| I'm glad you have your opinions. Many other disagree with your opinions, and instead put the line elsewhere. Here's a first-grade teacher who was fired for posting her private views on Facebook. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/teacher-should-be-fired-f... > "The reason why she was suspended was because the incident created serious problems at the school that impeded the functioning of the building," board president Theodore Best said in a statement at the time. "You can't simply fire someone for what they have on a Facebook page; but if that spills over and affects the classroom then you can take action." A judge agreed with the decision. The final decision is described in http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/new-jersey-district-dismiss... . > The ALJ noted that generally public reactions to an individual’s statement cannot limit their rights to free speech, but that “in a public school setting thoughtless words can destroy the partnership between home and school that is essential to the mission of the schools.” The appellate court agreed with the ALJ’s findings. So even in a place with 1st amendment protections, it's still possible for people to call for someone to be fired, and have it happen. Completely legal, even. A bunch of people complained: > Two angry parents went to her principal’s office to express their outrage, and one parent threatened to remove her child from school. The school also received at least a dozen irate phone calls. Twenty to 25 people gathered outside the school to protest because of the statements, and news reporters and camera crews from major news organizations descended upon the school. At the next Home-School Council meeting, the majority of the meeting was devoted to O’Brien’s posts and parents expressed their outrage over the posts. When O’Brien was made aware of the outrage against her posts, she was surprised that her posts had led to such a reaction. Certainly those people disagree that your line exists where you think it does, because they do believe that the teacher's private actions certainly are relevant. BTW, this is not bullying. You are misusing the term. There is no sense of physical or social imbalance of power used to intimidate. People call of the resignation of other people all the time, even for events from private lifes with no direct, significant effect on their professional life. Here's one example: http://voices.yahoo.com/san-francisco-mayor-newsom-admits-ad... . Supervisor McGoldrick (of San Francisco) called for Mayor Gavin Newsom's resignation after Newson's affair with Rippey-Tourk become public. I think that who one has sex with is a private matter, so long as both can give legal consent. But it was enough for McGoldrick to say "the mayor failed as a leader and a role model." Your view, if I understand you correctly, is that McGoldrick was bullying, and crossed the line? April Davila, author of that yahoo.com link, disagrees: "McGoldrick can say what he likes, it is (at least for the time being) still a free country, but I for one hope Newsom stays." So you see that many people clearly disagree with your opinion and also with your framing. |
Yes. But that's not an argument.
Are you content with "other people disagee with my opinion" as a measure of its worth? It doesn't even matter that some judges have disagreed with my opinion.
Some people disagree with things like "not being racist". And judges have also made bad decisions, that now everybody derides, for ages.
If we are to have a valid conversation, it would have be with arguments about the intristic value of what we are discussing. What's good and what should people be doing is not merely a matter of "some people are OK with it".
Even democracy doens't justify things merely by "some people wanting X". It raises this bar, asking for the majority (or the plurality) or people wanting it -- and it even adds other procedures and safeguards in too.