Brickbat: Get This Straight

Oleksii Terpugov / Dreamstime

Camille LeNoir had a job offer from then-New Mexico State University womens basketball head coach Mark Trakh, her former coach at the University of Southern California, to work for him as an assistant. But two days before she was to leave for New Mexico, Trakh called and said he'd seen a video online in which LeNoir said she was no longer gay. In fact, she said she is now a Christian and believes homosexuality is wrong. Trakh rescinded the job offer.

Comments

[chemjeff]

I feel bad for Ms. LeNoir. She's obviously struggled a great deal with her sexuality and her faith.

I wonder if her job offer wouldn't have been rescinded if she had simply said she was no longer gay, without also making the comments about "selling one's soul" for being gay.

[Eidde]

So, basically, don't ask, don't tell? Be a traditional Christian but don't make a big thing of it?

[chemjeff]

Does traditional Christianity really require the faithful to be public dicks about homosexuality though?

You can believe what you want, but once you start expressing your beliefs, you can then no longer control how others will choose to respond to those beliefs. That remains true regardless of the belief itself.

[Eidde]

You can prefer whatever sexual kinks you want, but once you start blabbing about your particular kink you can no longer control how others choose to respond to your kinks. Therefore state institutions should be free to discriminate against instructors whose publicly-avowed sexual kinks are off-putting to students, or may tend to alienate them.

Right?

[chemjeff]

Essentially right, yeah, but not just "state institutions". It's any employer, or any interpersonal relationship really. And saying "free to discriminate" is not the same as "required to discriminate". I would personally have preferred if institutions like universities had a backbone and could actually stand on principles of plurality and learning to accept and tolerate each other instead of wanting to toss out the heretics or unbelievers no matter where they may come from. But all institutions tend to knee-jerk respond in a CYA manner and will ditch their principles if it means avoiding some bad PR.

[Bubba Jones]

Just to be clear, it's ok for State Universities to decline to hire gays since they might be off-putting to some students?

[Roger the Shrubber]

Do all the proselytizing you want, Eidde. Just don't get all butthurt when people don't want to put up with your shit.

[Eidde]

I thought we were talking about state-sponsored discrimination.

How far can it go, if it's OK for the state to discriminate against people whose political/religious/social opinions irritate others?

[Eidde]

If you've used up your Washington Post clicks, here is the story at The Blaze.

[loveconstitution1789]

I am not clicking that!

[Eidde]

"In court filings, New Mexico State says that LeNoir's feelings about homosexuality shared in the video "would have had an adverse impact" on her "ability to effectively coach and recruit players who identify as LGBT.""

Just as they won't hire "out and proud" gay coaches because that may demoralize traditionalist players?

[Roger the Shrubber]

In today's world of female athletics, I don't think that is much of a concern. 'Traditionalist' players (whatever that means) are either going to get with the lesbian accepting culture or move on with their life's work. That goes for coaches, too.

[Eidde]

The coach you linked to was accused of discriminating against a lesbian player, which, to be clear, meant driving that player out of the program.

Is that to be equated to a situation where the students freak out because, outside of work, their assistant coach indicates she disapproves of particular sexual practices? Because that's the only kind of "discrimination" alleged against the person in today's post.

[loveconstitution1789]

If discriminating against gay people is an actionable offense, then the coach discriminated against LeNoir for not being gay enough to come out of the closet. Plus, there might be a bit of religious discrimination in there.

Sue the school for lost wages and teach these lefties a lesson.

[Roger the Shrubber]

That had been Rene Portland's MO for nearly 30 years. When the 90's came around, it was no longer an acceptable position to hold. Dinosaurs become extinct but life goes on.

[Bubba Jones]

This is women's basketball...

I can see how it would be problematic for a coach to publicly criticize lesbians.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Believing that one can pray the gay away might be a problem when coaching women's basketball.

[Eidde]

Yes, by all means let state institutions refuse to hire people based on their beliefs, because of what those beliefs might lead them to do.

To start out with, don't hire professors who believe in a proletarian revolution, because such professors might go off and harass conservative students or fellow professors.

[chemjeff]

Yeah, we have no idea if Ms. LeNoir would have wanted to "convert" her lesbian athletes or not.

[loveconstitution1789]

We do know that the lesbian athletes will try and "convert" straight athletes.

[Bra Ket]

I must not understand the rules of women's basketball at all then.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The rules as Ms. LeNoir would have them are to land a husband at all cost probably.

[loveconstitution1789]

The only rule of women's basketball is that there are not rules.

[Longtobefree]

Oh well, it's just women's basketball after all. Not like a real sport.

[Roger the Shrubber]

The post does not take an editorial stance, but the nature of the Brickbat column makes me think that I am supposed to be puzzled or outraged about the situation. While I may disagree how some of the actors behaved in this case or that of Colin Kaepernick, or James Damore, it's an ideological purity test for those that are outraged.

