Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.And the relevant sections of the Fourteenth Amendment, which says that the rights of citizens under the Constitution also have to be respected by state governments:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.You see who the First Amendment does not limit? You. Me. Your employer. Corporations. Every motherfucking entity which is not a government body or agency.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Do you get that?
So if you decide to become the local spokesman for The Promotion of Man-Sheep Love and your boss decides to take exception to that, you lose your job. If your boss doesn't have any problem with it, but then your company's customers are outraged that the Great Lakes Paperclip Company employs an admitted sheep-fucker and those customers start protesting and sales of their paperclips, guess what, Cupcake: Your boss is free to show you the door.
Which is why everyone who is bleating that Mozilla, by showing its CEO, Brendan Eich the door for his donating cash to the people who pushed for CA's Prop 8, is somehow violating Eich's free speech rights, are full of shit. To the point that it's dribbling out their ears.
But hey, if a high-ranking executive of Hobby Lobby was found to have donated significant cash t Planned Parenthood, and got fired for that, you can bet your left gonad that the very same people who are now whining about Eich being pushed out would either sit on their hands or cheer on Hobby Lobby.
If I am correct that the reason this donation became public is due to campaign finance rules, that's where I have an issue. Imagine if it were 1960, and donations to the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP had to be public.
ReplyDeleteAnd, you're putting politics and rational analysis in their same room. I'll grant the reality of logic as applied to bridge design and other subjects under the purview oif physics and the like. But as applied to belief structures like politics and religion? You have nothing provable, just a loudly squealing, smelly and dangerous greased pig.
ReplyDelete