I think we have grown familiar with the ritual of some celebrity or politician making a racist or anti-Semitic or misogynistic statement and then entering into a period of public penance. There are public relations firms that specialize in this sort of thing. The current example is Paula Deen. But we’ve seen it before with folks like Michael Richards who played Kramer on Seinfeld, and Mel Gibson, and Don Imus. How sincere and convincing were their apologies? Did they suffer sufficiently for their remarks? How long before we forgive them? Can they ever find work again?
This is the way the public uses shame and moral condemnation to punish hateful thoughts. It’s not a violation of anyone’s First Amendment rights, but it can feel that way. “I’m not allowed to say what I think!”
It’s a fine line when you face no legal jeopardy for speaking your mind but can nonetheless lose your job and become a national pariah. How free are you to speak? If you were criticizing your employer rather than hurling hateful epithets, it would be easier to see the potential problem.
This is why religious conservatives like Justice Antonin Scalia fear that their attitudes about homosexuality are being defined as indecent. They are not merely wrong, but they are the enemies of mankind. They don’t want their deeply-held religious beliefs to become the social equivalent of white supremacy.
Yet, to win acceptance of homosexuality as a naturally-occurring facet of human life it has been necessary to insist that anti-gay beliefs are wrong and discriminatory in nature. No one set out to insult religion or religious belief, but in some sense it can’t be helped.
Big can of worms.
Most of the comments in our local opinions column in the newspaper were about the decision to strike down part of DOMA. And every one against it was based on religion, how the Supreme Court was “bigger than God”.
As much as we try to separate church and state, there is the sad reality that religion is a fundamental part of a lot of peoples’ lives and it is their map and compass. As an atheist, I figure I can live a decent, honest and good life without the preaching, and I disagree with how religious groups operate, but they do what they want and people listen.
If someone like Paula Deen, who was basically showing herself as a racist, can figure out a way to rebuild her empire after saying pretty much what she believes (black people are meant for servitude) then it shows that people are willing to overlook her racism. They will say that she should be “forgiven”. But if you ask me, a true Christian would ask why Paula has such hateful feelings about African Americans, and why hasn’t she learned to be a better child of God?
If you feel comfortable with your own racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, then you have to own it, because society is all eyes and ears now. If you say it or do it, everyone is gonna know it. If you’re a person who has nothing to be ashamed of, it won’t matter. But when you’re in the spotlight, be it politics, entertainment, or sports, if you say it, you own it.
There are harder cases, too, like whether or not to support people who draw pictures of Mohammed to be deliberately provocative, but also to insist on their freedom of expression.
In what way is that harder than, say, someone drawing an offensive picture of Jesus or Moses? It’s racist and obnoxious because it’s intended to be offensive, but it’s also protected by the First Amendment.
The picture of Mohammed could be highly complimentary and still be offensive. That’s one difference.
Standards of what is offensive are culturally-defined. One of BooMan’s main points in this post about the continuing tendency within our culture to view homophobia as offensive, the way white supremacy is considered offensive. Very recently, homophobia was not considered offensive. That’s a fight over what our culture is going to consider offensive.
A drawing of Mohammed is more offensive than a drawing of Jesus and Moses because almost none of the people who feel strongly about Jesus or Moses live in a culture in which depictions of a religious figure is considered offensive, while many Muslims do live in such a culture.
You never see pictures of Mohammed riding a dinosaur.
Why do we have to support or not support? If you’re talking about legal action, then we either support them or give up on freedom of speech. We’re all supersensitized to the specter of anti-Muslim bigotry since Sept 11 and subsequent events. But giving them a special pass is both condescending and an encouragement to the craziest Muslim leaders. I’d join in calling the offending cartoonists total assholes, but that’s as far as it goes. Maybe when I see some prominent Muslim leaders going off on the “death to America” screamers I’ll feel a little more sympathy.
The problem with Scalia is it is pretty clear that his judgements are not distinct from his religious beliefs, i.e. the arguments he gives are inconsistent, he’s just looking for the result that aligns with his religious and ideological beliefs [great quote from seabe iirc yesterday ]. it’s not about his beliefs per se.
Paula Deen, also, it was about how she treated ppl in the workplace. if she was fair in the workplace she could have kept her racists beliefs to herself.
