Being "canceled" is a choice that private individuals and institutions make to not associate themselves with speech, actions, or views they find either objectionable or simply damaging to their brand and business goals. This is entirely a social phenomena and has no legal basis. People legally can and will fire/hire people as it serves my business goals even if you think it is lame. There is no 1st amendment violation here.
Conflating these things is a favorite straw man of people who simply feel scared and angry that they don't always get to be jerks with zero social or career implications (try going around saying you are a satanist and see how that affects your career, this isn't a new thing, just people are whining about it more loudly lately). They are very much not the same.
I find it hard to believe that the anti cancelation argument is purely made by evil jerks (e.g. I don't consider lex to be a jerk). You don't think it's easier now than ever before to be 'canceled' by a social media mob? Don't there have to be some negative consequences to allowing for permanent cancelations? By all means, people that do extremely horrible things should be shunned but how and where does the line get drawn for the more mediocre offenses? Also, people are fallible, they screw up and make mistakes. Do they have a right to make amends and be forgiven for dumb things they did in the past?
It almost seems like it's trending towards a crowd sourced social credit system similar to what the CCP implemented.
I am not on the left or right, but shouting social media mobs with pitch forks doesn't seem like the best way to achieve internet 'justice'.
It is important to disambiguate the two
I was talking specifically about "cancelling" people with social media mobs to shout down opposing views or harass them into submission. The scale and ease at which it can be done has allowed it to be used as a tool to beat down morally reprehensible individuals as well as some that have arguably reasonable views.
> Nor are Hollywood blacklists a remotely new thing. The only new element is the blacklistable offenses have changed from support of communists and various left radicals to sexual harassment and racism.
I make no claim that sexual harassment and racism are good things or that they should be allowed. My problem is with the gray area that is harder to say whether or not it is allowed. I think trump is a corrupt numbskull, but I think it is absolutely horrible to attempt to "cancel" people or organizations that openly support him and I think the whole idea of shouting down or harassing opposing viewpoints that a good portion of society consider to be reasonable into submission is reprehensible.
Vigilante mobs are not rational entities, they should not be used as a tool to win arguments. Their use will continue to further radicalize both sides of the spectrum and I don't see how they could possibly lead to anything good for humanity. Anyone or any group that says I think this therefore I am correct and they are wrong should be looked at skeptically. Policies and issues need to be discussed academically and not through twitter shouting matches.
There are already basic protections in place. For example, it would be expressly illegal for a workplace to fire you for being a satanist.
I don't see a problem with extending such protections to include more free speech. The problem is, where does one draw the line? If one is against abortion and protests that, seems different than say if one is a full fledged neonazi spewing rhetoric.
The way it sits today, the majority of people are afraid to speak their thoughts for fear of workplace retaliation. This is effectively corporate controlled speech, which is not a good thing for society.
There was an upheld case a few years ago where a man fired one of his employees for being too sexy. Not acting too sexy, or dressing too sexy, but being too sexy. You can fire someone for wearing Adidas, or for breathing too loudly (unless it can be shown to be the effect of a disability.)
The idea that we should have special rules for racists and sexists is an insult. It would be in effect creating a protected class for bigots, who could still be fired for wearing green on Thursday.
The most absurd part of this is that the vast majority of the people decrying "cancel culture" are the most antagonistic to any normalization of worker's rights, or enforcement of minority protections. Apparently, the only real racism is when you call someone a racist.
The post mentions people afraid to speak up, like Gen-X members educated by super progressive people from the real student revolts in 1970.
Except that this education is not sufficient to keep up with the arbitrary word games of rich elites, who incidentally do not care about worker's rights.
The post pessimizer responded to explicitly mentions neonazis.
I think overall businesses don’t care enough about higher costs because at the end of the day they can just fire me without providing cause if I cost more than I am worth to the business.
There was a thread about cloud services such as cloudinary and why businesses put up with the absurdly high bandwidth charges and someone explained to me that the business isn’t paying for bandwidth charges, it is paying someone to solve their business needs. As long as fragile meat bag humans serve the business needs, I think businesses will employ us.
That's not "basic protections", it's existing case law about a conflict within the constitution. Freedom of religion and freedom of association are both protected, but where they conflict we generally find that whichever side is providing some kind of good to the public (be it products or employment) needs to bend. You can't fire me for my religion because of the nature of "firing" (being something that denies me something most people have), not "religion". It can't be extended without stepping on some other right-holder's toes.
The Constitution is completely silent on the interaction of corporations and the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights; those rights describe a relationship between the people and the government. Within that framework, government crafts law that determines how business may legally operate.
Congress made a specific choice to extend (part of) a protection similar to the one described in the First Amendment to employees. It is not a complete extension; for example, at the federal level, freedom of association is not protected regarding one's business relationships, and you can be fired in most states for being a member of the KKK (there are some specific states that have added additional protections for political activities or political beliefs that would preclude such a firing). And most of the rights in the Bill of Rights aren't extended at all to the employer-employee relationship; employers may demand employees (and customers, for that matter) bear no arms on their premises, for example.
It probably wouldn't be -as- bad if in the US healthcare wasn't tied to employment. As it sits today, speaking your mind can literally be a death sentence, if you happen to say something a mob doesn't agree with.
The case that immediately sprang to mind for me was that of Alan Berg[1], a radio host who was assassinated (and about whom Oliver Stone made a movie called Talk Radio[2]).
But this has happened many times throughout history, where people were assassinated (or imprisoned/executed) for their beliefs.
More modern instances are things like journalists being assassinated in South America, for instance, for reporting on organized crime (similar things happening in Italy), or in Russia for criticizing Putin, or in the Islamic World for incurring the wrath of religious fanatics.. or the Charlie Hedbo attacks in Paris, or various beheadings of journalist and teachers.
Some older, but still relatively recent and famous cases have been the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and Gandhi... etc.
Of course, speaking one's mind against the rulers or their system in a totalitarian state like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union has always been a quick path to the gallows or a concentration/labor/death camp.
