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| Maryland Del. Emmett C. Burns |
Clearly the backlash has finally managed to pierce the veil of stupidity surrounding this religious nut, and he has had to eat a little crow. (Though not nearly enough crow in my opinion.)
This courtesy of Baltimore Sun:
"Upon reflection, he has his First Amendment rights," Del. Emmett C. Burns Jr., a Baltimore County Democrat, said in a telephone interview. "And I have my First Amendment rights. … Each of us has the right to speak our opinions. The football player and I have a right to speak our minds."
Burns, who is also the pastor and founder of the Rising Sun First Baptist Church in Woodlawn, has been under fire for a letter he wrote last month urging Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti to "take the necessary action" and order Ayanbadejo to "cease and desist" his advocacy of gay rights.
Yeah except this douchebag did not just "speak" his "mind." He demanded that this player's boss shut him up and take away HIS First Amendment rights. And he did it while using official letterhead from the Maryland House of Delegates, which is kind of the very definition of the government trying to suppress somebody's right to freedom of speech.
In other words, as a representative of the government, he is making a false equivalency and his attempt at an apology sucks ass.
Fortunately for him Mr. Avanbadejo is a much more generous human being than he is.
Ayanbadejo said that the delegate's revised sentiment is "a little too late from a damage control perspective" but hopes that Burns will "open his heart" on the issue.
Yeah I also think that the damage to Mr. Burns reputation has already been done, but unlike Mr. Avanbadejo I hold out little hope that he will ever change his intolerant opinion concerning who should, or should not, be allowed to marry the person that they love.
O/T, and yet not.
ReplyDeleteConsider the impact Pat Robertson has had on the Republican Party; son of a US Senator, he campaigned to be the R candidate in 1988.
http://gawker.com/5941983/pat-robertson-tells-man-to-move-to-saudi-arabia-so-he-can-beat-wife-legally-of-course
Yea - and didn't Romney just meet w/him? Not good, not good at all! Down w/Romney and Ryan!
DeleteBut... but... didn't Pat Robertson call for the deciminalisation of the pernicious weed?
DeleteHow to tell if your religious liberty is repressed.
ReplyDeletehttp://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/how-tell-if-your-religious-liberty-be
As a Christian...leftwing liberal....it's offensive to me that pastors preach politics from the pulpit, using it as a foundation to forward the fundamentalist belief that they have the absolute right to legislate morality via the Constitution. You can be a pastor or a politician, not both. Pick a lane.
ReplyDeletePlaid jammies - Cool name.
DeleteLook below for what I found at patheos, of all places. Shock. Surprise. Reasonable people who seem to understand why a secular government is what allows them to have and exercise their religious freedoms.
Slacktivist's blog at patheos
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/09/07/more-smart-people-saying-smart-things-2/
Here's tiny URL for same link in case it cuts off:
http://tinyurl.com/MoreSmartPeepsSayingSmartStuff
This is a link to an article from a couple of days ago that has three or four hundred comments, and only a handful (of about half so far that I've read) are real eye-rolling non-thinkers. I stumbled onto it when I was getting what ended up being a complete brake job on my car. I was going to see if Bristol had had any more kids of won a dancing trophy or something exciting at her blog but clicked on the wrong link on my iPhone, I guess, and after 2 hours, I had forgotten all about Bristol and her worldly affairs. Anyway, I've only read a couple of posts--- the first was the one about Mitt Romney's hundreds of lies (533? or 633?) from about a week ago that must've had a high click count or something because I believe that's the one I found inadvertently.
Steve Bisciotti,the Ravens owner,didn't give this bozo the satisfaction of any kind of comment on this ridiculous homophobic rant. Steve is a class act and Del. Burns opinion is not typical of the majority of Baltimore's fans.
ReplyDeleteBurns is not only a disgrace and embarrassment to the state of Maryland, he's also a disgrace and embarrassment to the nation and Black Americans. I was raised in the South under segregation. I saw how some whites at the time disrespected my dad and treated him as if he wasn't a human being. Blacks in the South at the time, especially black men, couldn't express their opinions freely. Burns knows what it was like for Black Americans under segregation, so I find it appalling that he is unwilling to stand up and support other Americans who are having their civil rights denied to them. Shame on him. My experiences living under segregation is exactly why I support LGBTQ Americans. I refuse to subject other Americans to what I was subjected to when I was growing up. Burns has a very short memory, and he appears to be blind to the fact that if the extremists in the GOP had their way, they'd turn the clock back on America, and he could find himself back where he was before President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
ReplyDeleteGreat comment, majii. (majii 1:45 PM)
DeleteExperience is our best teacher, as it sounds like you learned long ago, too, but not everyone remembers the all their lessons later, unfortunately.
