I’ve to confess, the case of Los Angeles County lifeguard Capt. Jeffrey Little has me scratching my head.
Little is the veteran lifeguard who filed a religious discrimination, harassment and retaliation lawsuit final month in opposition to the county Fireplace Division, which incorporates lifeguards. Little alleges that he was compelled to work below a model of the rainbow-hued Pleasure flag throughout June, which is widely known as LGBTQ+ Pleasure month, in violation of his deeply held spiritual beliefs.
Little believes it’s an infringement of his civil rights to be required to hoist the flag or to oversee individuals who hoist it. It additionally appears he doesn’t wish to work at any seaside the place the flag is flown. The lawsuit is a little fuzzy on these factors.
Anyway, I imagine him when he says that he’s sincerely offended by shows of queer and transgender delight. However I might additionally describe his place as bigoted, alongside the traces of those that invoke their Christian religion to elucidate why they oppose interracial marriage, for instance. I’m not a fan of people that use the Bible to disclaim the very humanity of others.
Little claims in his lawsuit that the Progress Pride flag in query symbolizes and advances “a variety of controversial spiritual and ethical views, together with concerning the household, the character of marriage and human sexuality together with the promotion of sure sexual practices, and the id, nature and goal of the human individual.”
Sexual practices? I feel he’s studying an terrible lot right into a swatch of brightly coloured material.
Little additionally claims that he’s against the flag as a result of it has been “featured prominently throughout Homosexual Pleasure parades around the globe, together with these wherein adults put on little to no clothes whereas within the presence of youngsters.”
Excuse me, Los Angeles lifeguard says what?
Has the great captain not seen how many individuals are operating round L.A. seashores practically bare in your common sunny day? I imply, you’d be laborious pressed to inform the distinction between a bikini and dental floss today. In actual fact, it’s generally laborious to inform who’s carrying a thong and who is definitely bare.
However hey, so long as they don’t ask in your sexual orientation when you are caught in a rip tide, even lifeguards are allowed to be bigots, a minimum of in non-public.
Imposing their faith on the remainder of us is the place I draw the road, although. Similar-sex marriage was legalized in 2015. Gender is not binary. Trans individuals exist and deserve respect. Flying the Pleasure flag is a symbolic method of claiming, “You belong too.”
I feel Little’s bosses in all probability mishandled his complaints; they need to have anticipated that their struggles with him would supply fodder for a juicy lawsuit such because the one filed by attorneys who work with the Thomas Extra Society, a conservative Catholic authorized advocacy group.
This saga started In March 2023, when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to lift the Progress Pleasure flag at county services every June.
This explicit flag is a variation on the Pleasure flag that debuted in San Francisco in 1978. The unique flag, because the supervisors famous, “contained eight stripes, every a separate colour of the rainbow, plus scorching pink.” The colours signify intercourse, life, therapeutic, daylight, nature, magic and artwork, serenity and spirit.
Over time, the flag’s design has advanced. The broadly adopted iteration at difficulty dietary supplements the unique colours with chevron formed stripes of black and brown (representing marginalized LGBTQ+ individuals of colour and those that have died of or reside with HIV/AIDS) in addition to pink, blue and white (incorporating the trans flag).
Curiously, a minimum of in a part of the lawsuit, Little doesn’t take difficulty with the county’s proper to lift the flag, permitting that “the federal government can communicate its personal messages.” Nevertheless, he objects to being required to lift the flag himself.
At first, he says, the division accommodated him by letting him work at a seaside the place the Pleasure flag wasn’t displayed. (Some lifeguard stations lacked the tools to show the flag.) However he alleges that towards the tip of final June, he arrived to work at Dockweiler State Seashore to seek out that the Pleasure flag had been raised at two lifeguard towers and one other constructing, which he claims was tantamount to non secular discrimination.
His first response, he recounts, was confusion, “as I used to be below the impression that I might not should cope with working in these circumstances.” After which he took the flags down.
That was dumb. As you may think about, this act of obvious insubordination didn’t go over nicely together with his bosses. He says they revoked his dispensation to keep away from seashores with Pleasure flags.
This was a traditional energy wrestle. Little claims that lifeguard division Chief Fernando Boiteux, whom the lawsuit characterizes as rather a lot larger than Little and “skilled in martial arts,” bodily and verbally intimidated him. “You could cease what you’re doing,” Little claims Boiteux advised him. “You’re an L.A. County worker; that’s the one factor that issues. Your spiritual beliefs don’t matter.”
I don’t know whether or not Boiteux truly stated that — the Fireplace Division won’t touch upon the case — however in fact spiritual beliefs do matter. Even when they’re outdated, misguided or bigoted.
If Little’s account is appropriate, his superiors might actually have been extra tactful and fewer abrasive of their dealings with him. Which may have spared them the ordeal of being sued in federal court docket at a second when spiritual bigotry is being enshrined in legislation by our Supreme Courtroom.
It’s too dangerous, however in all probability inevitable, that the Progress Pleasure flag has develop into a battleground within the tradition struggle. And it’s too dangerous that Little didn’t strive just a bit more durable to like his neighbor.