Exactly, this is a great reason to leave the USA, especially if you already have health issues. With AI taking hold and it getting harder to emigrate, the time to leave is now. Jobs with benefits for programmers are going to become more uncommon, with remote work being possible, as more contract work is going to be offered.
I am a dual US|EU (Croatian) citizen, who is culturally American. I can legally live in about 30 countries (Freedom of Movement rights) as an EU citizen. I left the US over healthcare. For most people on here, Ireland is the place to go to get EU citizenship. Once you get EU citizenship, it levels the playing field and you can go to places with better healthcare than Ireland.
https://mises.org/wire/3-times-many-europeans-move-us-other-...
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-finding...
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested...
Look, people should live where they want, be happy and be proud where they're at. Nothing wrong with that. But single platform ideals to make wide sweeping judgements are a good reason to keep a two party political system. Focusing on one issue and bringing a hammer down to shatter everything is rather unproductive. Yea, the USA has it's problems. Duh. Just like everywhere else has problems too. But more people run to the USA. If someone is privileged enough to find somewhere better, good, go for it. No one wants to stop you.
The only ways I am aware of are having a work sponsor, the Dutch-American friendship treaty, or taking advantage of a country that offers citizenship to descendants of emigres, like Greece
There's a bunch of resources online to find out. Whether you are a US citizen (natural born or otherwise) tends to be irrelevant.
This portal has a simple way to find out: https://ec.europa.eu/immigration/
Ridiculous hyperbole. First, because it imagines that people get killed for tweets, and second because it hilariously invokes the idea that this is a new thing. You genuinely don't think people have been persecuted for opinions in the past? Let me get my dead buddy Galileo to drop a few rocks on your head.
Likewise McCarthyism, etc... Objectively free expression of inconvenient conservative ideas in the US has never been cheaper, freer, easier or more pervasive than it is RIGHT NOW. Good grief, just look at your own posts. You don't look like someone afraid of being killed by a mob.
The abortion clinic volunteers that go with you so that you are not yelled at alone are a thing for a reason.
And in civil rights era, white who did not supported segregation was economically punished and had hard time to find job.
I don't agree with any of it happening to either side of the political spectrum. At some point the shit has to stop.
The direction of implication is "people are evil because they do evil actions", not "actions are evil because evil people do them".
Unjustifiedly firing people is wrong, and therefore conservatives are wrong to do so.
Unjustifiedly firing people is wrong, and therefore liberals are wrong to do so.
The article goes into one of the possible problems: cyberbullying.
Especially with young women, cyberbullying is a bit of a problem. Though the people involved in this case are not involved with cyberbullying, it's not difficult to jump to that issue with the people involved.
Though it depends on local laws, schools often have the mandate to stop bullying and other such behaviors. Courts have been mixed thus far on how cyberbullying is legalistically different than regular bullying and where the mandates/responsibilities (if they exist) start and end for the school administration, especially with mixed minor-adult populations. It is, admittedly, a very difficult line to draw.
As the article states, SCOTUS rarely gets into school-student speech issues, so this decision is expected to set the stage for the next 25-50 years of US policy in the now digital era
EDIT: It's not just young women, cyberbullying is more of an universal problem.
Schools aren’t called to solve crime; they should defer to the police.
Similar to the US military's idea of Non-Judicial Punishment[0] (drop and give me 50!), school administration often also has the lee-way of assigning punishment to students [1]. This punishment often does not rise to the level of a crime, but still requires action. Things like detention, cleaning toilets, scrubbing hallways, etc. Often, the bully is a minor themselves, and may not understand the implications of their effects. Giving them a police record may not be appropriate if a talking-to will stop the behavior.
SCOTUS's ruling will flesh out this idea a bit more, maybe. If they rule that school administration is able to punish as they see fit for this case, then cyberbullying may be seen as something that does not typically rise to the level of a crime. If they do not, then cyberbullying may need to be revisited as a more serious action on the part of minors.
If you believe your vigilanteism is justified (because, and only because, the police won't or can't do their jobs) the onus is on you to clearly communicate that your actions are because the police won't or can't do their jobs, and to support that assertion with resonable evidence, in every single case.
If students know that then what exactly is the disincentive to engage in bullying that doesn't rise to the level of criminal harassment?
Shouldn't a school be a place someone learns appropriate behaviours with less risk of criminal sanctions? It seems that some form of punishment imposed by schools would be reasonable in some circumstances.
If they're making a nuisance of themselves at school, the school would presumably give them a detention, with repeat offences eventually resulting in expulsion. If they're making a nuisance of themselves elsewhere, the school is not involved. (Note that the latter applies to criminal actions as well; that's what the police are for.)
0: That is, from "X implies Y" to "Y implies X".
This distinction doesn't really exist. Does "school" include virtual learning environments? School sports? Travelling to and from school or sports? Bullying that extends from school to out of school?
Traditionally, schools have always been responsible for these things or have taken actions that occurred out of school grounds into account.
I finished school in the early 1990s and students were expelled then for graffiti attacks out of the school, out if school hours, not in school uniform.
I don't see what is different or new here.
That's fair as far as it goes, but I'm not claiming it's different or new; I'm claiming it's bad and needs to be stopped.
> Does "school" include virtual learning environments? School sports? Travelling to and from school or sports?
Probably. Probably. Debatably and depends on the mode of transport.
> Bullying that extends from school to out of school?
That's two items; yes to the former, no to the latter.
Expulsion is not really on the table, at least in the U.S.
But expulsion is something that will affect the person for the rest of their life. There should be significant burden of proof before such an action can be taken, and we already have a system (courts) to deal with that.
Going to parents is probably unwise for a variety of reasons. Possible could solve the issue but more likely will increase the drama without providing any real punishment.
The idea of "incorporating" the Bill of Rights against states and cities is a result of the Due Process clause of the 14th amendment. (For example, I wouldn't be surprised if the Heller decision would eventually result in US cities like NYC, SF and LA being unable to require gun licenses anymore, after someone sues them like in MacDonald vs Chicago).
