New ConLaw Casebook--Is This Appropriate?

[Bob Sheridan]

Just because a loathesome individual uses a neutral word in a pejorative 
fashion, to use the example, doesn't destroy the validity (or 
neutrality) of the word for others to use in a non-loathesome manner.  
Whether a landlord, properly described as "homophobic," wishes to 
discriminate against gays for religious OR secular reasons, the effect 
is the same as to the gay prospective tenant, which may be the point of 
the casebook.  No foul, and no cause to disdain the book, imho.

rs

Rick Duncan wrote:
> Fred Phelps /is/ loathesome, and the gay/AIDS activists who invaded 
> St.Patrick's Cathedral, disrupted Mass, spit out communion wafers, and 
> called Cardinal O'Connor a "homophobe" and a "Nazi" are 
> also loathesome. (See the documentary Stop the Church for 90 minutes 
> of this loathesome attack on the Church and religious liberty).
>  
> But a landlord who refuses to facilitate sexual sins on his own 
> property is not "less loathesome." He is not at all loathesome. He is 
> a person of good will and deep faith.
>  
> The authors of this casebook have a right to use whatever slurs they 
> wish to use to describe people of faith. And con law professors have a 
> right (perhaps even a duty to their students) to avoid adopting a book 
> that uses such religious slurs.
>  
> Rick
>
> */David Cruz <dcruz at law.usc.edu>/* wrote:
>
>     On Wed, 1 Mar 2006 DavidEBernstein at aol.com wrote:
>
>     > Frank,
>     > As I wrote to someone off-list, I've never seen a case where a
>     landlord
>     > argues "I don't like gays because my religion tells me not to,
>     so I won't rent to
>     > them." [snip]
>
>     Evelyn Thomas was not Fred Phelps, but I think it also does no one a
>     service to pretend that the Fred Phelps of the world do not exist.
>     When I
>     went to Cambridge to talk to people when the very first finally
>     officially
>     sanctioned marriages of same-sex couples were performed, folks
>     from the
>     Westboro Baptist Church ("God Hates Fags") were out in force. They are
>     just as entitled to raise free exercise defenses to antidiscrimination
>     laws as are less loathesome people of faith.
>
>     David B. Cruz
>     Professor of Law
>     University of Southern California Gould School of Law
>     Los Angeles, CA 90089-0071
>     U.S.A.
>
>
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>
>
>
> Rick Duncan
> Welpton Professor of Law
> University of Nebraska College of Law
> Lincoln, NE 68583-0902
>  
>
> "When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad 
> or Mordred: middle things are gone." C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle
>
> "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or 
> numbered." --The Prisoner
>
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