Posted on 12/16/2009 5:41:35 AM PST by markomalley
A localized media frenzy has ensued after a Catholic reporter was let go from his 19-year position at a Maine newspaper for voicing his opinion against same-sex “marriage” and the campaign to legalize it in Maine.
According to an article by the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, Larry Grard, a former employee of the Morning Sentinel, was sent a mass email from the pro-gay rights organization, Human Rights Campaign (HRC), following the repeal of the same-sex “marriage” law in Maine during the mid-term elections on Nov. 4.
In the email, Trevor Thomas, spokesman for the HRC, voiced his disappointment with the vote results and allegedly stated that opponents of same-sex 'marriage' built their arguments on “lies and hate.”
Thomas told CNA that Grard responded to the mass email from his personal email account and said “who are the venom-spewing ones? Hint: not the Yes on 1 crowd. You hateful people have been spreading nothing but vitriol since this campaign began. Good riddance!”
Although CNA asked Thomas for the original HRC statement that Grard responded to, Thomas did not provide it.
According to Thomas, he forwarded Grard's email response to reporter's boss and wrote, “it's frankly, just not acceptable coming from a news organization the morning after our defeat.” Though Thomas insisted that he did not ask for Grard's termination, Grard was fired on Nov. 10 and his wife's bi-weekly cooking column for the paper was canceled.
The Maine Public Broadcasting Network stated that Grard has since apologized. “He had an emotional reaction to this email and sent off a reply and he recognizes that it was a mistake – that it wasn't professional,” said Tom Bell, president of Grard's union, the Portland Newspaper Guild.
Bell continued to say that workers for the paper have a union contract that calls for “progressive discipline” which means that if someone makes a mistake, they are given a chance to rectify the situation before drastic action, such as termination, is taken. “The issue here is that we feel the company overreacted,” said Bell. “For someone like Larry, who's 58, this is a one-way ticket into poverty.”
Bill Donohue of the Catholic League has also taken up Grard's case and referred him to several pro-bono law firms that handle situations of Catholic workers who are victims of discrimination due to their beliefs.
The gay mafia strikes again, but don’t you forget, they’re the “tolerant” ones.
Why did he even bother apologizing? It wasn't like he'd get his job back if he did.
People better begin understanding that persecution like this is not just against the individual like this Christian reporter, it is against all Americans (conservatives).
There may come a time in the not so distant future where we will regret allowing entities like this so called newspaper, the NFL, etc. to openly persecute us as sub citizens...I know our children will suffer much worse than we have from these evil doers.
Welcome to The United States.
For any libertarian types that still ask “How does gay “marriage” affect me?”,please refer to this story.
(in support of your post)
Oh, just because it destroys the basis of our Western society - one man, one woman marriage for life. And yes, divorce is just as bad, as is sex before and outside of marriage, so don’t argue that, I’m already in agreement there.
Damn straight....he should NOT have apologized. Why should the Catholic reporter apologize for his beliefs? Like you said, he still didn’t get his job back.
By the way, I’m in Maine, and this is the first time I’ve heard of this story.
I hope he sues everyone involved in his firing.
Notice that they went after his wife too.
Yes, the reporter probably falsely believes that he lives in a land where dissent is tolerated. And in ME at that!
The editor is scum. My name and address got published by Knowthyneighbor.org for signing the Marriage Amendment in MA. So I published the founders of that organization in my column about them. They called my editor to express their outrage. He laughed at them.
If they sent the email to Grard's personal email and he responded from his personal email, the firing violates the 1st Amendment and he can sue.
But if he received it via the company email system, forwarded it to his email, and responded from his personal email, but with his company email still displayed, that might violate company policy (since he would appear to be speaking for the company).
How many times has the gay mafia gotten away with hate crimes? Think about it.
They say that "same sex" policies don't harm anyone, but sometimes it works like this:
1)A company or city govt. has a certain amount of money for medical insurance.
2)Same-sex pressure compels them to bring in same-sex couples, many of them without kids.
3) The benefits for families with kids is reduced.
You don't need to take a morning-after pill, so, what are you complaining about?
Sorry, you're wrong. Private political opinions are protected from government retaliation, not from employer retaliation.
Pseudonyms are our friends. I hate to think how many jobs I won't be qualified for just because I've voiced controversial opinions under my real name.
Of course, if employers think defending marriage is controversial, perhaps they don't deserve my labor anyway.
That's a good point. I guess it depends on what the state laws are, and what the employer claims the cause of the dismissal is. If the laws say that the employer has to show just cause, and the cause is that the employer looked at the employee's private communications, the employee might have a lawsuit. If the employer claimed that he dismissed him for some other cause, that's different.
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