A good example is the Amish. No one cares that they are against use of electricity as long as there’s no SC justice making “reasoned judgements” against use of electricity
About Paula Deen, let’s get this straight.
Yes, she’s a muthafucking racist.
Then again, so are many folks.
The problem with Deen is the HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT THAT SHE HAD.
She had a modern fucking plantation.
Whites and LIGHT-SKINNED BLACKS were the only ones allowed on the floor of the restaurant
While the DARK-SKINNED BLACKS were only allowed in the kitchen to cook.
The Blacks had to enter through a different entrance.
What part of HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT don’t folks understand?
That’s the exact point I was making in discussions yesterday. The racial slur was bad enough but on top of that her employees working conditions were horrendous.
Either one of those thing should have gotten her fired and harangued in the media put both together and she should never be given a chance to come back again.
I tried to make that point to, as it turns out, a bunch of racists I grew up with.
It was ugly. Unfriend is a beautiful word in certain situations.
oh, yeah. I’ve been unfriending people left and right, I don’t need that nonsense in my life.
I rarely unfriend someone, but I do get unfriended or asked to be unfriended by friends of “friends”, typically high school acquaintances. I call out their lack of moral foundations and say that anyone who votes Republican is complicit to, if not culpable of, bigoted religious extremism and hateful greed. I say that it takes about 3 questions to figure out how much of each of these horrible traits a person has who votes Republican. I think bigotry and religious extremism are just forms of self-centered greed. Ask someone what they mean when they say that Republicans make people more self-sufficient. The bigoted religious extremists and hateful greedy people who don’t mind the bigots so much are so easy to flush out from under their filthy rocks.
rikyrah, do you have links to sites that document what Paula Deen’s workplaces were like for her and/or her brother’s employees? Of course, I can go out and google for myself, but I’d appreciate if you could help me with the sources. Is all the information above contained in the civil action that her employee has filed?
Here’s a link to the Complaint filed against Deen.
Thanks, rikyrah. That puts a whole different face on things from what the media focused on, which was her use of bad words on tv. If your info is accurate, how did she get away with an obvious violation of the law?
that’s what the lawsuit was about, workplace conditions; it’s being discussed on teevee sort of like the Kramer situation which it is not, i.e. Kramer didn’t run restaurants where he employed ppl, he treated inequitably.
also, evidently one of Deen’s so-called excuses being discussed was that she “used the n word once” which is misleading – and if that’s what she thinks she did wrong she evidently made an error in the settings in her time machine taking her back to ol Kentucky
[p.s. I know I’m not rikyrah]
That’s all our local media is focusing on is her language when the lawsuit was about working conditions.
Try to imagine my lack of concern for their hurt fee-fees.
When someone excuses their bigotry by (mis)interpreting their religion, then any pushback on their bigotry will be interpreted as an attack on their religion. I really don’t give a shit.
Many people in the past used their religion — not limited to Christians but certainly including them — to justify wars, genocides, slavery, and various types of institutionalized political, economic, and/or social oppression. Somehow their religions have survived, and often turned around to oppose those things.
Religious beliefs can be tolerated but advocacy of discriminatory behavior based on sectarianism cannot be.
The First Amendment prohibits the government from infringing on free expression (and I would argues corporations as extensions of government privilege). It does not constrain civil society from holding standards of speech and behavior collectively outside of governmental action.
The public not only uses shame and moral condemnation to punish hateful thoughts, it can also use them to encourage hateful thoughts. Think about the long history of red-baiting.
It doesn’t matter what one thinks, discriminatory behavior based on irrelevant characteristics is in a lot of cases illegal. And Scalia’s decisions in defense of continued racial discrimination and discrimination based on sexual orientation are behavior, not speech.
And Paula Deen’s speech as an employer is behavior intended to affect a workplace culture and is behavior more than speech. Harassment is a dodge to avoid obeying the laws on equal employment opportunity. “Ah jes cain’t find any knee-grows willin’ to work for me.”
In this case, religion is hypocritical cover.
Conservatives, church leaders and Republicans are in goed company with their homo hatred:
In fairness, it is only some church leaders. Episcopal and ELCA Lutheran churches in the US have gay bishops. There are Baptist associations outside the Southern Baptist Convention that have gay pastors and perform gay marriages.