That said, Facebook and Twitter are not publicly owned, they are "private" corporations (which are publicly traded). The problem isn't their specific decisions, but that they are too big.
The Sherman Antitrust act actually gave a lot of teeth to the idea that the public government can break up businesses if they abuse their monopoly power (and supported even by Republican presidents like Teddy Roosevelt). Ma Bell. Standard Oil. Etc. Today, people look at Facebook and Google as targets for breaking them up into competing companies or unbundling their departments from favoring one another.
As a left-libertarian, I would instead like to subsidize open-source software to disrupt these Big Tech monopolies from the ground up. And it's a subtle point, but I would like for the State to simply pass laws explicitly declining to enforce property rights and other rights of entities that "control too much". Landlords who own too many houses, or banks that merge together into large conglomerates will be put on notice that the public system will not enforce their rights against members of the public, past a certain point. It doesn't serve society for private property to have no limits, similarly to how you can't scale up Roman era ships and still have them seaworthy.
I recently gave an interview at Glasgow Caledonian University about the economics of free speech, where I go into detail about the problems and solutions in all the aspects around Capitalism and Free Speech, from money in politics, to deplatforming, to Big Tech filter bubbles, to clickbait news, to the Sinclair television chorus. It contains a lot of critiques of Capitalism and Competition as the basis for free speech.
If anyone has about 30 minutes to listen through it, I would love your feedback: https://youtu.be/M8HbvC6vqIY
Probably because one of those two is a religious statement, while another one is a political statement. Which makes sense, given that religious affiliation is a protected group when it comes to employment, while political affiliation/speech typically isn't.
I don't think so.
Therefore, it is an assumption to say the individual is conveying a political view. It very well may be a religious view that is being challenged in the political arena.
Some doctors would also state that it is a scientific argument. ( not protected I know but just showing it isn't entirely political )
But most of these cases are equivalent to someone being fired for wearing whatever t-shirt at home, so that's not really a distinction that gets you out of the problem.
You raise an interesting point, because I feel like they would be fired for that indeed. What makes it interesting is that it becomes a political message wrapped in a religious statement, and I have zero clue as to how courts would approach that.
I think it just could be the case of a simple misconduct that has nothing to do with religious prosecution, because I don't think you would be able to get away with wearing a tshirt with a lot of really explicit and graphic quotes from the old testament at work, despite them having nothing to do with gender or politics (e.g., the example of Ezekiel 23:20 with very explicit content about reproductive anatomy of horses and donkeys comes to mind).
Yes, which makes me believe that you are legally protected from being fired for publicly expressing your affiliation with a religious group. However, you are not protected from being fired for expressing political views, regardless of whether they stem from the religion you are affiliated with or some other source.
This is just an armchair lawyer level of reasoning on my end here, I have no idea if this is how it actually legally works, but that sort of makes sense. So if someone with the actual knowledge can chime in, that would be appreciated.
this whole cancel culture I think has taken a turn for the worse in the recent past.
Well yeah, but they can be, and their employer won't get in any legal trouble. Having controversial political statements on your tshirt doesn't mean that you will get fired or that you deserve to be fired, it means that your employer has a right to fire you for it with zero legal repercussions. And if the employer doesn't want to fire you for your political statement, they won't, it's up to them.
You can't be fired simply for belonging to a religion.
However, belonging to a religion doesn't legally excuse your other actions such as harassing others based on their religion/sex/whatever.
So, you can belong to the Church of Satan, and even tell people that you belong to it -- that's your business. But you can't harass Christians for being Christian. That's their business.
Similarly, you can believe there are only two genders and those who transgress those boundaries are wrong. That's your business. But you can't harass coworkers based on those beliefs. That's their business.
If yes, then it would mean that wearing a "there are only 2 genders" tshirt would essentially count as harassing a protected class based on their belonging to that protected class. Which seems like pretty clear grounds for termination, and no "this is just my religion" excuses are going to help here.
Just like wearing a quote from the bible on your tshirt saying that women aren't supposed to hold seniority over men would very certainly get you fired as well, despite that being a part of your religious textbook and you belonging to that protected class.
Dispelling a myth here, the Bible doesn't actually say "women aren't supposed to hold seniority over men". It is true that it has been used in this manner and interpreted by certain organizations as such. Strong lined Complementarianism [0] espouse this belief.
However, the conclusion is not supported by the text and context nor by the rest of the Bible. [1]
To use a verse already quoted here Galatians 3:28. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus". This verse has everything to do with equality and nothing to do with the topic it was used for elsewhere in this thread. ( read it in context and you will see ).
I know I may get flamed/down voted for this but it is extremely important.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementarianism
[1] https://almostheretical.com/episodes/authority-over-a-man
In the macro, it's relevant to issues of school/workplace speech in the sense that it's good to remember that major religions are awfully large tents and represent a wide plurality of beliefs. Christianity is not necessarily synonymous with any particular belief regarding gender, etc. The same could be said of other major world religions.
I'm an atheist and therefore don't have a horse in this race. But it's one reason why merely identifying as belonging to a religion is fine in the workplace, whereas espousing specific religious beliefs that disparage others is a problem.
The comment thread was specifically regarding religion so it is entirely applicable and important.
There are plenty of examples on HN where religious documents other than the Bible or the Pentateuch are discussed. [0][1][2]
Religion and/or the lack thereof impacts our culture and politics in outstanding ways. To ignore them or not discuss them leaves us blind to significant reasonings that have built the world we live in today.
[0] https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C5GCEM_en&q=site:news.yco...
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+...
[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+...
Just like wearing a quote from the bible on
your tshirt saying that women aren't supposed
to hold seniority over men would very certainly
get you fired as well, despite that being a
part of your religious textbook and you belonging
to that protected class.
Why would biological facts be considered "political statements"? (assuming gender = biological sex, which is the usual usage from regular talk to identity papers throughout the world).
No, I would label them all as "political" except the satan church one. Because the satan church tshirt you mentioned doesn't make any kind of a statement aside from signaling belonging to or support of a religious group.
