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 spiritual discrimination, harassment and retaliation lawsuit final month towards the county Fireplace Division, which incorporates lifeguards. Little alleges that he was pressured to work beneath a model of the rainbow-hued Delight flag throughout June, which is widely known as LGBTQ+ Delight 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 need to work at any seashore the place the flag is flown. The lawsuit is slightly fuzzy on these factors.
Anyway, I imagine him when he says that he’s sincerely offended by shows of queer and transgender satisfaction. However I might additionally describe his place as bigoted, alongside the strains 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 Delight flag in query symbolizes and advances “a range of controversial religious and moral views, including about the family, the nature of marriage and human sexuality including the promotion of certain sexual practices, and the identity, nature and purpose of the human person.”
Sexual practices? I feel he’s studying an terrible lot right into a swatch of brightly coloured cloth.
Little additionally claims that he’s against the flag as a result of it has been “featured prominently during Gay Pride parades around the world, including those in which adults wear little to no clothing while in the presence of children.”
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 as of late. The truth is, it’s typically 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, at the least in personal.
Imposing their faith on the remainder of us is the place I draw the road, although. Identical-sex marriage was legalized in 2015. Gender shouldn’t be binary. Trans individuals exist and deserve respect. Flying the Delight flag is a symbolic manner of claiming, “You belong too.”
I feel Little’s bosses most likely 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 boost the Progress Delight flag at county services every June.
This explicit flag is a variation on the Delight flag that debuted in San Francisco in 1978. The unique flag, because the supervisors famous, “contained eight stripes, each a separate color of the rainbow, plus hot pink.” The colours signify intercourse, life, therapeutic, daylight, nature, magic and artwork, serenity and spirit.
Through the years, the flag’s design has developed. 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).
Apparently, at the least in a part of the lawsuit, Little doesn’t take difficulty with the county’s proper to boost the flag, permitting that “the government can speak its own messages.” Nonetheless, he objects to being required to boost the flag himself.
At first, he says, the division accommodated him by letting him work at a seashore the place the Delight flag wasn’t displayed. (Some lifeguard stations lacked the gear to show the flag.) However he alleges that towards the tip of final June, he arrived to work at Dockweiler State Seaside to search out that the Delight flag had been raised at two lifeguard towers and one other constructing, which he claims was tantamount to spiritual discrimination.
His first response, he recounts, was confusion, “as I was under the impression that I would not have to deal with working in these conditions.” After which he took the flags down.
That was dumb. As you’ll be able to think about, this act of obvious insubordination didn’t go over properly along with his bosses. He says they revoked his dispensation to keep away from seashores with Delight flags.
This was a basic energy battle. Little claims that lifeguard division Chief Fernando Boiteux, whom the lawsuit characterizes as lots greater than Little and “trained in martial arts,” bodily and verbally intimidated him. “You need to stop what you are doing,” Little claims Boiteux informed him. “You are an L.A. County employee; that’s the only thing that matters. Your religious beliefs do not matter.”
I don’t know whether or not Boiteux really 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 right, his superiors may actually have been extra tactful and fewer abrasive of their dealings with him. That may have spared them the ordeal of being sued in federal courtroom at a second when spiritual bigotry is being enshrined in legislation by our Supreme Court docket.
It’s too dangerous, however most likely inevitable, that the Progress Delight flag has develop into a battleground within the tradition conflict. And it’s too dangerous that Little didn’t attempt just a bit more durable to like his neighbor.
