Sorry James you are mystifying us. Discrimating based on how one self-identifies sounds like thought crime. Our society should not (and does not) care about how someone feels inside, only their behaviours or actions. So firing a biological man for wearing a dress, or marrying another man or any of the other behaviours normally done by a women would be discriminating based on sex. Gorsuch is correct.
Nah! I think James addressed that pretty clearly. We can assume that the hypothetical woman is not dressing in men's clothes, etc., and claiming to *be* a man, whereas the man is making such a claim, while certainly implicitly, and likely explicitly, demanding that those around him accept his identification by their behavior, language and thoughts.
Yes, indeed, our society should not care about how someone feels inside or what their thoughts about themselves (or even others) are, *unless* they are expressed in behavior. In this case, it is the behavior that is the problem, the demands that others agree with and conform to his thoughts, feelings, and ideas about himself and tolerate behavior they find disturbing, no matter how distorted that may be and upsetting to his fellow workers. His internal thoughts and ideas if not imposed on others would be of no interest to anyone.
This unfortunate fellow is not discriminated against because he's a man, or because of his internal "feelings", but because his behavior and actions--demanding his coworkers deny reality and adjust their behavior to comply with his delusions--are antithetical to a positive working environment, not because he's a man per se. If a woman worker were convinced she's a member of royalty from an alien planet and demanded that her co-workers (and possibly customers) address her by her imagined honorific, accept inappropriate clothing, and require weird protocols to support her claims, she would also be eligible for firing.
No he doesn't deal with it. Let me try again. Our society should not under any circumstances care about how someone feels inside even if it is expressed in behaviour. To clarify, it is not the feelings we have any business being concerned about. Only behaviour should be evaluated. Your use of "unless" states otherwise - you say very clearly that we should be concerned with feelings when they are expressed as behaviour. If someone's actions constitute a crime, you cannot send them for reprogramming - that is what is done in authoritarian countries, we don't do that here. Everyone has freedom of thought. So again, it is not the thought we have any business dealing with.
No where in the SCOTUS decision did anyone bring up the situation where someone was fired for forcing their beliefs on anyone else. That was never part of the fact pattern. There is a middle ground that everyone can live with whereby coworkers have to treat the individual with respect, and the individual needs to know that no one is required to address them in the manner they desire. If coworkers make fun of the individual, that would be creating a toxic environment. If the individual castigates the coworkers for not using their desired pronouns, that would be a problem also. Whether this creates the optimal business envirinment is neither here nor there.
But the fact remains, that you cannot fire someone for behaving like someone of the opposite sex, and you certainly cannot fire someone for thinking or feeling that they are of the opposite sex. Whether you can fire someone for wearing alien clothes is another matter, as that is not constitutionally protected behaviour.
Authoritarian government? As far as I understand it, this was a matter of a private business, not some diktat from the government. Reprogramming? Last time I looked, it's mostly people who want to use pronouns that comport with a person's actual biological sex, or are unwilling to deny biological reality in their speech, writing or thought, who are facing authoritarian treatment, increasingly by government, and forced to undergo DEI reprogramming in business and school settings.
"Whether this creates the optimal business environment is neither here nor there." Are you saying that a business has no right to have rules and expectations from employees' conduct, that it has no right to fire an employee for anything short of *criminal* behavior? That would certainly hamstring a company in dealing with an employee who is incompetent, whose behavior interferes with the effective running of the company, or who alienates customers or coworkers. Doesn't a private company traditionally have the right to make those decisions?
You insist on conflating feelings with behavior. This was not just a matter of a person mentioning his thoughts or ideas to others, or writing articles or commenting on social media posts on this issue. (Although, again, you seem blind to the fact that, ironically, people are being fired from their jobs for exactly that when they express their belief in the immutability of biological sex or refuse to use "preferred" pronouns.) It was his actions that caused him to be fired, not his thoughts or feelings.