However, if the satan church tshirt made an additional statement (after "satan church") like "abortions should be legal", I would count it as a political statement as well.
"Flat earth" is just as much of a political statement as "Spherical earth" is (science and validity aside). You can get fired for either without much legal repercussions for the employer. Whether you get fired or not for wearing that tshirt is fully up to how your boss feels about it.
To put it simply, "protected class/speech" doesn't mean that you can wrap any statement inside of it and you are protected from getting fired. Especially if that statement you wrapped inside goes directly against another protected class (e.g., if you had a christian church tshirt that said "islam is a fake religion"), then I bet you are gonna get fired extremely fast, and saying "religion is a protected class" won't help you much there.
It's worth noting that it's legal in all states but Montana to fire someone for absolutely no reason at all, meaning that in 49 states + DC all firing discrimination is effectively legal so long as it's obfuscated enough to stay out of court.
I see people asking for legal advice online re: being fired as soon as they come out as gay or refuse to attend the church suggested by their boss like once or twice a month. Often times the company has less than 15 employees so there's no violation even if it's spelled out.
If it were just that then who cares. No, the problem is that a small group of agitators whip a mob into a frenzy of targeted harassment at friends, family, and employers of the person being cancelled, a process that naturally gives no way for the target to defend themself or for the true facts of the situation to even be known. This is literal mob justice.
I hear this argument regularly. Can you cite evidence showing it's actually true?
I've read this multiple times over the last couple years. Please don't accuse me of cherry picking, I don't know anything about Cato, I just googled it and it was the first link(well, via thehill).
I wonder how this compares with other countries but I can look that up myself. The article you referenced from The Hill considered the issue but didn't provide much useful data either way. [1]
[1] https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/510402-afraid-to-sp...
https://marc.info/?l=python-dev&m=161652621725348&w=2
Similar rants from last year have been deleted.
Whenever someone posts the evidence you ask for, it is usually flagged instantly. Perhaps that is why evidence is rarely seen.
In the example you post, someone is ridiculing a group decision on a sensitive topic. Do you actually think that there should be no negative consequences to _ridiculing_ the decisions of your boss or coworkers? Being a dick has always been a way to lose your job, and I think that's okay.
What if Twitter one day decided that something you happened to say, perhaps in the past, disagreed with some social "norm" that you weren't even aware of? Would you be happy to be fired? Or can you confidently say that you will never have any opinion different from that of the "social norm"?
“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-t...
Goes to show the fear that everyone shows about this topic is almost always overblown. Assuming you aren't actually Harvey Weinstein and didn't do anything criminal, the worst that happens in every other case is you get the same job or even better for a different company a few years later. Brendan Eich and Mel Gibson still have no trouble finding work. Cancellation doesn't ever seem to be a life sentence.
James Damore seems to be doing fine, just not at Google: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-damore-b277b62b/ (interesting that he doesn't name the startup, though).
I don't believe "they'll recover eventually" is in any way an excuse for "let's ruin this person's life [temporarily] for fun". They got fired and are likely unable to have a stable life for a year. I sure wouldn't like to get fired and have the paparazzi in front of my house for the next month.
> Goes to show that the fear everyone shows about this topic is almost always overblown.
Sounds like the right amount of fear to me. Some people don't have the privilege to go without a job for a year. Some people don't have the mental fortitude to deal with the crap that ensues.
People shouldn't need to worry about getting fired because the people of social media didn't agree with what they said.
You're being somewhat generous here.
Yes.
> She posted a joke on Twitter mocking the idea that white people couldn't get AIDS.
Even if you believe the subsequent backtracking, that's still a profoundly stupid thing to be doing in that circumstance, and it shows a complete lack of any critical thought as to how your actions and words are perceived.
Of course I believe the subsequent backtracking. Have you read the New York Times article? Most people aren't racists.
> ... a complete lack of critical thought as to how your actions and words are perceived.
A lot of people have times when they don't think about how their words will be perceived. I sure have, and I'm sure you have too. However, I do not believe such minor stupidity should result in immediate loss of job, without warning.
Too be honest, that depends entirely on the joke and her role, doesn’t it?
However, the term "canceled" itself is more typically about a specific and recent set of peers and biases - people on the right who are angry that people on the left are telling them to stop using the f-g or n-word, etc or angry that guys are getting outed for doing exactly the rape-y crap they themselves did and normalized and probably celebrated when they were in college.
Now, I honestly don't know if Louis CK should have had his career ended because he was pervy (pulled his junk out a lot, right? I get these stories confused), but that is more a function of social media being a huge, new megaphone for ostracizing people, not that the left is on some spectacular cancel rampage as it is normally characterized. We do need to grapple with how to deal with this new megaphone, I agree.
However, again, mostly this angst is not about a genuine desire to be good citizens and calling out dangerous corner cases. If it were, we'd be having a very different and much more constructive conversation. Most of this angst is really about the right wanting to keep being the right and going back to good old days, defensively dismissing the way the good old days were actually pretty terrible for a lot of people and we've learned a lot about how to be better humans. Of course there are cherry picked examples (in a population of 7B you can probably found thousands). But those examples don't change the underlying dynamics and motivations of what is going on here on average*.
If I see something I disagree with on the Internet, maybe a joke gone wrong, I do not necessarily have to like it. But I will, nonetheless, celebrate that they are able to post what they have without facing potentially career-ending repercussions from the other side.
Does that difference make sense?
Can you direct me to any incidents where someone expressed support for Satanism, even as a joke, and was then summarily fired after a mob harassed his employer with angry phone calls/tweets expressing (almost entirely empty) threats to boycott or worse?
Are we talking Church of Satan or the Satanic Temple here?
Or at least creates funding consequences for them if they try to act like a private organization that actually has rights like a private citizen.
specifically, when an organization tries to "cancel" someone, it makes me wonder if they are
A) able to, or if they must tolerate basically any level of speech
B) able to have their own funding consequences by losing government funds if they choose to regulate speech
That's going to be everything.
