Years ago, when the drive for “hate crime” legislation first started taking off, I noticed the rising confluence of speech codes, radical “diversity”-mongering and nascent hate-speech codes, and said “one of the logical consequences of this could be classifying Christianity – or at least the “wrong” kind of Christianity – as a hate crime”.
The audience – mostly liberals, mostly smug about it – scoffed. “Poor white WASP, complaining about oppression”, responded the middle-class white anglo-saxons of indeterminate religious interest.
As George Will points out, I was, of course, right:
Marriage is the foundation of the natural family and sustains family values. That sentence is inflammatory, perhaps even a hate crime.
At least it is in Oakland, Calif. That city’s government says those words, italicized here, constitute something akin to hate speech and can be proscribed from the government’s open e-mail system and employee bulletin board.
It’s within government, of course:
Some African American Christian women working for Oakland’s government organized the Good News Employee Association (GNEA), which they announced with a flier describing their group as “a forum for people of Faith to express their views on the contemporary issues of the day. With respect for the Natural Family, Marriage and Family Values.”
The flier was distributed after other employees’ groups, including those advocating gay rights, had advertised their political views and activities on the city’s e-mail system and bulletin board. When the GNEA asked for equal opportunity to communicate by that system and that board, it was denied. Furthermore, the flier they posted was taken down and destroyed by city officials, who declared it “homophobic” and disruptive.
The city government said the flier was “determined” to promote harassment based on sexual orientation. The city warned that the flier and communications like it could result in disciplinary action “up to and including termination.”
Effectively, the city has proscribed any speech that even one person might say questioned the gay rights agenda and therefore created what that person felt was a “hostile” environment.
This, even though gay rights advocates used the city’s communication system to advertise “Happy Coming Out Day.” Yet the terms “natural family,” “marriage” and “family values” are considered intolerably inflammatory.
In other words, “protected classes” are official protected from any sort of offense at all.
The flier supposedly violated the city regulation prohibiting “discrimination and/or harassment based on sexual orientation.” The only cited disruption was one lesbian’s complaint that the flier made her feel “targeted” and “excluded.” So anyone has the power to be a censor just by saying someone’s speech has hurt his or her feelings.
Unless the speech is “progressive.”
The GNEA should look at the bright side; pretty soon, they’ll be able to drown their sorrows in a moslem foot bath.
“middle-class white anglo-saxons of indeterminate religious interest”
Often they will say they are Unitarian. I prefer the term secularist for the Oakland civil servants here because they seem to have an agenda to build a hate based society or at least use hate to self motivate. Didn’t they listen to Obama’s famous speech recently where he said religion should not be used to divide but to unite? Well, some Unitarians are using the religion’s credibility for politcal gain and have been for years. There is no creed in the Unitarian society/religion. Therefore hate based attacks targetting families like this should be repudiated by Unitarians.
Nice little zinger at the end there. “Moslem foot bath”. They should ban all beef product from the employee cafetria too.
PC has gotten totally out of control. Recall that the so called St Paul human rights director banned stuffed rabbits from city hall because he says they are Christian rabbits. What next? Ban bagels from the cafeteria because it is Jewish food?
No, ban plush Piglet dolls because they might offend Muslims.
ban all stuffed animals because they might offend the PETA/vegan types.
The following groups have been declared hate-organizations by the left PC police:
Salvation Army
Boy Scouts of America
Catholic church
The United Way in Duluth banned any contributions to the Boy Scouts.
I stopped donating “my fair share” to the united way some time ago because of things like that. The guy banning stuffed rabbits is an idiot, we will always have people like that. As far as hate speech goes, I remember the Skokie thing years ago, hard to believe a nation that respected free speech so much back then that they were willing to throw money, time and their safety so those nuts could march has fallen so far so quick. Free speech is free speech and “hate” speech comes with it.
Overall I think the United Way is still a very worthy organization and donate via payroll check. I would just not give to my local UW chapter if they were one of those that discriminate against the Boy Scouts.
Chuck-please check out the United Way in more depth…you might decide that they are actually NOT a worthy organization in the least.
Buzz said: “I stopped donating “my fair share” to the united way some time ago because of things like that.”
Sounds like you’re not one of them generous conservatives, eh buzzkill? Scary Colleen either.
So the United Way is the ONLY organization worthy of charitable donations, eh AC?
C’mon, you can do better than that. That attempt at pithy snark falls even below MY gelatinous snarking abilities. Dare I say, “pitiful”?
Good point, Bill C. No doubt they’re giving that money to the NRA and deserving televangelists.