I’m just here to watch people who cheered and defended the lady who wouldn’t marry a gay couple suddenly care about government employees doing their job regardless of opinion.
I understand where they are coming from, but its not their job to dictate what mail gets delivered.
and it opens the door for right wingers to do the same if they do not get serious punishment for this.
Yeah like I agree with the thought but the mail is kinda sacred.
Good. This is the same as a pharmacist refusing to fill a prescription due to personal beliefs. You took a job knowing what it would entail.
The Post Office disseminating hateful propaganda is bad, actually, and just because the law currently requires Postal workers to do it doesn’t make it right.
Their free speech is bad. OK.
What does that have to do with delivering the mail as the carrier takes an oath to do ?
Or was professionalism in the civil service bullshit from the start ?
Their free speech is bad. OK.
Yeah, hate speech is bad. IDGAF about your free speech when that speech is “I think this group I don’t like should be eliminated or removed from society.”
If this were a conservative refusing to deliver liberal info you’d call the refusal free speech itself and argue firing her is illegal - so y’all can sit the fuck down.
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So a pharmacist should be allowed to refuse selling e.g. birth control, due to personal beliefs? Everyone can just decide who they want to service for any reason, right?
the post office is right to punish her for not doing her job, but she is also right to sacrifice her job for an act of civil disobedience. they are both right. the only person who’s a piece of shit here is the one sending the mail.
That. What this parent did was a laudable act of civil disobedience. Unfortunately, the post office did what they had to do.
Yes. Exactly. But that’s the original point: you accept the job with the understanding that, if you find a particular aspect of the job to be against your morals, and you refuse to perform your job due to your morals, that you may be disciplined and/or fired.
The wrinkle here is that pharmacists have some degree is 1a protections (in the US) because their objections are on religious grounds rather than humanist ones. That makes firing them difficult, because it can be argued that it’s religious discrimination. An obvious solution would be to require them to refer the person to another pharmacy, so that they aren’t violating their religion, but pharmacists are arguing that’s compelled speech that still violates their 1a rights.
nobody should ever be granted special privileges based on religion or political beliefs. the postal service and the pharmacy face the same moral circumstances in these two scenarios.
civil disobedience is still disobedience. you do it because you believe its right, and you accept the consequences.
This is hateful shit.
Unfortunately, they have the same argument as Kim Davis for not doing their duty.
They both refuse to do their duty due to moral concerns.
Hate speech doesn’t get protected under free speech. These aren’t the same.
In the US, it is. In Canada (assuming this applies to Canada - I don’t know), I don’t know if you want postal workers deciding what is or isn’t hate speech.
Under US law, there is absolutely no “hate speech” exception to the 1st amendment. This has been ruled on repeatedly.
This is in Canada.
I saw the Grumman LLV mail truck in the thumbnail and just assumed US. I had no idea you guys used them too. Neat!
…Which is why I specified US. (Yes, I know where NB is.)
Most of the people here are arguing from a US perspective, esp. since the original source largely reports on US news, and reports on news from a US perspective.
Fun geographical place names time: there’s also a New Brunswick in New Jersey and a New Brunswick in Indiana, and there’s also a New Jersey in New Brunswick and an Indiana in Ontario. There’s also an Ontario in California. But wait, there’s also a California in Ontario. This is where our geographical journey ends for now.
Yes it does/yes it is.
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Just so people can judge for themselves…
Good to see that conservatives are focused on the widespread problems that really matter to people internationally and not just down here in the US!
/s
“God doesn’t make mistakes.” This has to be the best argument I have ever seen. Just wow… Can’t god also solve the 3x+1 problem? Would be useful.
Don’t wear Glasses or use viagra as God intended.
this is a phrase I’ve started to turn around in a trans-affirming way: god doesn’t make mistakes, do you really think he couldn’t conceive of a trans person?
And if she pull this the Georgia mail carrier pulls the abortion and lgbt mail. Let people get the hate mail. The only ones it convinces are those that already agree everyone else just trashes it. Postal Carriers should deliver regardless of sender or recipient. This just does DeJoy’s work for him.
The article is about events in Canada.
Apples to oranges comparison. Facilitating speech is not automatically a neutral action. Facilitating hate speech is bad and censoring hatemongers is good. The law is irrelevant to the question of morality.
Really, you want someone going through your mail deciding what you get? What if I’m the judge of what you get, are you still happy?
Disgusting as it is, she has a job to perform and has no authority to determine what mail is sent. This shit needs to be stopped at the source, not by a mail carrier. Either do you job or step aside.
