe 'associated' is the wrong word here and was introduced to deliberately obfuscate the issue.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's the wrong word. It's a term that's been used in legal thought for a long time (particularly in the term "freedom of association"), and it's not gonna change now just because you don't like it.
Now does it apply to single transactions (like the grocery store in your example)? Maybe not; that's more likely to be listed as "freedom of contract" than "freedom of association"; the two are of course related and overlapping; there's some disagreement exactly how much overlap or where the edges are. Day labor? Right on the edge. Long term employment? Definitely association.
I'll stick with the idea of endorse their personal views
Which is an idea you brought into the discussion, and has little to do with freedom of association, so, sure, stick with it.
But I don't get it... if you don't want to talk about freedom of association, why in the world did you reply to our local libertrollian's post about association? Surely you could have started your own thread to talk about people endorsing each others' personal views?
(Score: 1) by Scrutinizer on Thursday April 06 2017, @08:29PM (4 children)
Your claims could only be true if government owned the businesses conducting the transactions. Granted, this is actually the case in all countries I'm aware of sans the USA - and US governments do make defacto claims of ownership over all private businesses through such "laws" as referenced in the story.
Associating can be as simple as being in the general proximity of another person. Speaking in general as a free self-owning USian, I cannot force you to move yourself away from me, but I do have the authority to move myself away from you. What would my status be if I were not free to remove my own self from your presence for any reason at all?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday April 06 2017, @10:00PM (3 children)
I happen to think the civil rights act is the right thing. I don't have to hang out with people I don't like. But I can't deny them employment or housing. But some people seem to think it is okay to deny employment or housing to people they don't like. The people who think this probably have never been on the wrong end of the discrimination before. I haven't been, but I can empathize with those who have.
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(Score: 1) by Scrutinizer on Thursday April 06 2017, @11:03PM (2 children)
Let's break your response down to its fundamentals:
The Civil Rights Acts [wikipedia.org] (of which there were several) are excellent insofar as they apply to government agents and offices only. Laws point guns at people, and advocating for laws is advocating for pointing guns at people. (Pointing guns CAN be a good thing, as robbers and murderers might otherwise run riot.) You are therefore advocating the use of force to compel individuals to associate or serve others non-consensually. Correct me if I'm wrong, but then you must also show how your support for law/force is somehow in harmony with the USA's principle that involuntary servitude is illegal [wikipedia.org].
Who owns your business? Who owns your real estate? If you are the owner, then by definition, you can make your own property subject to any whim - visitors have two choices: comply or get out. Incidentally, if enough potential visitors decide to "get out" or never visit in the first place, you as a private entity unsupported by government largess will run out of resources and go out of business. Such action is the proper tool for free, self-repecting humans to deal with bigoted business-owners, versus threatening them with deadly force.
If you cannot subject your possessions to your will... then you're really not the owner, are you? This very question is quite critical for every "American home owner" to examine closely, not to mention the typical small-business "owner". A society built on fraud is not expected to last long.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday April 07 2017, @04:57AM (1 child)
If you cannot subject your possessions to your will... then you're really not the owner, are you? This very question is quite critical for every "American home owner" to examine closely, not to mention the typical small-business "owner".
Of course you're not really the owner. The land was taken from someone else, currently you are using it and eventually someone else will take it. That's the history of most land. In between it may be passed on by other means but any which way, ownership is a temporary state, usually dependent on following certain rules to avoid having it taken from you. Don't believe me, try not paying your taxes.
Similar with businesses, you're allowed to operate a business as long as you follow certain rules. Try starting a business selling drugs without a bunch of paperwork and you are likely to get locked up and forced into involuntary servitude. One of the rules for a public serving business is to serve everyone in a non-discriminatory manner.
A society built on fraud is not expected to last long.
Most societies are built on fraud, often mixed with violence. Assuming you're American, consider how the land was violently taken from the previous owners and how much fraud was used in the treaty making when it was traded for.
(Score: 1) by Scrutinizer on Friday April 07 2017, @05:37AM
Agreed, in the defacto sense. This is why I point these things out using simple ugly language, as the vast majority of people within the USA seem to have never given any thought to it and are taken aback by the concept that, in practice, they don't own anything and as such they effectively live under naked criminal rule. The fact that fraud and force have been used through the overwhelmingly vast majority of human history is no excuse for tolerating it in one's own society in the here and now.
Considering the sheer number of US people who at least claim to abhor fraud and coercion, in conjunction with the sheer number of small arms they collectively possess, these are powerful truths that are best revealed at every opportunity.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 06 2017, @05:43PM (9 children)
Government cannot lead society; government can only follow society.
Society? No.
Commerce? YES.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @05:52PM (6 children)
Human interaction is human interaction.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 06 2017, @06:53PM (5 children)
Murder is also human interaction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @07:00PM (4 children)
I'm confused as to how you think you've bolstered your position or weakened mine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @07:26PM
truth is lies
black is white
see, i can do it too
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 06 2017, @07:52PM (2 children)
Most people are OK with the government making the human interaction of murder illegal (e.g. regulating it).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @08:59PM (1 child)
Doesn't make it right.
Also, you'll notice that murder is still rampant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @09:27PM
Dear lord you just advocated against society punishing murder... my guess is you're just a total troll, my guess is Der Buzzard posting as AC with a specific set of catch phrases. Your arguments / counter arguments are too dumb to not be trolling while also able to construct proper sentences.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @08:33PM (1 child)
The resounding success of the USA's decades-long "War on Drugs" calls the veracity of your claims into question.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @12:32AM
There are such good points all over the place; people refuse to see the world for what it is.
The most entrenched religion of them all is Statism.