Is there a categorical difference between, say UVA, and Harvard? Arguably Harvard takes much more federal funding than UVA.
How about a local dance studio that got $160,000 in federal loans to keep it afloat during COVID pandemic?
The extent of consensus, for me, is understanding what reality can match the arbiters that matter. So I don't really have a fixed world view on much of anything. (sidenote: I'd probably be a decent lawyer, but software earns so much more without any licenses needed.)
Well, for one, anyone administering anything IRL. You're a programmer, so you're not really responsible for much besides your own code. If you were a school principal (or a dance studio runner), knowing where the line exists (or is "liable to exist") BEFORE having to walk into court is important. A legal battle is not as easily ninja'd out as println debugging.
ideally their local counsel knows better too.
the best action in inaction.
all they have to do is do nothing. let the student represent whatever values the student wants in most circumstances.
Being "denied a wedding cake because one is gay" is a choice that private bakeries and institutions make to not associate themselves with speech, actions, or views they find either objectionable or simply damaging to their brand and business goals.
Had that gone the other way, it would have had some icky implications for compelled speech/artwork.
To quote the dissenting Opinion in this case, written by Justice Ginsburg,
In contrast to Jack, Craig and Mullins simply requested a wedding cake: They mentioned no message or anything else distinguishing the cake they wanted to buy from any other wedding cake Phillips would have sold.
The "Jack" in question:
> William Jack visited three Colorado bakeries. His visits followed a similar pattern. He requested two cakes “made to resemble an open Bible. He also requestedthat each cake be decorated with Biblical verses. [He]requested that one of the cakes include an image of two groomsmen, holding hands, with a red ‘X’ over the image. On one cake, he requested [on] one side[,] . . . ‘God hates sin. Psalm 45:7’ and on the opposite side of the cake ‘Homosexuality is a detestable sin.Leviticus 18:2.’ On the second cake, [the one] with the image of the two groomsmen covered by a red ‘X’[Jack] requested [these words]: ‘God loves sinners’ and on the other side ‘While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Romans 5:8.’ ” App. to Pet. for Cert. 319a; see id., at 300a, 310a.
...
The bakeries agreed to bake & sell him these cakes, but without the specific messages he wanted. Jack filled charges against these bakeries, and the Colorado courts upheld the rights of the bakeries in this case. The Supreme Court in the Masterpiece Bakery used this case as the precedent, and I agree with Justice Ginsburg's dissent that it should not apply.
> The Court concludes that “the Commission’s considera-tion of Phillips’ religious objection did not accord with its treatment of [the other bakers’] objections.” Ante, at 15. See also ante, at 5–7 (GORSUCH, J., concurring). But the cases the Court aligns are hardly comparable. The bakers would have refused to make a cake with Jack’s requested message for any customer, regardless of his or her religion. And the bakers visited by Jack would have sold him any baked goods they would have sold anyone else. The bakeries’ refusal to make Jack cakes of a kind they would not make for any customer scarcely resembles Phillips’ refusal to serve Craig and Mullins: Phillips would not sell to Craig and Mullins, for no reason other than their sexual orientation, a cake of the kind he regularly sold to others.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf
> Had that gone the other way, it would have had some icky implications for compelled speech/artwork.
This is addressed in her dissent as well.
Some speech is more protected than others.
I’m pretty sure that people would give me a weird look and then it would carry on as normal. Is this different somewhere?
Though I did have a co-member there get fired for being a Mormon and win a discrimination suit. His religiously motivated abstemiousness regarding alcohol got him fired from an aircraft maker since they worried about him NOT drinking with clients (as a salesman.)
An even more ridiculous example might be an annocuous disagreement with what a lot of people are saying. "I don't think the cops should be abolished, and anyone should be able to protest for their beliefs".
I don't think anyone disagrees with the other implied strawman of the guy who goes around constantly making rape jokes and is surprised when his friends don't like him anymore. It's more about how easy it is to just spread dirt, truthful or otherwise.
"Though public school students do possess First Amendment freedoms, the courts allow school officials to regulate certain types of student expression. For example, school officials may prohibit speech that substantially disrupts the school environment or that invades the rights of others. Many courts have held that school officials can restrict student speech that is lewd.
Many state constitutions contain provisions safeguarding free expression. Some state Supreme Courts have interpreted their constitutions to provide greater protection than the federal Constitution. In addition, a few states have adopted laws providing greater protection for freedom of speech." - https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/about/faq/what-rights-...
It can still be a major problem in a supposedly "free" society if there is a culture of punishing people for their thoughts. For one thing, it makes democracy pointless.
You're making a lot of assumptions about the comment above yours. Language changes.
Speaking of straw men. There’s a legitimate concern that political discourse is run through a few monopoly providers with biased and inconsistent moderation. Stating that the actual reason is because they’re jerks is a fantastic straw man of your own.
If I'm reading you right, then you are very wrong [0]. So much so that the court's own website addresses this:
"If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."
The idea of free speech is that for it to be free, you MUST allow unpopular speech (otherwise, it's not free!). This is hard to remember when we disagree with someone' actions.
A government agent (the school) taking repercussions against a child (she was 14 at the time) because she expressed frustration about the government should clearly fall into the violation category.
To not be a violation would be have an incalculable chill on free speech across schools impacting roughly 70 million kids (plus their parents).
[0] - https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-a...
If everything private is fair game, then I expect we should be able to depose all parties involved for any disparaging statements they have ever made. Then we can proceed with either cancelling the large majority of everyone, and prosecuting the rest for perjury. I suppose there is as third group who just don't say anything at all, and we should just go ahead and nail them for thoughtcrime.
Sure, there is a blurred line with posting something on a forum which is read in school, but this case clearly isn't that. The speech wasn't public and wasn't available at large.
Worked for O.J. when his attorneys questioned Mark Fuhrman. Probably had a substantial impact on the jury verdict.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/03/people-v-oj-sim...
1: https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-a...
“Silence is violence”
Scenario 1) someone who has bullied you in the past calls classmate a racist term. you stay silent for reasonable fear of reprisals.