“I was just doing my job” cannot be accepted as a defense of doing something immoral. In this case the rules were on the wrong side of morality, and breaking them was the right thing to do.
then you should resign
ROFL.
Whenever laws get broken, it’s constantly “I was just doing my job”.
The Postal office can find someone else to do that delivery.
You don’t know how long they’ve been working there. And that directly puts their family at potential harm.
It’s her job to deliver the mail. The only law broken here is her refusal to deliver it. You don’t get to cherry pick the mail system.
If she won’t deliver the mail, she needs to be fired. Period.
The SS at Auschwitz were also “doing their job”
Hot take bud, where do you draw the line with that?
Can a transphobic postal carrier refuse to deliver anything they disagree with also? Shouldn’t they be able to decide what mail you get based on their beliefs as well?
Or are you a hypocrite that thinks that rules should only be broken because you disagree with them.
Oh, and please don’t go to Nazis when you feel someone disagrees with you. It’s immature, it’s irrelevant to the discussion, and it’s foolish as hell.
Pro trans material isn’t putting people in harm’s way
Huge difference bud
People with strong religious beliefs believe that it does. They believe that even allowing people to see that LGBTQ+ people can be accepted leads to an acceptance of sin, and risks condemning a soul to hell. Even if it’s bullshit, they still believe that real harms are being done.
You’re wrong here bud. No matter how you feel about it. You’re wrong. It’s her job to deliver mail. Even if she disagrees with it.
And for the record- they will tell you that trans rights puts people in harms way as well- even if we both disagree- belief is belief at the end of the day- and someone is choosing to take the law into their own hands based on that belief.
She should be fired.
I’m done arguing this with people that don’t understand how federal laws work on the most basic of levels.
Maybe not fired for a first offense. That’s a bit extreme imo.
In a different scenario, what would you think if it was UPS or another private company worker instead of federal?
She could argue it’s self defence technically. As we all know what shitfuckery advertising like that leads to…
She’s probably been delivering the mail for decades. Just not some bigoted advertising.
It’s not my job to pull down Nazi sticker crap or clean it up, but I do.
Yes management should reject that delivery, but she also has a right not to put her family in harm’s way.
Jesus christ, no, she can’t argue that it’s self defense. What is the imminent risk of physical harm to the mail carrier here? Self defense only applies to cases of immediate physical harm, and that’s just not this. At best there’s an argument to be made for very, very indirect harms.
This is every bit as dumb as arguing that someone waving a Nazi flag means that you can self-defense them to death because they’re going to hurt someone eventually.
It’s not my job to pull down Nazi sticker crap or clean it up, but I do.
Good, and you should. But that’s you acting in your personal capacity, not as an agent of the gov’t.
So should a bigoted transphobe mail carrier be allowed to deny mail from a source depicting trans rights as a positive thing?
Does this work both ways?
Or is it only that the law should be broken because you disagree with it. You don’t get to cherry pick federal laws bud. That’s not how it works.
What? The flyers promote the discrimination and criminalisation of a minority group, versus your example which would be promoting minority rights.
Those aren’t comparable.They’re 100% comparable when you understand how federal law works. Learn it- then come back here and we can discuss whether or not a mail carrier has the right to decide what mail you get.
Until then, I don’t think you can carry your side in this discussion.
Well I’m not too well versed on Canadian federal laws as I’m a bit further south. So I looked into discrimination laws in New Brunswick, Canada and found this Human Rights Act
Some parts that could be relevant;
The New Brunswick Human Rights Act is the provincial law that prohibits discrimination and harassment based on 16 protected grounds of discrimination.
The Act prohibits discrimination in the following five areas under the provincial jurisdiction: Employment (includes job ads and interviews, working conditions, and dismissals); Housing (e.g. rent and sale of property); Accommodations, services, and facilities (e.g. hotels, schools, restaurants, government services, libraries, stores, etc.); Publicity; and, Professional, business or trade associations (e.g. Nurses Association of New Brunswick, New Brunswick Teachers’ Association, New Brunswick College of Physicians, etc.).
Publicity includes any publications, displays, notices, signs, symbols, emblems that show discrimination or an intention to discriminate against any person or class of persons
Not a lawyer or expert, but that seems to apply at least superficially. Maybe a bit of a stretch. But it helps that the fliers were full of factually wrong and hateful anti-trans myths. And freedom of speech has limits, even federally.
