I have to admit that the case of Los Angeles County Lifeguard Capt. Jeffrey Little leaves me perplexed.
Little is experienced Lifeguard who filed suit alleging religious discrimination, harassment and retaliation Last month, Little filed a lawsuit against the county fire department, which includes lifeguards. Little alleges he was forced to work under a version of the rainbow-colored Pride flag during June, which is celebrated as LGBTQ+ Pride month, which violates his deeply held religious beliefs.
Little believes that flying the flag or monitoring people who fly the flag is a violation of his civil rights. It also seems that he doesn’t want to work at any beach where the flag is flown. Lawsuit a bit blurry at those points.
Anyway, I believe them when they say they are sincerely offended by displays of gay and transgender pride. But I would also call their position just as bigoted as those who cite their Christian faith to oppose interracial marriage. I’m not a fan of those who use the Bible to deny the humanity of others.
Their small claims trial That Progress Pride Flag The issue in question “embodies and promotes a range of controversial religious and moral views, including views about the nature of the family, marriage, and human sexuality, including the promotion of certain sexual practices and the identity, nature, and purpose of the human person.”
Sexual BehaviorI think he’s reading too much into a swatch of brightly coloured fabric.
Little also claimed he is opposed to the flag because it has been “prominently displayed during gay pride parades around the world, including parades at which adults wear little or no clothing in the presence of children.”
Excuse me, what did the Los Angeles lifeguard say?
Hasn’t the good captain noticed how many people are running around LA beaches nearly naked on your average sunny day? I mean, these days you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a bikini and dental floss. In fact, sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s wearing a thong and who’s actually naked.
But as long as they don’t ask about your sexual orientation while you’re stranded in the waves, even lifeguards are allowed to be radical, at least in private.
However, I draw the line at forcing my religion on all of us. valid Gender in 2015 Not BinaryTrans people exist and deserve respect. Flying the Pride flag is a symbolic way of saying, “You deserve this too.”
I think Little’s bosses probably did not handle his complaints properly; they should have anticipated that his conflict with them would provide the basis for an interesting lawsuit, such as the one filed by lawyers working with the Thomas More Society, a conservative Catholic legal advocacy group.
This saga began in March 2023, when Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Voted unanimously to fly the Progress Pride flag at county facilities each June.
This particular flag is a variation of the Pride flag that was first introduced in San Francisco in 1978. The original flag, as observers noted, “had eight stripes, each of which was a different color of the rainbow, as well as These colors represent sex, life, healing, sunlight, nature, magic and art, peace and spirit.
The flag’s design has evolved over the years. The most widely adopted iteration of the issue includes the original colors with black and gray chevron-shaped bars (representing marginalized LGBTQ+ people of color and people who have died or suffered from HIV/AIDS) as well as pink, blue, and white (representing the trans flag).
Interestingly, in at least one portion of the lawsuit, Little does not take issue with the county’s right to fly the flag, saying “the government can speak its own message.” He does, however, object to being forced to fly the flag himself.
He said the department initially accommodated him by allowing him to work at beaches that did not fly the Pride flag. (Some lifeguard stations did not have the equipment to display the flag.) But he alleges that late last June, when he arrived for work at Dockweiler State Beach, he found Pride flags flying on two lifeguard towers and another building, which he said amounted to religious discrimination.
He said his first reaction was confusion, “because I thought I didn’t have to work under these conditions.” And then he took down the flags.
It was stupid. As you can imagine, this act of blatant defiance did not go down well with his bosses. He says they revoked his exemption to avoid beaches with Pride flags.
It was a classic power struggle. Little claims that Fernando Boiteux, the head of the lifeguard division, who is described in the lawsuit as much older than Little and “trained in martial arts,” physically and verbally intimidated him. Little claims Boiteux told him, “You should stop what you’re doing.” “You’re an employee of L.A. County; that’s the only thing that matters. Your religious beliefs don’t matter.”
I don’t know if Boiteux actually said that — the fire department won’t comment on the matter — but certainly religious belief to do Even if they are outdated, misguided or radical.
If Little’s statement is true, his superiors could certainly have been more tactful and less aggressive in their dealings with him. Doing so would have saved him the trouble of being sued in federal court at a time when religious bigotry is being enshrined in law by our Supreme Court.
It’s too bad, but perhaps inevitable, that the Progress Pride flag has become a battleground in the culture war. And it’s too bad that Little didn’t try a little more to love his neighbor.