I might be over-generalizing (or stereotyping based on my own personal bias), but I would think Burns is old enough to have had the opportunity to see enough de-humanization of, if not himself, other folks during his lifetime. I believe Woodlawn is a fairly affluent suburb about half black/half white so I guess it's possible he doesn't see enough racial stuff because it's much less in -your-face when everybody you know lives in a big house with a nice lawn, 2.5 kids and a dog and a cat. A little poverty will bring out raw emotions. Spending any amount of time in Baltimore, IMO, you'd have to be purposely blind not to recognize discrimination on some levels on occasion, at the least. He's either got a major blind spot; he screwed up and realized it and is too embarrassed to speak humbly about it yet; or he's a haughty asshole who doesn't think about others. Or a million other possibilities in between. I'm guessing it's one of the first two, but it's strictly conjecture here.
But maybe this will click a light bulb on in his head later. It hasn't happened until he shows a little empathy, IMO, rather than his comment regarding the free speech issue, because while what he said was true, it's a red herring and pretty lame. Sure, people are free to say stupid things or express their bigoted, backwards ideals as an individual, but when you start putting that crap on my company's letterhead (even if you did pay for the stationery and postage) or on the municipality's letterhead where you are employed, it changes your rights from individual free speech to speaking on behalf of an organization in an official capacity. Not cool in any way, and if he doesn't see that, his constituents should.
Hopefully, the state of MD has ethics guidelines that deal specifically with the issue and he can get his hand slapped with a ruler or whatever a representative of another denomination feels would be an appropriate "time-out" for a Baptist Minister (for my own amusement, I'm visualizing a 4'8", crotchety 80-yr old white nun wearing her habit, who’s hard of hearing but ain’t gonna listen anyway). I'm kidding, obviously, but it might take seeing a little absurd religious "discrimination" up close for Delegate/Pastor Burns to finally "get" the irony and see his own behavior through someone else's knee-jerk actions.
As a life-time Baptist, I know how many of us can be a bit pretentious until we can feel the pain of seeing a loved one hurt by "somebody else's" bad act, if not our own. Sometimes folks never learn, but then again, sometimes seeing it happen once is a wake-up call for life and a lesson to be shared.
I hope Burns can see the light and the multiple errors in judgment and lack of compassion he's displayed. It would be a help big-time if he has a close friend who can call him on the carpet to show him his blind spot. Everybody needs someone they trust that is brave enough to be gut-level honest when someone needs to hear the truth, if that's what it takes. Since I've always been lucky enough to have good people around to do that for me, I try to do the same and call 'em as I see 'em. Always spare their dignity, but if someone needs to be knocked off their soapbox, do it with love but do it nonetheless. Well, it went something like that. I remember the lessons if not his words verbatim.
A nutcase demanding that someone's employer fire him for any reason whatsoever IS NOT a breach of anyone's First Amendment rights. The State of Maryland threatening to jail someone for expressing his opinion about anything IS a breach of someone's First Amendment rights.
ReplyDeleteThe first letter Burns wrote had a government letterhead therefor he was acting in his position as delegate to the state of Maryland. THAT constitutes government interfering with someone free speech. He's still a nutcase, but in this instance he was a government nutcase.
DeleteIt would have been more appropriate for him to write his crap on his church stationary. I hope he received a lot of negative commentary from throughout the nation. He deserves it!
ReplyDeleteI cannot stand these Republicans and no wonder there are fewer and fewer christians in the USA. These people are no more christian than the man in the moon! They don't live by what the bible teaches!
Unfortunately, this is one of those "pointing out the speck in the other guy's eye, but not seeing the log in our own" lessons that is applicable regardless of religion or political persuasion. No religion, race, gender nor political party is faultless when it comes to bigotry, so to be fair, it's better not to generalize too much. Discrimination should be ugly to all of us regardless of who's the culprit, and it should be called out without regard to whose "team" the "player" is on. Burns is a Democrat.
DeleteWait, wait, he's a pastor AND a politician? So much for the separation of church and state...
ReplyDeletePastors have every right to run for office and the public has the right to vote them in.
