SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said Thursday that discriminating against gay people shouldn't be illegal, although he would prefer it if everyone were treated with respect.
In his most definitive comments yet on gay rights, Herbert told reporters he doesn't believe sexual orientation should be a protected class in the way that race, gender and religion are.
"We don't have to have a rule for everybody to do the right thing. We ought to just do the right thing because it's the right thing to do and we don't have to have a law that punishes us if we don't," Herbert said in his first monthly KUED news conference.
In Utah, it is legal to fire someone for being gay or transgender. The gay rights advocacy group Equality Utah has been trying to change state law for several years but has always been rebuffed by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
....
"I agree that we ought to be able to just do the right thing. Unfortunately, the Salt Lake City Human Rights Commission makes it clear that not all employers are doing the right thing," he said, referencing a city report released earlier this summer that said discrimination was rampant.
Follow the link for the whole article.
Okay Freyguy, I mostly agreed with you on “Mawwiage”, but this is a different matter. Let’s compare how the real world works as opposed to the one that postulates legions of hapless victims and evil victimizers. Think of this as a teachable moment.
ReplyDeleteA recent spectacle had the President of the United States calling a policeman stupid based on very little and ambiguous evidence. Why? Well, when seen through the victim/victimizer lens, the Black Man is the victim and the cop is the victimizer. Fortunately for the cop it was soon obvious that he was more Mother Teresa than rogue bigot while the professor had been arrogant and abusive. The good news is at least no one got killed. A few beers and it was pretty much yesterday’s news.
How does this play out in the world of employees and employers? A number of years back we hired a triple minority. One reservation at the time was: would we be able to fire this person if she didn’t work out? (NOTE: an employer, even more than a cop, is assumed to be guilty unless proven innocent.) Being a small firm that lacks a legal department and strong employee documentation procedures we knew that hiring her posed a sizable risk with no real upside – neither the government nor our customers care about our diversity policies.
Still we did the ‘right’ thing. Long story short, she didn’t work out and we felt that we were stuck. Was our fear of getting sued legitimate? You betcha. When we later fired her for committing an overtly fraudulent act, we got sued. We won, but the cost in management time, aggravation and expense was a huge burden. And without facts overwhelmingly in our favor I don’t know if we would have prevailed. Would she have sued if she didn’t feel that she had ‘special rights’? Honestly, I don’t know, but I think it would have been a lot less likely.
So although you seem find comments about ‘special rights’ laughable, I don’t find them at all funny. The tradeoff really and truly is: what are the benefits of trying to enforce equal rights for certain classes of people vs. the cost to society for creating these special protections (rights)?
In trying to protect people who might otherwise be victimized we create a path for that class of people to game and/or unfairly benefit from the system. More importantly we create extra hoops for businesses to jump through that have real costs in terms of manpower and productivity. And also social cost since we (a) reinforce and justify feelings of victimhood and (b) create a backlash among those who believe that special rights for others means that they don’t get to play on a level field. These costs are not insubstantial.
And here’s an interesting nugget about protection for the gay and transgender population? If we create these protections virtually anyone can qualify. Try to prove that someone isn’t gay or transgender. A ‘straight’ employee who feels vulnerable to being fired due to his or her lousy job performance could just ‘come out of the closet’ by doing something that seems overtly gay or ‘unusual’. Then, if fired, simply claim discrimination. (Everything was fine until I showed up at work wearing a tutu. That’s when they decided to fire me.) Hey skirts are a bargain if your job is on the line. And they can be worn by even the most Brave Heart among us.
Okay, maybe I’m getting a little carried away (and maybe not). I’ll grant that society hasn’t arrived at the point where everyone embraces the spirit of Kumbaya. But we just elected a minority President while women make up 55% of the college population and a majority of the workforce. The time has come not to expand these regressive laws, but to get rid of them.
The keepers of the liberal flame do have one thing right. It’s time to move on.
Fred,
ReplyDeleteI think you may have missed the part where the article said employer discrimination against gay and transgendered people is "rampant" in Salt Lake City, according to a city report. And the part where it said it the discrimination is legal. In my opinion, all of your arguments are valid by themselves, but when added up and compared to this reality, they do not amount to a compelling argument that it should continue to be legal to fire a person simply because they are gay or transgendered.
In other words, GLBT people who have been legitimately discriminated against should have no legal recourse at all, because we don't want them to feel like they are victims. And they should have no legal recourse because we don't want them suing others unfairly, ever. And they need to "move on". I don't agree with this arithmetic.
