WASHINGTON, DC — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who is touted as a top GOP presidential prospect in 2016, thinks it should be legal to fire someone for their sexual orientation.
So sayeth the boy-faced pretend immigrant.
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So far, of course, Rubio’s work on human rights issues has earned him praise, and not much conservative criticism. (I have begun to notice some conservative criticism about his close work with Sens. McCain and Graham on foreign policy issues.) But Rubio will be on everyone’s short list as a possible vice presidential running mate. Once the political conversation switches from who will be the GOP nominee? – to who will be the running mate? — Rubio’s possible selection may very well spark a debate over the future direction of conservatism and the proper role of government.
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Welcome Gena – and I think you’re right. Just watching this weekend’s news it’s clear the guy is still trying to find a way to walk that dreadful line between succeeding in primaries and succeeding in general elections. The good news for him is that he’s got time. Even if he comes out on the wrong side and is vilified by the right wing noise machine, it’s three years till that election. Which, as they say, is a lifetime in politics!
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I tend to feel that it should be legal to fire an employee for any reason or no reason at all so this doesn’t really bother me, though I do actually understand that we have to balance the rights of the employees’ with the rights of the business owners…though no sane person would claim that someone had a right to work per se but many would agree with the owners’ right of free association and of determining the course of their property.
There’s really no easy answer because there’s “soft” criteria for any workplace that HAVE to be taken into account yet most of us really don’t want individuals of various subcultures excluded from employment.
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jonolan, since the underlying principle is discrimination (be it gender, race or whatever) and the prohibition applies to multiple things, not just employment (think real estate, military, education – not quotas, just not okay to deny entry), an employer should be subject to the same societal rules. And who’s an employer? A city? A car wash? A stateless multi national corp?
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It is often about a lot more and different factors than discrimination and even those cases of discrimination are often about the employer having to do with the prejudices of their clientele as opposed to any personal bias.
That being said, who cares if the underlying principle is discrimination? It not like we’re so unbiased about discrimination itself. Few get outraged unless it’s Whites, heterosexuals, Christians, or men discriminating against some protected group. Reverse the roles, as you joke about hairdressers did, and almost nobody complains and those that do are reviled, even though such discrimination is utterly and completely normal and entrenched in our society.
Make it one protected group vs. another and it’ll barely be spoken of at all and then only in the form of apologetic, e.g., the CA Black vote (approx 90% in favor) of Prop 8, the long running issues between Feminists and Black women, or Muslims and just about anyone else.
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” Few get outraged unless it’s Whites, heterosexuals, Christians, or men discriminating against some protected group”. Well, sure! Of course that’s the case, since whites, heteros, and Christians are and have been for centuries, the ruling majority. They were the ones who cut out others. And duh, the whole point of anti discriminiation is to protect minorities. Speaking as one who grew up as a minority, who lived in a world where men held all the power, I’m a big fan of the laws that made a lot of that illegal. We’ve still got a long way to go with that male/female partiy thing,, but . . . . at least we’re going in the right direction despite the desperate efforts to hold women back by punishing sexuality..
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I’m not exactly talking about the supposed anti-discrimination laws, Moe. I’m talking about the fact that anything to do with discrimination is only applied to the perceived majority. Until that changes I don’t really care how much the protected classes get screwed over or think they’re being screwed over by people looking after their own interests.
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Sen. Marco Rubio said Wednesday that Congress should use its 2013 spending bill to cut U.S. aid to Egypt until the Middle East nation adopts economic and human rights reforms.
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