DeleteI agree. If you can't wear play different roles without getting confused about which hat you're wearing, then you probably shouldn't marry and have kids. Because being a spouse and being a parent has a lot of similarities because you have some of the same duties in either role, like chores, but where they are different, they should never overlap. Like on date night, a romantic dinner with your wife = GOOD. Same occasion with daughter or son = BAD.
DeleteLikewise, it's okay if my son's AP Physics teacher also teaches Sunday school and lives everyday as a devout, moral person of faith. But in Physics class, it's inappropriate to be discussing Jesus' sermon on the mount. I also don't care if he has purple-tinted hair and a Born to Ride tatoo if he has mastery of the subject of Calculus and is able to effectively communicate the material while commanding and earning the respect of a bunch of hormone-driven 17-18 yr olds.
Curriculum night was very interesting meeting instructors this past Thursday, as I described two outstanding young teachers above that I was glad to meet. I like to see a workload that shows some commitment, and they both have set down the guidelines. I'm just glad that I'm not having to lunk those two huge textbooks around every day myself.
Sam anonymous as above.
DeleteI've never seen a pastor in politics, never, except in the US of A. In Europe it would be a breach of the separation of church and state and would stir some serious shit. Religious leaders are barred from politics, period.
You may want to check your legal precedences on that, 2:01.
ReplyDeleteANY official member of the government (any US government!), utilizing official government letterhead stationary, who "requests" the employer take action to get an employee to "cease and desist" is attempting to utilize the authority of said government to abridge said employee's First Amendment right to free speech. Period.
If there wasn't that weight of law behind the furor raised by a tremendous number of people, do you really believe this idiot would have made an idiotically stupid and transparent "apology" for his actions?!
Further, by using his State of Maryland letterhead, he was officially acting as a representative of that state's government!
The 1st A says that the government can't pass any laws abridging freedom of speech. A representative, speaking for himself, requesting someone else do something to stop someone else's speech isn't the government passing a law.
DeleteSorry, 2:54. He's a Democrat. At least, according to what Gryph has posted, anyway. The rest of the sentiment in your note I can whole-heartedly agree with!
ReplyDeleteMust have impacted his political standing - ONLY reason any of these nutcases calm down - if they discover what they said was illegal - or it impacted their election chances
ReplyDeleteBurns may have the right to "speak his mind," but the problem is he doesn't have much of a mind to begin with.
ReplyDeleteWhile I find Burns remarks ignorant, his encouragement for an employer to silence his employee is not a violation of the first amendment. Employees (except the government) can set, generally speaking, whatever rules they want on speech.
ReplyDeleteNow, it's a little messy because it is a state representative advocating this, but I don't think that rises to government action. Should Burns take this to the governing body, and they supported it, that would be government action. Right now it's just a politician voicing his views with no power to enforce.
I don't mind criticism of his speech. I just cringe when the 1st Amendment protection is alleged without understanding what the 1st Amendment does or doesn't do. ONly speech that the government inhibits without a pressing governmental concern (outlined in court cases) counts for a violation of the first amendment.
Nuts! The regulations concerning an employer's right to control speech is an extremely limited thing having to do with speaking about the company and/or the employer. They do NOT have the right to tell the employee they cannot speak outside of those limitations.
DeleteOh. This does not, of course, have any connection to the question of the right of a member of the military to speak his/her mind. THAT is an entirely different world.
ReplyDeleteSure they do. Most don't because it's too hard to monitor. And has little to no effect on the company. But celebrities get canned all the time for saying things that reflect badly on the product, or might tarnish the product's image. What is the authority behind your statement that employers can't tell employees what they say outside the employment. Even non-celebrities, caught on TV doing or saying something stupid have employment ramifications.
ReplyDeletehttp://corporate.findlaw.com/law-library/freedom-of-speech-in-the-workplace-the-first-amendment-revisited.html
ReplyDeleteWhy do I always get the feeling this isn't the last we'll hear from this bigoted pastor/politician? I'd like to think it's because the people in his church cut back on their donations, but it's got to me more than that. The "He has the right to free speech....I have the right to free speech" apology doesn't seem genuine.
ReplyDeleteClearly, the better man through all this was Mr. Ayanbadejo. He acknowledged it wasn't enough, yet mustered the grace, compassion, and generosity of spirit to wish this would open the bigot pastor/politician's heart. That's closer to Christ's example, IMHO.