Scenario 2) your boss says something overtly sexist. you know he is fairly temperamental, so stay silent because you want to keep your job so as to continue paying your bills.
Scenario 3) the government is jailing a certain ideological group you happen to somewhat agree with. you stay silent for fear of being included in that group and leaving your children parentless.
Do any of those sound like violence? Or do they sound like a reasonable course of action for an individual lacking power over the perpetrators?
I understand the instinct to condemn silence in the face of injustice. But the real world places real demands on people, some of which are more important than abstract notions of justice.
The question at hand is whether you believe isolated private communications to be representative of true nature.
I disagree. Why should associating with someone automatically mean you condone all of their beliefs/actions? You can disagree with parts you disagree with. Otherwise that's like a religious person saying they have to shun all democrats, because to associate with them is to condone abortion.
only if they are able to convince me, but even if they are completely certain their view is right but they can't explain why, then they will not be able to do that. if you want to change someones mind you need to understand and be able to explain why they are wrong.
Daryl Davis: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis
It does sound like they're making a claim to efficacy. It says "one by one managed to turn them away". That's the part I'm asking for clarification on.
I'm not saying that's not a valid point of conversation, I'm saying it comes across as off-context to the point where it seems a little like bait.
And way more people who socialize in KKK circles end up naturally moving toward racism and extremes of it. They change toward racism, because that is what choose to hear most of time.
It so happens that these are quite aggressive when voice disagreements with them, so socialising with the requires you to pretend you agree, at least on the edges. It works like any other bubble overtime, the anti-racists become crazy ennemies.
there is also quite a difference between people who socialize in kkk circles, and those who befriend individuals with the intent of changing their mind. the latter, for certain will not only socialize in kkk circles but also in other circles where they get the necessary grounding for their work to change those people.
i understand your point. from your perspective it makes sense. but i think you are missing something. pretending to agree does not make me believe what i pretend to. but i also think that pretending is not needed here, but rather it's important to empathize with my opponent, and then gently educate them to point out the flaws in their argument.
if i am working with someone to educate them and change their mind, then i am not joining their bubble. i am not giving up on my other circles either. rather i am breaking out of my bubble, and i help others break out of theirs. i end up with a better understanding of why they have their beliefs, and they hopefully get a better understanding why they might be wrong. we both gain something.
> pretending to agree does not make me believe what i pretend to.
It somewhat does. More importantly, as you pretend you agree, the people who happen to disagree will slowly move themselves out from your company, because listening to you agreeing is uncomfortable for them. And they get better treatment elsewhere.
Also the pull of extreme groups is not just rational where you point out flaws in thinking and logic will do rest. There is strong social (strong bonds to other extremeists) component and strong emotional component (it feels good to be superior, it feels good to see yourself as protector of race - a hero).
as far as i can tell, also from personal experience, education and friendship are the only ways to solve social issues that actually have a lasting effect.
as you pretend you agree, the people who happen to disagree will slowly move themselves out
possible, but as i said, pretending is not actually part of the strategy. you don't pretend, you empathize, but that doesn't mean you agree or even pretend to agree.
There is strong social component
which is broken by your friendship. you show that they can find better friends, and you are one of them.
This doesn't materially change if instead everyone finds out jack says these things to randos on a weird forum on weekends, unless jack decides to persuade people that those opinions are not representative of who he is. That would be an entirely different problem.
A religious person who hangs out with pro-choice individuals is condoning that its ok to be pro choice. That's not the same thing as saying pro choice is the right ideology, but that it is a tolerable difference of opinion. It's basically tautological. If you refuse to accept pro-choice individuals and then hang out with them, you're just an inconsistent person.
If you share employment with someone with a different religious background and that really bothers you, but you remain employed, you're ultimately deciding that being employed is more important to you than the virtue of your religious objections.
No amount of politicalization will erase the fact that social reputation is an important part of how humans socialize.
you seem to suggest that disagreeing with an opinion requires me to reject the person as a whole. but that is wrong. i can, even must accept you as a person, even if i violently disagree with your opinions. if i don't then it would be impossible for us to have any dialogue, and for me to learn and understand why you have this opinion, and also for you to learn and understand mine.
this idea that i must not associate with people who i disagree with is a core problem. we must get away from that otherwise we won't ever be able to resolve our differences.
virtue of your religious objections
there is no virtue in objecting to someone elses religion. that's just pure intolerance, which is something that needs to be eliminated.
That's not what I said. The difference is whether you see an difference of opinion or something that is so ideologically different that you can not tolerate their opinion.
> there is no virtue in objecting to someone elses religion. that's just pure intolerance, which is something that needs to be eliminated.
And social ostracization of aggressive, intolerable groups is an effective strategy
that still doesn't require me to stay away from them. if there is an opinion so bad that it actually is intolerable, (which the kkk obviously represents) then it is on us to do something about it. none of that affects whether i ought to socialize with these people or not. it only affects why. if my goal is to change them then i should be allowed to do that.
social ostracization of aggressive, intolerable groups is an effective strategy
effective to do what? to change their mind? i'd like to see some evidence for that, because i don't believe it. ostracization only strengthens people in their opinions. it may make then unable to spread their ideas, but it doesn't help them change.
ostracization also can end up hurting the wrong people. those who want to get out but can't because they don't have anyone helping them. it causes people who are actually unsure get stuck because they have noone showing them that there is another way. it causes people who realize that they are wrong being unable to get out because they have to fear to end up being completely isolated. they don't know that there will be others who welcome them. for all they know they have to expect to remain shunned because they are afraid could not convince anyone that they changed. (this is made even worse by todays climate of ostracizing people for things they said years ago. you said something racist on twitter once, and noone will ever believe that you learned your lesson for the rest of your life)
changing your opinion and then finding new friends looks easy from the outside, but very risky from the inside. finding new friends, and then have those friends help you get out is the only way.
it's up to us to be those friends.
a problem here is also who decides who ought to be ostracized. i should have the right to associate with whoever i want. it's not anyone's place to decide whether i am capable of avoiding to get influenced by those people or not.
if you are a close friend who knows me well, you may be able to tell if these people are getting to me or not and you can tell me, or help me avoid that influence. if you aren't already a friend, then your only option is to become my friend and find out. and if necessary help me understand that these people are influencing me. but if you ostracize me because i am not doing what you think i should, then you will achieve the opposite of what you set out to do.
you see, it's friends all the way down. and all the way up. the only way to change the world, is to change its people, one person at a time.
ostracization leads to disunity, and disunity leads to war. the well-being of the worlds society, its peace and security can not be achieved if we keep ostracizing each other.
