Company tells man to pack up b/c his pickup says gays shouldn't pair up

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10/20/2006

by Jeremy Hooper

Bumoper2 "Pro-marriage" folks in Virginia are all kinds of upset over the news that a employee at Harisonburg's Cargill Foods plant, Luis Padilla, was fired for refusing to remove from his pickup truck an anti-gay marriage message reading "Please Vote For Marriage on Nov. 7."

News to which we have one initial response: Isn't it kind of nutty that the Evangelicals have hijacked the English language so much that we all know exactly what "Please Vote For Marriage" really means ? Aren't we gays the ones who currently don't have the right and are pausing our lives to fight "for marriage?" But yet, since our opposition so skillfully refuses to associate themselves with negatively-connotated words like "marriage ban" or "anti-gay," they have sort of brainwashed us all into accepting their fallacy? Sort of like how they use "pro-life," "pro-family values," and countless other self-proclaimed titles, so as to paint themselves as the ones on a holier-than-thou plane of moral superiority and their opposition as the bottom feeders who are chipping away at the pillars of decent society. Annoying, right? Anyway, moving on...

The Christian conservatives are calling Mr. Padilla's dismissal "viewpoint discrimination" and are exploring legal options, but Cargill Foods is saying that Mr. Padilla's anti-gay marriage message and his refusal to remove the text were simply in violation of the company's policies of "equal employment opportunity, non-harassment, and tolerance of differences." For our two cents, we'd just like to add: And don't forget your policies of using the English language properly, Cargill. Seriously -- "for marriage" means banning millions from access? Let's stop pretending we live in some sort of alternate linguistic universe and start calling a ban a ban! We're clearly not going to let this one go."