Homophobia is a default attitude of “civilization” and thus those religions that were spawned in city-states.
More in the same vein.
Ever since the enlightenment people with strong religious beliefs have seen those beliefs challenged. A fundamentalist in particular sees his or her religion as “the way”, with emphasis on “the,” in the sense of “the one and only”. It is very difficult for him or her to think in terms of “the way for me.” Anything that leads a person to think there may be other ways undermines his or her belief that his or her way is “the” way. And that is very frightening.
The fundamental problem they have – the reason they feel victimized – is this phrase from the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.” If you truly believe that your way is “the” way, then you really don’t believe that statement from the Declaration. Which means that you have a fundamental conflict with one of the founding principles – I would argue THE founding principle – of our Republic.
It’s no wonder they constantly feel like they are at war….
Religion has a built-in forgiveness mechanism. The process of forgiveness is meant to leverage the role of religion and after much todo flip the transcretion onto the shoulders of the followers, it is they, thru an act of forgiveness who can extinguish the transgressor’s act and once again love the transgressor, hate the act.
One flaw. Dean’s followers forgiving her doesn’t do jack to change the sheer abuse she has and will likely again bring down on those who work for her. It will be the lawsuit’s success that shows her the Light.
Whatever. The shoe fits. If the choice is between defining homosexuality as indecent, or defining Antonin Scalia’s attitude toward homosexuality as indecent, I don’t have to think too hard about that one.
Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It is not about their religious beliefs.
Homosexuality is mentioned far less in the Bible than, say, adultery. And yet there has been no well-funded movement to “cure” people of adultery; no widespread patterns of housing or workplace discrimination against people who have affairs; and so on. There’s a little bit of social stigma – in some circles – and almost never any legal consequences to adulterous behavior. Even divorce settlements are rarely based on it any longer.
I have no problem with someone who would never engage in a same-sexual sex or relationship themselves, and does not approve of it in others, based on their religious beliefs. But if they’re going to try to impose that standard on everyone else, quite aside from denying (as most right-wing evangelicals do) that we have something called separation of church and state in this country, they’re advocating discriminatory behavior if they’re cherry-picking which parts of their religious beliefs they want to see broadly applied. Especially if those beliefs are based on someone’s identity rather than their actions.
The “you’re impinging on my religious beliefs!” complaint is one of the most intellectually dishonest arguments used by homophobes, just as it has been for centuries by defenders of Jim Crow, misogyny, lynching, slavery, and so much else. (There’s a far better biblically based defense for slavery than for homophobia, which also suggest what a moral cesspool the Bible can be by modern standards.)
What we’re impinging on is the religious beliefs homophobes (or misogynists, racists, etc.) are obsessed with while they overlook all those other religious admonitions that are less convenient or don’t appeal to their bigotry.
Which translates into the obvious reality that their bigotry is not religion-based, but a highjacking of religious prattle for their own ends.
Boo, it’s too bad you had to conflate the tribulations of Paula Deen with the bigoted christianists. It’s 2 separate issues. Personally I’m pretty sick of the culture of offendedness, whether it’s the teabaggers whining about non-existent IRS bias or some minority push to ban a book or take down a painting or fire somebody for using a unapproved word. The impulse is understandable both emotionally and strategically, but it then calls up the culture of apology and judgement, which is sheer cheap fodder for a lazy media. For somebody like Deen, I have to move toward the right: if you don’t like it don’t watch it. Whining is revolting no matter where it comes from. People need to toughen up and speak for themselves sometimes.
As to the likes of Scalia, he’s responsible for what he says and what he believes. Who ever said “religious beliefs” (which are hardly ever really that) are somehow owed immunity from counter-argument? This public-piety escape button was bullshit from the very beginning, placing voluntary opinions in the same drawer as involuntary conditions that have suffered real oppression. Please explain why you think insulting religion (which mostly amounts to challenging its premises) is somehow off limits? Of course civil behavior is to be preferred to screaming and namecalling, but that applies to all discourse, not just responses to religionist efforts to enforce their silly fantasies by force of law.
Well Richards is on a new show, Kristie’s New Show, starting Kristie Alley that is in preproduction now, so about 6-7 years since he made his remarks.
Paula Deen however is making it worse, so she’s still not into the “time” phase.