It's worth emphasizing that I am not talking about affirmative action here, or quotas, or any special treatment which might arguably give a certain group of people an unfair advantage. Everyone has a sexual orientation. Therefore, a law that says you can't discriminate based on sexual orientation protects everyone equally -- gays and straights. There is no reason such a law should create a backlash from straight people (no legitimate one I can see, anyway).
-Freyguy
Speaking of how the real world works....
ReplyDelete"A wage or income gap between LGB people and heterosexual people with the same job and personal characteristics provides another indicator of sexual orientation discrimination. A growing number of studies using data from the National Health and Social Life Survey (“NHSLS”), the General Social Survey (“GSS”), the United States Census, and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (“NHANES III”) show that gay men earn 10% to 32% less than otherwise similar heterosexual men. The findings for lesbians, however, are
less clear."
More data on LGBT people in the workplace at:
http://www.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute/publications/Bias%20in%20the%20Workplace.pdf
And what happened to one woman in a state where employers can legally do what they want to their LGBT employees:
"Ashley is a Native American woman
living in Jackson, Mississippi. After she
graduated from high school, Ashley began
working as a waitress in a restaurant. All of
her co-workers knew that she had a girlfriend
and her girlfriend would come to the
restaurant to eat. When Ashley's boss discovered
that Ashley was dating a woman, he
began to harass her. Every day, he told
Ashley she would go to hell for what she was
doing and that she needed to find Jesus. Her
boss' comments upset her to the point that
she was in tears. Ashley's boss tried to get
her to quit by making her do more work than
other employees and being harder on her
than anyone else. Her boss also made offensive
comments like: "You just haven't found
the right man; a man who knows what he is
doing."
Ultimately, Ashley quit her job. She said that
because of her experience, she is "less confident in telling coworkers who I am. I'm
always in fear for my job because of my sexual
identity." Ashley hopes that there will be
a day when she can be out at work without
being fearful of losing her job."
Read more stories, and a federal law to protect everyone from discrimination based on sexual or gender identity called ENDA, here:
http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/lgbt/enda_20070917.pdf
-Freyguy
Freyguy, I feel like you are ganging up on me all by yourself. You are of course correct that affirmative action is not the same as antidiscrimination, although today they seem to be two sides of the same coin. But let’s examine your arguments.
ReplyDeleteSomeone is writing an article about discrimination. What do you think the chances are that he or she will say that there is a moderate amount of discrimination? I know that zero is wrong, but I would bet there is a small chance that the article would say there is very little discrimination and a fairly large chance it will say something like discrimination is “rampant”. If I was doing an article on traffic deaths caused by drunkenness, falling asleep behind the wheel, or text messaging, I would probably also use a word like rampant, but I don’t know what you would glean from that or what laws you would want to pass that don’t already exist. (Okay, text messaging being new, I guess we can agree that that one could use a little work.)
As to your second article, I don’t quite get your point. Ashley is the victim of a hostile work environment based on a number of actions by her boss. She doesn’t need additional protection. She can already sue him up the wazoo (that’s a legal term) even though she no longer works there. Your reasoning for new laws seems to be the same one Congress uses: The rules are not being used (enforced) so what we need are more rules.
In terms of statistical measures, it seems like there is indeed serious data showing discrimination. Since I don’t want to take the time to examine the studies you cited(assuming the raw data is even available) I will take the findings at face value for the sake of this discussion (although I find the possibility of a 32% wage gap breathtaking). So the question is: what would the wage gap look like if you got the laws on the books that you want? Should gay men be allowed to sue based on statistical “proof” of discrimination?
Look, I’m not happy about discrimination and would love to punish those who engage in it. But laws tend not to be surgical instruments. And seeking to outlaw discrimination has already led to the next logical step of trying to outlaw different outcomes. And I especially fear where that can lead.
Fred,
ReplyDeleteWhen I posted those articles in my last comment, I was mostly thinking about and responding to things the Old Man has said. I just wanted to throw some facts and examples out there, not that they necessarily contradict what you (Fred) have said. Poor communication on my part.
I concede that, if we are specifically talking about the merits of ENDA, Ashley's case is not the best example. Ashley's story is simply one example in which it is instructive to consider who is encouraging the "victim status" of LGBT people, and who needs to "move on". (Hint: it's not Ashley). On the other hand, there are many more stories in the report I cited, and elsewhere, which demonstrate the appropriateness of ENDA, specifically, if that is our focus.
To answer your question: no, I don't think people should be allowed to sue based on statistical proof of discrimination. I do, however, think people should be allowed to sue based on convincing evidence that their employer discriminated/fired them arbitrarily because of their sexual orientation, on a case-by-case basis. Just as they can sue for discrimination based on race, religion, disability status, age-ism, and so on. Civil Rights.
