Image: Wikimedia Commons
I just sent the following email to this Kentucky business owner. I’m HORRIFIED his family received death and rape threats for his store policy, but I’m also horrified at his policy.
Dear Herald Owner,
I am terribly sorry your wife and children received death and rape threats in response to your policy to “refuse to produce promotional products that promote homosexuality.” I’m glad the two men were charged with Terrorist Threats in the Third Degree. What your family went through was horrific, inexcusable and undoubtedly terrifying.
I am however, deeply saddened that in this day and age a company would deny service to a citizen based on sexual orientation under the protection of “religious beliefs.” What if my religious beliefs didn’t for example, support “promoting” people of color or bi-racial children or, or, or….
I understand you allow the LGBT community in your store, but by refusing to embroider anything that reflects sexual orientation, you are indeed, blatantly discriminating.
Please don’t invoke Scripture to validate your discriminatory stance. Instead, please pause and think for yourself. Does your policy even FEEL remotely God-like?
Your policy is anything BUT in line with the Jesus and God that I know. You mention that you “have been the victim of racism” and I’m terribly sorry. I hope your children will never feel the sting of racism, or any other “ism” in their lives. Yet somehow the pain you felt doesn’t resonate with the pain you cause someone under the protection of “religious beliefs?”
You must understand it’s simply impossible to “promote” one’s born sexual orientation any more than one can “promote” being white, black, female etc. I don’t promote my “female lifestyle” I am female. I didn’t decide to be Caucasian. I am Caucasian.
How old were you exactly, may I ask, when you decided to be heterosexual?
Your refusal to create products that “promote homosexuality” is no different than if a business owner refused service that “promoted the interracial lifestyle.”
If God was against our gay citizens God would not have created people attracted to the same-sex. If you can’t use compassion to grasp these concepts, please use good old-fashioned common sense.
The God I know is shaking His or Her head and frowning. I truly hope one day you’ll sit down with yourself and realize that refusing service based on one’s sexual orientation is the same as refusing service based on race, ethnicity, gender etc. The Bible isn’t a book of conveniently held beliefs or a book to uphold discriminatory practices, the Bible is an interpretation through the prism of Man and I’d suggest, a reflection of what sits in one’s heart.
I hope your children will know true grace as they grow; I hope they will know, despite their parent’s views, that all God’s children, born who they are, deserve respect and equal service.
God, guns but no gays? Shame on your Kentucky lawmakers.
Sincerely,
Laura Owens
Donald Sterling. When words speak louder than actions.
By Laura G Owens
On May 1, 2014
In Social Issues
Image credit: Blake Griffin
Interesting dialogue about Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
As much as I’d like to see every bass-ackwards racist moron ousted from their organizational protected throne, it’s a slippery slope around freedom of speech to use personal recordings and comments to legally oust someone.
If Sterling counter sues and wins to keep the Clippers then unfortunately he wins. I lay bet however, he won’t get a big welcome home party by the Clippers and the NBA.
Thank God the NBA made a forceful statement and threw Sterling out and are (trying) to take the Clippers away from him. (Why bigots-in-charge are allowed to continue is another issue altogether. Priests protected, systemic sheltering of the sacred establishment for fear of losing jobs and image).
The NBA has a right to fine, suspend or boot anyone they find in opposition to their organization’s brand and so, best interest. Sterling’s actions have been discriminatory and in some instances he’s spewed blatant hate speech. Hate speech isn’t protected.
In 2009, writes The Daily Beast, former longtime Clippers executive Elgin Baylor sued Sterling for discrimination on the basis of age and race, during which Baylor alleged that Sterling wanted a team composed of “poor black boys from the South … playing for a white coach.”
Among many of Sterling’s racist gems he allegedly told his girlfriend the following…. “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you are associating with black people. Do you have to…..You can sleep with (black people). You can bring them in. You can do whatever you want. The little I ask is not to promote it on that … and not to bring them to my games….. In your lousy … Instagrams you don’t have to have yourself walking with black people.”
So let me get this straight….
The black people who hang with the woman you’re cheating on your wife with make you a mint with their extraordinary hard work and talent but you don’t want your mistress to be seen with them at the games? Go ahead and have sex with black people if you must but don’t get all “I’m with a black-man” and cozy up with them at my games. For Gods sake woman, use some common racist sense. What would the season ticket holders think?
I can hear the Sterling supporters but.. but… butting…. he gave a boat load of money to the NAACP so clearly he isn’t totally racist, just a tiny bit. We can forgive a little racist when big money is involved.
Sometimes words just speaker louder than actions. A big check isn’t restitution for racist comments. It’s like Sterling knows he can get away with “Listen to what I do, not to what I say.”
So, when does a point of view, even one you loathe, become unlawful hate speech? It’s not cut and dry.
Say you’re against same-sex marriage (a view) but not against gay people. Or, maybe you hate gays and lesbians with every fiber (which then I just feel sorry for you) but you keep your views inside your private life and away from your company dealings. If you don’t use or incite hate speech in your organization (“fags, perverse people, an abomination”) then you’re not directly harming anyone (accept that your soul is dying a slow and inevitable death, but that’s just me).
Maybe you secretly think people of color are inferior. But, you keep your mouth shut at corporate dealings until one day, you start slipping up. You get cocky because your plantation mentality gets a chuckle here and there over cigars and Manhattans at the club. Despite getting sued for say, housing discrimination, none of your fawning or fearful posse has the balls to tell you to keep your mouth shut or you’re out. You’re the owner, who tells off the owner?
Anyone who can afford to lose their job, in other words, a very small list.
Chick Fil-A’s owner Dan Cathy’s views against gay marriage aren’t mine but he has every right to say them. He’s not known for spewing hate speech against the gay and lesbian community. If he discriminated hiring gays and lesbians (he doesn’t) then we have a legal issue.
But say Mr. Cathy spewed hate speech about the LGBT community, “perverse, lazy workers, an abomination,” yada yada nonsense I’d EXPECT Mr. Cathy to be ousted by his Board even if he didn’t employ discriminatory practices because his views are hateful which I gather wouldn’t sit will well with the Chick Fil-A family brand (that is anti-gay marriage but not anti-gay, per se).
But, if Mr. Sterling wins his lawsuit will he still want to belong to a club that for the most part doesn’t want him? Probably. Most larger than life egos don’t care about being liked, they care about being in charge.