That's up to you then. Shunning occurs on various levels.
If you want to talk to someone in the KKK to discuss the merits of their opinions, be my guest. If you want to employ KKK members, I'm leaving your team. If I'm your manager, I might even fire you for making such a boneheaded decision.
Giving everyone legitimacy is a childish idea easily abused by bad faith actors.
i might hire them after they renounce their kkk membership. are you ok with that?
where i am from, discrimination based on political opinions is illegal. on the other hand, political activism by employees is also not allowed. so i probably could hire someone who is not already known for their kkk membership, and you would not be allowed to fire me for that. they are allowed to stay as long as they are not becoming active. that scenario is unlikely to happen though because hiring friends is considered a form of corruption and strongly frowned upon. qualifications only.
but let's be clear. i am not giving someone legitimacy just by talking to them.
I think the ironic and not obvious answer here is that we stop committing people to the garbage heap of humanity via religious-like shunning. That reaction is what gives bad ideas power.
People are complicated. You can’t boil them down to a true nature that is “good” or “bad”. That’s “us vs them”. Only ideas can be judged that way and history decides what the bad ideas are.
There’s also religious-like forgiveness too. Some incredible acts of forgiveness were accomplished by very religious people. Pope John Paul II immediately forgave the person who almost killed him.
If there are no consequences for "acting like a Karen" what is the social incentive to stop behaving like an angry toddler anytime you don't get your way? Now extend this to even more extreme behavior like people who say you should be killed just for existing because you're an abomination. Is the argument that we should just get along and there shouldn't be any social consequences for that? Such a view would be incredibly naive at best.
On the flip side clearly people's views do sometimes change, people make mistakes, etc. Changing minds and hearts is a process, not a one-time event, so complete shunning for any perceived slight is rather extreme and can be counterproductive.
Yes. But it's a problem when different cultures coexist and see each other's good behavior as bad. Societies that kill their "abominations" are also enforcing their social norms. And they may even be right to do so given the environment they live in and their desire to continue existing as a society. Modern western culture has the luxury of being very tolerant of diverse types of people because we're so wealthy and safe, but many societies or their members are closer to the brink and the presence of too many ineffective or counter-productive members is an existential threat.
Yes, sometimes it is in racist or exaggerating context. But, most often, Karen is used to shut up woman who don't want to be doormat or is telling you off for good reason.
The goal is and as when men do the same - make them stop or at least minimize. Or vent frustration, sometimes.
Respectfully communicating feelings about somebody being horrible and hurting people rarely achieves anything. Cause horrible people hurting people don't care about your feelings.
Visiting a rapist who speaks freely, or privately just to you, about how much he enjoys rape certainly begs the question of why you're doing what you're doing.
Employing such a person who says these things speaks volumes about your concern for the feelings of people who feel threatened or have suffered sexual assault in the past, especially on your team.
All of this boils down to how much legitimacy we're willing to offer people based on what we know about them. If you want to offer the worst of the worst people just enough legitimacy to have a human conversation once in a while, I think that's defensible. If you think one's reputation doesn't have massive reprecussions on which social groups you welcome them into I think you're naive.
Although I suppose I was referring to "history is written by the victor". America is a great nation, but had the revolution failed, it would have been a disgraceful insurrection instead.
Even now the American revolution is kind of a non-event to the British. It is of less interest to them than the French revolution, which led to the Napoleonic wars and ultimately the rather drastic reshaping of European nations. George III is the villain in the American version of the story, but he's mostly known in the UK for his long, sad descent into madness.
They had their own Civil War in the 17th century, and even that tends to be glossed over in British history classes. They've just got so much more history than Americans do that it's just unfathomable. They don't really spare a lot of thought for the successful revolution, and an unsuccessful one would have been a footnote.
What do you mean by "stop committing people to the garbage heap of humanity via religious-like shunning"? Do you have a social group in mind that does not enforce its own social norms?
The best modern-day example of how we should all live is probably Daryl Davis...
"It's when the talking ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence. If you spend five minutes with your worst enemy — it doesn't have to be about race, it could be about anything...you will find that you both have something in common."
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinc...
I hear what you're saying, but I think Daryl Davis is an inexplicable exception, not the rule. I think most people know someone that has held onto truly shocking beliefs for decades, and hasn't responded to reason or compassion.
> held onto truly shocking beliefs
Can you see the extreme subjectivity in your comments? Why should your opinion of what's a norm or shocking be the ultimate judge? What if its your ideas which are actually shocking and violate the norms? For example, you should believe in a god because that's normal and if you're an exception, you need to be brought back into the fold of believers.
I'm okay with being extremely subjective and saying that's actually shocking. Claims that strong should be accompanied by at least circumstantial evidence. If you don't believe this is a real world view that people are trying to spread, look up Q-Anon.
To me, this does not seem logical (for the dictionary definition of "condone"). Would you mind explaining your reasoning?
I was pointing out that visiting a criminal does not directly imply that you condoned the actions that landed them in prison. However, if you know someone that is committing crimes, and you do nothing to stop them, then you do condone their behavior. I hope that clears it up?
Nobody would disagree with the individual right.
I would fire someone in a heartbeat if I heard they were a self identifying Neo Nazi or klansman, and they affirmed this when confronted. I don't want to work with nazis. I don't want my team to have to work with nazis. I don't want people to think I work at a company that knowingly employs nazis.
