Sorry for the long post to follow, but actual reasoning sometimes takes a bit of patience.
Quote from: suzifrommdTysilio, you identify "expressions of bigotry which strike at people's identities" as the speech he sees as problematic and speak of "a responsibility to support them with facts and logical reasoning".
I agree with the first (more about that later), but I'm not sure about the second. I should be fired or suspended from my job if I state something that isn't supported with facts and logical reasoning? How do I know whether my post or speech has enough facts or reasoning to satisfy my management.
The post in question *is* seen as logical reasoning by millions of people. It's something you can hear in many churches and on mainstream news outlets, and is taken as truth by a large segment of our population. Yes, I think it's ignorant and misleading, but that's just my opinion.
The reason people see such things as logical reasoning is that they don't understand elementary logic. Here's what she wrote (brackets mine):
QuoteSee this is the agenda...[1]one minute they argue that hey [sic] are born this way and it is not a choice to get 14th amendment rights equal protection....bologna......[2]which was carved for permanent characteristics..unchangeable characteristics such as race and disability... [3]but once they in the 14th amendment they will argue everyone should be able to choose being gay or lesbian lifestyle.....[4] in other words they want to reengineer western civ into a slow extinction [5] We need healthy families with a mother and father for the sake of the children and humanity!!!!
Let's break down her argument:
[1] is demonstrably true. There's loads of evidence that GLBT people believe that we're born this way and that it's not a choice. However, it's completely irrelevant, because:
[2] is false. This is shown by the way the 14th amendment is actually applied to people with disabilities: a disability doesn't have to be permanent for someone to be protected by the 14th amendment. The ADA, which is basically the implementation of the 14th amendment with regard to disabled people, effectively defines disability as an impairment which lasts more that 6 months. It doesn't have to be permanent. (Sec. 12102, Paragraph 4(D))
[3] is her unsubstantiated opinion about something which might happen, contingent on lesbian and gay people being covered by the 14th amendment (which will be the case if the Supreme Court rules for the plaintiffs in the marriage cases it will be hearing next month). She can't have evidence for something which hasn't happened, nor does it follow logically from her previous premises. (As a matter of fact, [3] is irrelevant to her argument, given that she's wrong about "permanent characteristics" being a prerequisite for protected status under the 14th amendment.)
[4] She concludes, based on the above "premises", that JUST ANYBODY will be able to say they're gay/lesbian and marry someone of the same sex. This is trivially true: the issue before the court is whether
people of the same sex can marry; there's no test for anyone to pass to prove their sexual orientation is "real."
[5] She says the only "healthy families" are those in which a mother and a father are present. There's plenty of evidence to refute this claim. The presence of a mother and a father is neither necessary nor sufficient to guarantee a healthy family: many single parents raise their kids just fine, and there are plenty of two-heterosexual-parent families which are hideously abusive and dysfunctional.
So, from all these invalid premises, she "concludes" that western civilization will fall and
humanity itself will be imperiled if same-sex marriage is legal.
This is nothing but an emotional rant; it's not even close to a logical argument. Her statement about what we say now vs. what we'll say later is there to show that we're untrustworthy, evil people who are hiding our real agenda; it's not actually relevant to to her argument. She's flat-out wrong about the 14th amendment. There's no reason to think that legalizing same sex marriage will mean that everybody wants one. And there's nothing automatically wonderful about "mum & dad" families.
Conclusion: Western civilization won't fall. If one needs more evidence for this conclusion, consider what a large part gay people have played in forming it, and how central they are to the continued development of Western culture, in the arts, in music, in fashion... LGBT people are actually one of the main pillars of Western civ. (Oh, and... computing, because Alan Turing.)
One might even suggest that a teacher who can't reason any better than this should be fired for utter intellectual incompetence, but unfortunately, we don't live in that universe.
Here endeth the lesson.
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QuoteIf we say it's OK to suspend or fire someone for an opinion expressed on an internet post, and then provide fuzzy enough criteria of what does or doesn't merit dismissal, doesn't that have the effect of chill ALL speech, because of the difficulty of determining whether any particular post violates the boundaries of the person making the decision?
It shouldn't, for at least a couple of reasons. First, many opinions are harmless: I happen to think J.S. Bach was the greatest composer who ever lived, but that's mostly a matter of taste. Even if I were a music teacher, there would be no reason to fire me if I said so: when it comes to taste, people can and do differ, thank goodness.
Second, if I express a controversial opinion but can support it in a logical fashion, then it's a fit subject for discussion, with the proviso that it might not be suitable for all audiences. I have opinions about the treatment of sex offenders, but I don't discuss them in the presence of five-year-olds; if I were a teacher and did so, I would certainly be sanctioned.
Under some circumstances, hate speech falls into this category; this is why the ACLU has historically defended the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois.
What Dee wrote above is a vital condition for me: "...the power dynamic between children and teachers." Hate speech is wrong when the speaker has as much influence as a teacher has over the minds of her students. I hope I've convinced folks that Ms. Jannuzzi's statement comes down to an unsupported statement that LGBT people want to destroy civilization, and if that's not hate speech I don't know what is.
One more thing (I hear people sighing... ) -- we've framed this debate as a question of whether Ms. Jannuzzi should be fired, which she hasn't been, as far as I know, and I don't necessarily think she should be. Punished by an unpaid suspension... for sure.