As far as the rights of businesses to fire people, I am saying there are constraints in a free and fair society, so they can fire them for any reason they want but if it's because they are wearing a dress, they will have to compensate them as if they were fired without cause.
Lastly, I certainly haven't conflated feelings and actions, in fact I made a clear distinction between them. But I did accuse you, and James, of conflating them. In the cases before SCOTUS, the individuals were fired for their actions which did not include forcing others to use their pronouns. That is why it was an illegal termination, because their actions were those normally done by women, and you cannot discriminate on the basis of sex per Title VII.
We can see the same game plan was done with gay marriage. It involves messing around with the definitions and basically identifying the basic reality of male and female.
Male and Female is so fundamental it is literally in the opening pages of Genesis.
Marriage: a union of man and woman.
They came in and insisted marriage should be a union between ANY two people. Restricting it to the fertile coupling was "unfair." They lost the vote, but mystified the courts to get their way.
Next step was to invent something new called "gender identity." And uncreate Men and Women to the point where a Man who wants to wear a dress is "now just as much of a woman" as your mother who gave birth to you.
Same trick as marriage. Invalidating male and female in the name of equality, and hence, every single institutional feature that rest upon that bedrock.
I don't know if James reads this comments, but his commentary on Gnosticism really lays out the game plan.
Read G-d's creation of the world.
Imagine undoing it.
G-d's creation is by making distinctions. Separating the Dark from the Light, the Land from the Sea, the Good from the Evil, and Male from Female.
So we can assume their goal is to reverse all that. No longer able to distinguish between Dark and Light, Land and Sea, Male and Female, or Good from Evil.
I don't agree with the gender identity folks. I think the correct view is that gender roles or normal behaviours are unnecessarily limiting in our free country and need to be loosened a little, instead of inventing something called a gender identity, but that is also is neither here nor there.
I also don't think the bible is anything other than just a collection of stories an ancient tribe told its members millenia ago. And I certainly don't think reality is made up of binaries (dark/light, land/sea, good/evil, male/female), that is childlike thinking.
But it is certainly the case that discrimination on the basis of sex, which is (mostly) a binary of course, is wrong, and restricting marriage to the union of a man and a woman is unnecessary.
What someone does in the privacy of his own house or in certain spots for that kind of activity is fine. If the man at the funeral house wanted to wear a dress at a nightclub that caters to that crowd, go at it.
He didn't; he wanted to wear a dress at a business of the most solemn and sober of occasions. Grieving families are probably not interested in being lectured about your gender identity.
As for the Bible, well...I don't consider the wisdom of ancients to be outdated because I'm so smart I can watch television and surf twitter.
Same sex marriage divorces marriage from its most basic component: The propagating of the next generation by binding the only fertile unit.
A culture that considers children unnecessary will be replaced by a culture that does value children.
That may all be so, but Title VII puts constraints on what businesses can do about it, and besides, no lectures were provided.
I don't do twitter or watch television, and yes there is some wisdom found in the bible, but we should all evaluate it and not blindly accept it. The ancients were interpreting a much simpler world with much fewer data points.
And yes, the impact on the family could be harmful, but doesn't have to be. Same sex and opposite sex marriage can coexist. It's not up to the State to determine culture. People who want to provide a solid foundation for their offspring will have to come to the conclusion on their own that a strong family helps.
Well, I don't know about lectures so to speak but "That's how I identify, deal with it" is certainly not how I want grandma's funeral to go.
When I was an agnostic / atheist I assume people blindly followed the Bible. Now I think it's not so blind. The debate and questioning on it is very rich as are the ideas. I don't think the world was simpler then. It's our own hubris that we think we're more advanced.
The same sex movement was -- well, I believe it was as top-down as the gender movement are. Yes, there were some people pushing from the bottom up. But it won in courts, not voting booths. And we're having to reinvent the wheel because a simple concept like "both men and women have something unique and vital to give to the developing child" is now defined as hate speech. As again, we roll back that very basic truth: "Male and Female He created them."
