Tag Archives: discrimination

Discrimination, Diversity, Voices and Images From Beyond, Living Above Venus, and the Impeccable Bad Piper

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This entry is part 57 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

This came through the feed late today:

“Without a robust religious exemption,” they wrote, “this expansion of hiring rights will come at an unreasonable cost to the common good, national unity and religious freedom.”

That’s the justification, in part, for a group of businesses (who claim to be religious) for asking that they be exempt from non-discrimination rules when it comes to those totally wrong, creepy, and detrimental GLBT “people.”

To me, that says “In order to be united, we must exclude this entire group of people. In order to be free, we must oppress these others who don’t fit our beliefs.”

This is a result, direct or in, of the Hobby Lobby decision from the Supreme Court yesterday. The one that people (who are happy with it) have been swearing up and down that it won’t lead to anything worse than some (skeevy whores) not getting their pass to free sex (“birth control”).

Well, there ya go. Not more than 48 hours later and this request has been made.

It makes me sick. It makes me disappointed in any genuine faith-based organization that would condone, let alone support, this kind of exclusion in this day and age. (And, yes, I am regularly disappointed in a number of faith-based organizations.)

The biggest problem with the Supreme Court decision is that it was based on other exemptions already on the books. I take issue with those, too.

There’s a difference between secular society and spiritual life. One is shared among people who don’t always agree on things. In order to be part of that secular world–especially as an incorporated business–you have to play by the same rules as everyone else. Exceptions to the rule of law should be few and far between and supported by a distinct need.

Thinking gay people are icky does not make eliminating them from your presence a need.

Opposing birth control is just fine. Don’t make use of it in your life. But how other people feel about that is out of your hands. Especially if you’re “just” in a titled position in a free-standing entity like a national chain of businesses. A secular entity. You want to be a faith-based organization? Fine, change your structure and all your other behavior to be one. Then you get to play by those rules and be as picky as you want.

This whole thing is an nasty mess waiting to explode.

And I don’t have a good, coherent solution to make it any better. Mainly because the existing laws are a mess. Partially because the way we’ve done business for more than a century is a bit of a mess.

Anyway… here’s the rest of the feed…

History Most Don’t Know, Instances of Future History in the Making, Talented Kids, and other Interesting News

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This entry is part 20 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Today’s been another mixed-bag, newsfeed-wise. There’s a lot going on in the world right now and it seems most people don’t even come close to grasping just how much things will change, depending on which way some of it goes.

The big one, of course, is the ongoing Net Neutrality fight. But that’s running parallel to the continued fallout from all the revelations about how the NSA (and other agencies) have been spying on pretty much all of us. Both of those current events have some of the biggest players in the information game at one another’s throats. In the first case, it’s the content providers against the infrastructure owners. The the second, it’s companies like Google against the U.S. government.

Both of these fights are going to get a lot more messy before they get better. There are indications that there’s some heavy corporate influence shifting the sands of the Net Neutrality battle in ways that I (and many others) think will be very bad for the public in general. In the domestic surveillance case, a number of companies are trying desperately to regain the trust of their users (and their foreign business partners) by pushing back against gag orders and, apparently, gearing up for a drawn out fight with intelligence agencies and law enforcement.

There’s more than a little overlap in the “good guys” and the “bad guys” in these two arenas. I find myself rooting both for and against some companies (like Verizon, who stands a lot to gain if there’s no mandate for Net Neutrality, but is also in a position to fight against the government overstepping it’s bounds in the surveillance arena). It’s… problematic, to say the least.

All I know for sure is that the world has been changing really quickly over the past 30 years or so. For decades, we’ve been in a period of transition where out reach has extended beyond our grasp. Waters have been further muddied and vision blurred by high emotions and secret dealings. Even now I doubt we have anything near the full picture of everything going on in these two major battles.

This could go on for years. But I worry that the bulk of the public is either ignorant of the importance of these fights or already growing bored with the legal wranglings and semi-obscure technical specifications. Without the support of an knowledgeable public, the big players are free to do whatever they want, regardless of whether it’s good or bad for the rest of us.

Can’t say I care much for that.

But I don’t have any good solutions, either.