Free association, bitches. I'm sure that this coach would be more comfortable at BYU.

[Bra Ket]

It's a public university in this case. An agent of the state was discriminating against a mainstream religion.

[Roger the Shrubber]

You can try to frame it that way, but I think the university is on pretty solid ground when they say that the existence of an easily discoverable video where she says

Competition came from satan, not from god. God told us to love each other, to walk in humility. Everything that Jesus preached, from the sermon on the mount, contradicts everything the sports atmosphere promotes. Everything.

and

If you're in a same-sex relationship, it's not worth losing your soul.

make her presence on the staff detrimental to their recruiting efforts. It also makes me question why she would consider coaching as a profession.

[Bra Ket]

You seem to agree with the way I "try to frame it", but are defending the discrimination as justifiable.

I'd say she has a pretty strong court case if that's all there is, based on how intimately she mixes her religion in each of those statements.

The first quote is indeed bizarre.

[Roger the Shrubber]

Not all discrimination against a religious person is religious discrimination, nor is all discrimination a legal offence.

Can the White House pasty chef be fired for refusing to decorate a gay wedding cake? Indeed.

[Bra Ket]

I assume you equated some religious speech a person did on her free time to a chef refusing to do his job as requested by his employer, purely to make a little joke. Though I'm not so sure the laws are reasonable there. Can you still fire a muslim employee that refuses to serve pork or alcohol?

Of course not all discrimination is religious discrimination. This case pretty clearly is in my view. Imagine instead of some video talking about herself where she expresses a mainstream religious view about gays, she was recorded in a church reading passages from the bible making those same points. Same risk of students finding out. Same risk of them getting triggered. Cool for the govt to decide which scripture people are allowed to read on their own time? Where does it stop? Gay students might also be triggered if they find out she is a member of a religion that discriminates against gays and believes silly things regarding satan. Same excuses to fire her are applicable just for her membership in a particular religion.

[Bubba Jones]

I would agree that her stance on "competition came from Satan" is incompatible with being a coach.

[SIV]

I blame reason and GayJay

[Juice]

Except the American Revolution wasn't really a revolution. It was a secession.

[GlenchristLaw]

And?

[Roger the Shrubber]

OUTRAGE, of course. It's all the rage these days.

[Bra Ket]

So while I was cyber-stalking you the other day I found some things which concerned me.

[Eidde]

One caveat - if a state university wants to engage in some Roy Moore style pushback against the feds, in the name of the 10th Amendment, I might be sympathetic, but it would involve defending a broad power of academic autonomy, brad enough to include discriminating against pro-gay coaches, communists, etc., not just bad-thinkers on the "right."

If they're taking the position that their behavior can be reconciled with US Supreme Court precedent, and federal court precedent, good luck with that. The federal courts don't like universities discriminating based on the viewpoints of their staff. Right or wrong, that's the federal courts' position, and challenging that ought to involve a head-on clash with the federal courts themselves.

[Eidde]

broad enough, not brad enough

[colorblindkid]

"I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian ? for me ? for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God's in the mix."

Is that a fireable offense? Because that was Obama less than 10 fucking years ago.

[Eidde]

It was OK when Obama said it, because they knew he was lying. This chick looks like she means it.

[Tony]

Thomas Jefferson owned people. Standards of acceptability change with time.

[loveconstitution1789]

Tony, Remember when FDR put all those Japanese-Americans into concentration camps?

Don't you lefties still want to put dissenters into camps? I guess standards of acceptability don't change with time.

[Tony]

No, it's actually you people are not only want to put people into camps but are actually doing so. Remember your hero Joe Arpaio?

[loveconstitution1789]

Do you mean jails, Tony?

I know you socialists cannot easily tell the difference between jails and concentration camps.

Hint: One is for duly convicted criminals and those awaiting jury trials and the other are for political reasons reasons and expediency.

[Finrod]

We are talking Tony here, who can't find his ass with both hands and a map.

[Warren]

So?

[Tony]

Nobody wants to work with someone that Christian.

[loveconstitution1789]

I would.

[Amir Najam Sethit]

I am not okay with your statement.

[BYODB]

I have zero problems with gay people. In fact, I've been to gay/lesbian weddings, and had a great time. People are people, after all.

Isn't it time, though, to stop discriminating against BDSM people who want to wear their latex gimp suits and ball gags out in public or to work, though? Or is openly declaring that the only kind of sex you like is anal to everyone you meet where we draw the line for acceptable civil discourse?

The above is mostly a joke, but it is curious that we tend to draw nonsense line's in the sand when it comes to openly declaring sexual deviancy. Notably it's not a civil right to marry more than one person. Why?