Sorry James you are mystifying us. Discrimating based on how one self-identifies sounds like thought crime. Our society should not (and does not) care about how someone feels inside, only their behaviours or actions. So firing a biological man for wearing a dress, or marrying another man or any of the other behaviours normally done by a women would be discriminating based on sex. Gorsuch is correct.
Nah! I think James addressed that pretty clearly. We can assume that the hypothetical woman is not dressing in men's clothes, etc., and claiming to *be* a man, whereas the man is making such a claim, while certainly implicitly, and likely explicitly, demanding that those around him accept his identification by their behavior, language and thoughts.
Yes, indeed, our society should not care about how someone feels inside or what their thoughts about themselves (or even others) are, *unless* they are expressed in behavior. In this case, it is the behavior that is the problem, the demands that others agree with and conform to his thoughts, feelings, and ideas about himself and tolerate behavior they find disturbing, no matter how distorted that may be and upsetting to his fellow workers. His internal thoughts and ideas if not imposed on others would be of no interest to anyone.
This unfortunate fellow is not discriminated against because he's a man, or because of his internal "feelings", but because his behavior and actions--demanding his coworkers deny reality and adjust their behavior to comply with his delusions--are antithetical to a positive working environment, not because he's a man per se. If a woman worker were convinced she's a member of royalty from an alien planet and demanded that her co-workers (and possibly customers) address her by her imagined honorific, accept inappropriate clothing, and require weird protocols to support her claims, she would also be eligible for firing.
No he doesn't deal with it. Let me try again. Our society should not under any circumstances care about how someone feels inside even if it is expressed in behaviour. To clarify, it is not the feelings we have any business being concerned about. Only behaviour should be evaluated. Your use of "unless" states otherwise - you say very clearly that we should be concerned with feelings when they are expressed as behaviour. If someone's actions constitute a crime, you cannot send them for reprogramming - that is what is done in authoritarian countries, we don't do that here. Everyone has freedom of thought. So again, it is not the thought we have any business dealing with.
No where in the SCOTUS decision did anyone bring up the situation where someone was fired for forcing their beliefs on anyone else. That was never part of the fact pattern. There is a middle ground that everyone can live with whereby coworkers have to treat the individual with respect, and the individual needs to know that no one is required to address them in the manner they desire. If coworkers make fun of the individual, that would be creating a toxic environment. If the individual castigates the coworkers for not using their desired pronouns, that would be a problem also. Whether this creates the optimal business envirinment is neither here nor there.
But the fact remains, that you cannot fire someone for behaving like someone of the opposite sex, and you certainly cannot fire someone for thinking or feeling that they are of the opposite sex. Whether you can fire someone for wearing alien clothes is another matter, as that is not constitutionally protected behaviour.
Authoritarian government? As far as I understand it, this was a matter of a private business, not some diktat from the government. Reprogramming? Last time I looked, it's mostly people who want to use pronouns that comport with a person's actual biological sex, or are unwilling to deny biological reality in their speech, writing or thought, who are facing authoritarian treatment, increasingly by government, and forced to undergo DEI reprogramming in business and school settings.
"Whether this creates the optimal business environment is neither here nor there." Are you saying that a business has no right to have rules and expectations from employees' conduct, that it has no right to fire an employee for anything short of *criminal* behavior? That would certainly hamstring a company in dealing with an employee who is incompetent, whose behavior interferes with the effective running of the company, or who alienates customers or coworkers. Doesn't a private company traditionally have the right to make those decisions?
You insist on conflating feelings with behavior. This was not just a matter of a person mentioning his thoughts or ideas to others, or writing articles or commenting on social media posts on this issue. (Although, again, you seem blind to the fact that, ironically, people are being fired from their jobs for exactly that when they express their belief in the immutability of biological sex or refuse to use "preferred" pronouns.) It was his actions that caused him to be fired, not his thoughts or feelings.
I agree the DEI police need to be cancelled.