You seem to be saying, no, LGBT people who are discriminated against should not be able to sue. Even if they can prove it. In these cases, they should not have any legal rights, they should just move on. Employers should be allowed to discriminate against them. Really? Or am I misreading you?
Of course none of us -- including you, me, the Old Man -- are happy about discrimination. I think we're all on the same page on that.
I sympathize with your fear as to where something like ENDA might lead. For example, for every scholarship/fellowship that I have investigated for physics students in general, there seem to be several awards restricted to women and minority physics students only. Is that fair to white, male schmucks like myself? I honestly don't know. But the concern that something hypothetically unfair to straight people may hypothetically happen is not a legitimate reason to continue unfair practices against LGBT people, now. If we are serious about wishing to mitigate discrimination, then it makes sense to address the big, current problems and worry about the small, hypothetical problems if/when they arise.
-Freyguy
Fred,
ReplyDeleteThis doesn't have much to do with our discussion so far, but I want to throw this out there:
In a few months, there will be some people who will all of a sudden be terribly concerned about discrimination. Specifically, they will be concerned about discrimination against Christianity somehow made manifest by the words "holiday tree". They will not be much moved by the fact that, as the Old Man emphatically pointed out, everybody is discriminated against. They will not agree with the Old Man's argument that, as long as the discrimination does not result in statistically lower income or education, it is a "red herring" that only promotes "victim status". The Old Man may not even agree with that, when the time comes.
Conservatives / Christians do of course have legitimate concerns worth discussing. I don't want to mitigate or dismiss the real cases of discrimination which do occur. I just wish they would apply the same enthusiasm they have for the molehill of "holiday trees" to the mountain of social and legal practices which treat LGBT people unequally. Imagine if it were legal to fire someone because they are Christian. Or if they Christians couldn't adopt children or get married. Or serve openly in the military. Or if they were commonly harassed when going out in public with their spouses. Or if hospitals occasionally refused them access to their partner. Judging by their annual response to mere "holiday trees", I'm guessing there would be a strong reaction and those policies would swiftly change.
Here's my point: moderate conservatives say they support LGBT rights. Unfortunately, in practice they sometimes deny the problem, or downplay or ignore it. That is why the right-wing has been able to block progress for decades, and recently pass state amendments banning gays from adopting, etc. If moderates who SAY they believe in equality applied the same standards of enthusiasm to the LGBT mountain that they do to the "holiday tree" molehill, we wouldn't be having this awkward conversation in this country, where most people SAY they support LGBT equality, and yet progress in action is slow.
All I am asking, you might say, is that moderate conservatives treat others how they want to be treated -- you know, kind of like what that one guy, Jesus talked about, long before the first Holiday or even Christmas tree.
-Freyguy
Freyguy,
ReplyDeleteAs to what degree people (businesses, schools, landlords, government agencies, etc.) should be allowed to discriminate, I will make a stunning admission: I don’t know. There is a line to be drawn and my guess is that this line shifts over time. One of the problems with legislation is that it tends not to move.
As I said before, legislated protection comes at a cost. And it is also true that discrimination is counterproductive and leads to failure in the marketplace. It is therefore self policing to some degree (although never enough). A business that does not promote capable minorities puts itself at a competitive disadvantage. A business that overtly discriminates also risks pushback from the public resulting in lost market share. A professional sports team that discriminates against minorities commits suicide.
That is mostly the long term view. However in today’s environment the long term doesn’t take all that long. As noted, businesses cannot afford to be at a competitive disadvantage. That is one of the reasons that ‘old boy networks’ are dying a well-deserved death. In practice, most discrimination suits rest on changing and ambiguous statistics which in any event you said you do not want to use as the basis of lawsuits. (As an example of using statistics to prove an obviously invalid point, I note that men are clearly being discriminated against because more men than women have lost their jobs during this recession.)
As to your self-described handicap, it is hard for me to see why you consider this hypothetical. There are consequences when others are advantaged ahead of those who show the most promise. This may or may not serve some higher purpose, but the nature of that purpose is, as they say, above my pay grade. That knowledge is reserved for new age dogmatists who converse with the gods of political correctness before legislating which angels, if not how many, can dance on the head of which pins.
Indeed promoting less talented people for any reason has real world costs to whatever endeavor is being pursued. You may consider that price acceptable. But I believe that being willing to pay for the rope that is being used to hang you with does not make the world a better place. It simply makes it a little more schmucky.