The converse is you need to offer a way for people to change. The point of social pressures like this is to get people to stop being the worst. We say "echo chamber" like its unilaterally bad, because in america 'muh freedom' means whatever the individual wants is what the individual is entitled to preach. But honestly there's a lot of basic social norms that are healthy to enforce, without embedding it in legal code.
That's immaterial. The teams rules prohibited any statements of that nature, in private or public.
The real question is whether such a rule is enforceable. If not, then every rule would have a limited scope. The article gives some examples of problems this would cause, e.g., sharing test answers, bullying, harassment.
If the rules only apply while on school property or in public, then why even have rules? The student can just flaunt the rules and claim "privacy" when challenged.
Almost any way that Institutions have to detect rule breaking outside of their purview involves serious privacy breaches.
And really, any grown adult who says the same things about their employer that Levy did about her school should expect to find themselves unemployed as soon as word gets back. I don't mean that to diss Levy, who was a kid at the time, and besides, what kids don't privately rant to their friends about school? It's neither appropriate nor desirable for a school to say "you don't like it, then quit" to a child, whereas it's reasonable for most work settings to fire a disgruntled employee.
How’s a private snap any different than a private letter?
I thought that letters had a copyright? The recipient has ownership but cannot publish. If they do copy and distribute (as a screenshot of a Snapchat message) does this not break copyright?
Edit: In New Zealand (where I am), an employer screenshooting and distributed an employee’s Facebook messages breached privacy laws. https://privacy.org.nz/tools/knowledge-base/view/366
In Levy's case, she made a public post (even if she didn't mean for it to be public). And to be clear, I'm not going to judge a 14 year old for doing things that I'd be annoyed with a 30 year old for doing. A kid got frustrated with her school and complained about it? Ooh, stop the presses and clutch some pearls! I have a much harder time sympathizing with people twice her age who complain publicly about how much their job sucks, then complain that their boss has relieved them of the burden of ongoing employment.
I don't think it's fair to call her action "making a public post" because she did not make it public. Someone else did.
I think she should be allowed to be a cheerleader even after complaining about her coach and school, as kids are wont to do. Now we'll find out if the courts see it the same way.
The school can certainly argue that all students have to meet the same requirements to participate, which would hinge on whether the student could reasonably anticipate the consequences here (an example where that isn't possible is if the school created and applied a policy for the incident).
My first comment is in response to the people inventing parallels that don't exist at all because schools and work places are very different things and wasn't an attempt to thoroughly examine the specifics. A finding that the existing obligations of the school do apply to this situation is irrelevant to at will employment.
That cannot possibly be true. Here is an example. Imagine if a school banned people from sports, because they expressed support for Obama or Trump.
Clearly that would be a government infringing on people's right to speech, as it is expressely political.
Or imagine that a school gave certain benefits, only to students, who publicly support a certain political candidate. If you don't support their choice of president, you lose privileges or benefits or get expelled.
Or, if we are truly talking about "any manner they see fit", an obvious counter example would be if they just banned women from playing sports.
> is about to open One Giant Can of Worms.
There is no can of worms being opened here. A school is a public institution. How speech laws apply to public institution is not some crazy out there idea. It is well established.
I am not sure why people are making out speech laws, which have a long history of how they apply to public institutions, as some sort of alien topic.
You wouldn't say that a school could expel people, for example, for this kind of speech, out of school. Why is it so crazy, for this to be applied to other activities?
Free speech laws apply differently in school. They're not exactly the same as other public institutions, as SCOTUS has ruled numerous times.
Bethel v. Fraser[0] is an example where the Court ruled pretty clearly that the school can go as far as to prohibit sexual innuendo, it doesn't even have to be obscene or vulgar.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethel_School_District_v._Fras...
I didn't say that they were exactly the same. Instead I am saying that there is not some "huge can of worms" that is opened on up this topic, if the supreme court rules in favor of the student in this case.
It is instead something that predictably might happen, and which will have predicable results that are in line with how things work in other examples.
So, in other words, the sky will not fall, and schools will not collapse under the weight of not being allowed to punish students for purely off campus speech.
I guess this case is about whether cheerleading falls into the former or latter category.
url encoding the dot with %2E does work around it.
Hmmm, I'm not sure that's the meaning of free speech. Forcing a private entity to provide an unpaid service is something quite different.
Did you try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahanoy_Area_School_District_v... ?
The fact the Klan is not labeled as one is deeply shocking.
I'm not sure if what you're advocating is because of perhaps missing education on the subject but this is a serious hot button issue at the moment; I'm honestly surprised you'd espouse this so freely.
If the Supreme Court made an exceptionally broad ruling to the effect of forbidding any organ of the state revoking an appointment on the basis of first amendment protected speech uttered while not performing duties, then the ruling would protect a racist police officer and irate cheerleader equally.
The Supreme Court is, of course, very unlikely to make such a broad ruling in this case, but it does seem like that's the remedy which quite a few people in this thread would like to see decided.
I guess students sign behavior pledges or similar, but I'm more inclined to enforce an employment agreement against an adult than I am to give local school administrators complete control over what activities students they disapprove of participate in.
Cheerleaders? They are welcome to go to the Klan BBQ and liven up the proceedings within the limits of the law; like the rest of us.
Additionally, I hope this can also apply to the workplace.
> Brandi Levy sent a profanity-laden post to her friends on Snapchat in 2017, venting her frustrations with cheerleading and her school. When coaches at the Pennsylvania school discovered the post, she was barred from the squad for a year. The case will determine whether schools have the right to punish pupils for what they say off-campus. It is being viewed as a major test of the US Constitution's First Amendment, which protects free speech rights.
As for my own thoughts... I'm hoping the outcome of this case can be used as a litmus test for related bannings/cancellations when people express an opinion "off-campus" (so to speak).
Edit: More info about the case here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahanoy_Area_School_District_v....
Edit2: Looks like HN can't handle URLs that end with a period. Clicking the link above won't work; you have to manually terminate it with a period before loading (should end with "B.L.", not "B.L")