As far as the rights of businesses to fire people, I am saying there are constraints in a free and fair society, so they can fire them for any reason they want but if it's because they are wearing a dress, they will have to compensate them as if they were fired without cause.
Lastly, I certainly haven't conflated feelings and actions, in fact I made a clear distinction between them. But I did accuse you, and James, of conflating them. In the cases before SCOTUS, the individuals were fired for their actions which did not include forcing others to use their pronouns. That is why it was an illegal termination, because their actions were those normally done by women, and you cannot discriminate on the basis of sex per Title VII.
We can see the same game plan was done with gay marriage. It involves messing around with the definitions and basically identifying the basic reality of male and female.
Male and Female is so fundamental it is literally in the opening pages of Genesis.
Marriage: a union of man and woman.
They came in and insisted marriage should be a union between ANY two people. Restricting it to the fertile coupling was "unfair." They lost the vote, but mystified the courts to get their way.
Next step was to invent something new called "gender identity." And uncreate Men and Women to the point where a Man who wants to wear a dress is "now just as much of a woman" as your mother who gave birth to you.
Same trick as marriage. Invalidating male and female in the name of equality, and hence, every single institutional feature that rest upon that bedrock.
I don't know if James reads this comments, but his commentary on Gnosticism really lays out the game plan.
Read G-d's creation of the world.
Imagine undoing it.
G-d's creation is by making distinctions. Separating the Dark from the Light, the Land from the Sea, the Good from the Evil, and Male from Female.
So we can assume their goal is to reverse all that. No longer able to distinguish between Dark and Light, Land and Sea, Male and Female, or Good from Evil.
A reverse switch on Genesis.
I don't agree with the gender identity folks. I think the correct view is that gender roles or normal behaviours are unnecessarily limiting in our free country and need to be loosened a little, instead of inventing something called a gender identity, but that is also is neither here nor there.
I also don't think the bible is anything other than just a collection of stories an ancient tribe told its members millenia ago. And I certainly don't think reality is made up of binaries (dark/light, land/sea, good/evil, male/female), that is childlike thinking.
But it is certainly the case that discrimination on the basis of sex, which is (mostly) a binary of course, is wrong, and restricting marriage to the union of a man and a woman is unnecessary.
What someone does in the privacy of his own house or in certain spots for that kind of activity is fine. If the man at the funeral house wanted to wear a dress at a nightclub that caters to that crowd, go at it.
He didn't; he wanted to wear a dress at a business of the most solemn and sober of occasions. Grieving families are probably not interested in being lectured about your gender identity.
As for the Bible, well...I don't consider the wisdom of ancients to be outdated because I'm so smart I can watch television and surf twitter.
Same sex marriage divorces marriage from its most basic component: The propagating of the next generation by binding the only fertile unit.
A culture that considers children unnecessary will be replaced by a culture that does value children.
That may all be so, but Title VII puts constraints on what businesses can do about it, and besides, no lectures were provided.
I don't do twitter or watch television, and yes there is some wisdom found in the bible, but we should all evaluate it and not blindly accept it. The ancients were interpreting a much simpler world with much fewer data points.
And yes, the impact on the family could be harmful, but doesn't have to be. Same sex and opposite sex marriage can coexist. It's not up to the State to determine culture. People who want to provide a solid foundation for their offspring will have to come to the conclusion on their own that a strong family helps.
Well, I don't know about lectures so to speak but "That's how I identify, deal with it" is certainly not how I want grandma's funeral to go.
When I was an agnostic / atheist I assume people blindly followed the Bible. Now I think it's not so blind. The debate and questioning on it is very rich as are the ideas. I don't think the world was simpler then. It's our own hubris that we think we're more advanced.
The same sex movement was -- well, I believe it was as top-down as the gender movement are. Yes, there were some people pushing from the bottom up. But it won in courts, not voting booths. And we're having to reinvent the wheel because a simple concept like "both men and women have something unique and vital to give to the developing child" is now defined as hate speech. As again, we roll back that very basic truth: "Male and Female He created them."