{"id":6958,"date":"2006-06-22T15:56:48","date_gmt":"2006-06-22T15:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/whats-next.html"},"modified":"2006-06-22T15:56:48","modified_gmt":"2006-06-22T15:56:48","slug":"whats-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/whats-next.html","title":{"rendered":"What’s Next?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jody Bottum reprints an email of a friend, on the firing of a Maryland official:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Earlier this week, Robert L. Ehrlich, the Republican governor of Maryland, abruptly removed from office one of his appointees to the board of directors of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), an interstate agency that oversees public transportation in the Washington, D.C., area. The appointee, Robert J. Smith, had been a regular guest on a local cable news show in Maryland, and on the June 9 program, the topics discussed on the show included the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, which would limit marriage in the United States to unions of one man with one woman. In the course of the discussion, Smith referred to gays and lesbians as \u201cpersons of sexual deviancy.\u201d He later reiterated to reporters that he \u201cconsider[s] homosexual behavior as deviant\u201d and explained that this view stems from his Roman Catholic faith. To be sure, \u201cdeviant\u201d is a harsh word, and Smith would have done better to stick close to the more careful formulations used in Catholic doctrine, but in context it was perfectly clear that Smith was affirming the moral doctrine taught in the Catholic religion and in a dwindling percentage of other Christian denominations.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Bottum’s correspondent wonders:<\/p>\n

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The removal of Robert Smith is thus an early-warning sign. Unless things change in ways now quite unforeseeable, it will not be very long before the principle of traditional Western morality that homosexual conduct is immoral will be contrary to the public policy of the United States. As this new public policy takes hold, it will filter through the law and society just as other anti-discrimination norms have. Adherence to the new policy will be a de facto<\/em> requirement for holding public office, and, as private entities adopt the policy as they have other anti-discrimination norms, people adhering to the traditional moral view will become unfit to serve as directors of public corporations, as officers of professional associations, as union officials, and as university professors. Organizations that do not ascribe to the policy may lose government licenses necessary to carry on their business, become ineligible to receive grants and subsidies, and be disqualified from bidding on government and other contracts. Catholic Charities in Boston recently had to cease arranging adoptions because Massachusetts required that it not discriminate against same-sex married couples in placing children. Organizations not ascribing to the new policy may even lose tax-free status under the Internal Revenue Code to which they would otherwise be entitled. This happened to Bob Jones University because of its racist policies; there is no reason why, a few years hence, the same thing could not happen to Notre Dame because of what will be called its homophobic policies.<\/p>\n

A Mirror of Justice blogger comments:<\/a><\/p>\n

There are some interesting legal issues lurking.  I start with the proposition that a Governor can and should be able to remove a policy making appointee who publicly disagrees with the Governor\u2019s policies. That would also be true if Mr. Smith was in favor of gay marriage, and the Governor disagreed.  If, on the other hand, Mr. Smith was a bus driver and in an off the job<\/em> context publicly expressed views contrary to those of the Governor, the First Amendment would protect the employee from sanctions of any kind. On the other hand, this term, in Garcetti v. Ceballos<\/em>, the Supreme Court held that \u201cwhen public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jody Bottum reprints an email of a friend, on the firing of a Maryland official: Earlier this week, Robert L. Ehrlich, the Republican governor of Maryland, abruptly removed from office one of his appointees to the board of directors of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), an interstate agency that oversees public transportation in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat's Next? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/whats-next.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What's Next? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jody Bottum reprints an email of a friend, on the firing of a Maryland official: Earlier this week, Robert L. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}