Should the right to call a fellow employee 'a deviant' be protected under law?

[ccharles000]

Last week, I talked abut Peter Vadala, a young man claiming that he was fired from his job at Brookstone (a Massachusetts retailer store) for "merely" voicing his so-called Christian beliefs abut a colleague's legal gay wedding.

Well now many religious right groups and organizations have picked up on the story, making sure to make Vadala seem like an innocent victim. The most lurid headline coming from World Net Daily:

Man fired after saying homosexuality wrong
Accused of 'harassment' even though lesbian approached him

In World Net Daily's usual lying style, the headline gives the inaccurate impression that Vadala was somehow sexually harrassed.

Now this incident has sparked a lot of discussion in the lgbt community. I got into a huge discussion with some folks who felt that either the lesbian employee should have kept her mouth shut or that what Vadala said was not ground for termination.

http://holybulliesandheadlessmonsters.blogspot.com/2009/11/should-right-to-call-fellow-employee.html

[slackmaster]

1. I think employers have the right to set workplace policies about what is and is not tolerated

IMO there is no way should the law protect that kind of speech or any other form of expression on the job, unless it would only apply to government jobs.

My employer requires business attire. My previous one allowed T-shirts, but a couple of months before I quit they updated the policy to say no T-shirts with any kind of political or "controversial" content (obviously subjective but the policy was clear enough to me). They have a right to do that.

[Deep13]

2. Businesses can't discriminate based on religion.

That means no religious harassment of customers.

What if he told a Jew he was going to hell for rejecting Christ?

[LuvNewcastle]

3. I saw a video this morning with

Vadala explaining why he got fired. The thread with the video was locked because it linked to a hate site. Anyway, the lady who offended Vadala's delicate fundie sensibilities merely mentioned that she had become engaged. When Vadala found out she was engaged to a woman, the hate started brewing. After he heard her discuss her fiance a few times, he couldn't resist telling her that homosexuality is "bad stuff." She went to HR and they sided with her, as they should have. After all, gay marriage is legal in Mass.