A tale of two viewpoints

I thought of two state legislators. I wondered what they might be say- ing on social media about what had happened. I was looking for the dichotomy.

First was state Rep. Tippi McCullough of Little Rock, a liberal Democrat. She was saying she was “beyond thrilled,” “grateful,” and, initially, “speechless.”

“Losing your job because of who you are, and not anything at all related to your performance, can be devastating,” she wrote. “All anyone wants is the right to work hard and be judged by your results, just like anybody else. It’s about respecting the inherent dignity of each person.”

The other was state Sen. Jason Rapert of Conway, conservative Republican. On Facebook, he had hit the “live” to broadcast himself delivering a personal statement, a long one, about 68 minutes, it appeared. I watched and listened through 18 minutes of setup and rambling and promises “just to talk to you,” and despaired.

So, I went to Twitter, figuring the 280-character limit would force Rapert to get to the point, which he did.

He wrote, “Where are the members of Congress who will stand up to judicial activism and tyranny? We must impeach judges who overstep their authority under the Constitution. Justice [Samuel] Alito and Justice [Clarence] Thomas were right. This was legislating from the bench. Shame on Neil Gorsuch.”

Rapert has indicated he wants to be your next lieutenant governor. All McCullough wanted in 2013 was to keep teaching English at Mount St. Mary’s in Little Rock, where she’d toiled for 15 of her 29 years of teaching.

McCullough got fired because she went to New Mexico and married her same-sex partner. It was widely reported that she was a good teacher and that most people at the school knew her sexual orientation. The

OPINION

principal said she had no choice under Catholic rules, considering that McCullough’s relationship had been affirmed on a public document.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday, by 6 to 3 with conservatives Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts joining the majority, that the Civil Rights Act prohibits job discrimination against persons based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

The majority took the civil rights law’s ban on discrimination on account of sex to include more than male-female gender, but to pertain to losing a job on a basis that would not have existed absent one’s gender — that is, a woman marrying a woman, or a man newly declaring as a woman.

Rapert calls that legislating from the bench, though it’s an interpretation required by the case of what the ’64 law means to circumstances today. Rapert also is widely known for decreeing that homosexuality is a sin and that the rest of us should accept the rightness of his religious belief.

In this case, I asked to make sure he wants to impeach even Gorsuch, a Donald Trump nominee, and Roberts. He replied that, if in Congress, he’d file articles of impeachment on all six offending justices.

I chose to juxtapose these two Arkansas legislative examples around the epic cultural news of Monday to invite you to consider which of the personal situations you find more compelling.

Is it that of a teacher who lost her job because of whom she married, and is now ecstatic that no less than the U.S. Supreme Court is saying, essentially, that she shouldn’t have been fired, and, today, couldn’t be?

Or is it that of an arch-conservative state senator who says we ought to do more than disagree with judges, but impeach them when they issue rulings that he assures us the Lord doesn’t like?

Isuspect the ruling Monday would hardly be controversial if not for the case’s inclusion of gender identity. This ruling was the first to advance transgender rights so dramatically.

One of the cases at issue was about a man who worked at a funeral home for six years and then decided to present as a woman. The funeral home fired her. People haven’t yet worked through their acceptance of that to the extent that they’ve come to terms with what is now a nearly banal matter of being gay. They probably stumbled on my pronoun.

May a school fire Mr. Jones the English teacher if he shows up as Miss Jones? No, not by the case law the Supreme Court made Monday.

Yes, that part of the ruling conceivably could have public restroom implications.

Beyond that, religious schools and nonprofits will now be in a bind if it turns out they’ve hired someone gay, or a transgender person.

The answer will be to abide by the law and accept that you don’t fire every employee who does things you can find sinful, and that this is just another case.

The answer is certainly not to impeach six members of the U.S. Supreme Court, including Gorsuch and Roberts.

We need Roberts and the four liberals to save Obamacare.

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