ETA: However, mail carriers are probably exclusively covered by federal law, and the federal Canadian Human Rights Act
only seems to specify discrimination and not harassment. I do think it’s too much of a stretch to say this would be covered by any federal lawsFinal edit: ok I read more. This is the closest thing I could find from the federal Human Rights Act
12 It is a discriminatory practice to publish or display before the public or to cause to be published or displayed before the public any notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation that (a) expresses or implies discrimination or an intention to discriminate, or (b) incites or is calculated to incite others to discriminate
If I am misinterpreting it, please let me know. I think it could be used as an argument tho
Worse people have thrown better mail away for worse reasons.
Relevance?
At some point we have to recognize that these organizations are delivering blatant misinformation and hate-speech. That is, speech designed to “other” an already minority group of civilians.
These postcards accuse teachers of “pushing transgenderism” and describe gender-affirming medical care as “chemical and surgical mutilation.”
This hateful and divisive rhetoric has real effects on trans people just trying to live their lives, and one should not be forced to participate in the dissemination of said hate-speech propaganda. I’m glad that they just suspended her, and ended up paying her for the days missed after she came back.
I, for one, am sick an tired of being delivered hate-speech in the mail. Some of the republican mailers I get are littered with the same hateful misinformation. It does nothing but foment anger towards an already marginalized minority group. It’s wrong, and the post office should refuse to deliver it.
That actually happens? I can’t say I’ve ever gotten hateful misinformation in the mail (and no, I don’t want to find out). My snail mail is mostly spam, with the occasional bill that doesn’t want to be electronic. More than half the time, it all goes directly in the recycle bin.
While I have the utmost sympathy for her, if a postal worker is picking and choosing what mail is to be delivered the entire concept of the post office becomes moot.
I agree in that it should be a democratically-accountable panel that prevents hate speech from being disseminated through the mail, rather than an individual, but that doesn’t make this individual’s actions wrong.
Yeah. I have very strong political, moral, and ethical opinions.
I’m also a government employee, and those opinions disappear when I’m performing my duties. I enforce rules I find idiotic all the damn time and let people get away with bullshit that should be illegal. They’re not my rules.
I’m not sure you have very strong political, moral, and ethical opinions
We’re an ordered society. We elect leaders who adopt laws and ordinances. Who the hell am I to throw that out the window and instead tell people they have to follow my will.
Yep. This is part of the “Do the job” deal.
Because I’m sure we’ll be up in arms if a religious Postal worker elected to not deliver mail for religious reasons.
Pretty much anyone defending the postal worker here on the basis of what she did being “right” is missing the generalisation that must be made. If it’s okay for postal workers to refuse to deliver mail containing viewpoints they disagree with, that means it’s okay for bigoted postal workers to refuse to deliver mail from or to LGBT organisations. It means it would be okay for pro-life postal workers to refuse to deliver parcels containing birth control pills or flyers containing information about abortion services.
You cannot have it both ways. If you make a rule that there are cases when it is acceptable for postal workers to destroy or refuse to deliver mail, it will be used by the other side against you.
If it’s okay for postal workers to refuse to deliver mail containing viewpoints they disagree with, that means it’s okay for bigoted postal workers to refuse to deliver mail from or to LGBT organizations.
Wrong. You are describing two separate things and arbitrarily deciding that they are equal actions. Preventing hate speech from being circulated is a moral act, while hatefully censoring benign communications is not.
It’s not you who decides if something is hate speech or not, and it’s not the postal worker either. And something being moral doesn’t make it lawful.
generalization that must be made
No such generalization has to be made, what?
If you make a rule
Why does saying someone did the right thing require you to make a rule?
I’ll bite. Treating fascist flyers and LGBTQ+ flyers as the same thing is bullshit. Acting like the only fair thing to do is treat someone refusing the LGBTQ+ flyers the same as this person refusing to spread fascist flyers is bullshit. Reasons matter and it’s bullshit that society has normalized stripping the context and nuance out of situations in the name of “fairness”. She shouldn’t have been punished. We don’t have to generalize, we’ve been conditioned to generalize because it reinforces the status quo. It’s ridiculous that people refuse to acknowledge the threat of fascism in actionable ways because it’s “”“”““unfair””“”“”
Also, it’s not ok for people to refuse to deliver medication on ideological grounds for an entirely different reason than it is to refuse to disseminate fascist propaganda. Postal workers wouldn’t know they’re delivering abortion medication in the first place as it’s sealed in (at the very least) an envelope that does not provide a description of the contents in a way that would reveal abortion medications over any other medication.
It is not a matter of fairness. I don’t give a shit about fairness. You are fundamentally making the same argument that the other person has tried to make in vain. I will explain the problem again using a rhetorical game for your benefit, but I will not engage in an argument with you, as you lot tend to make the same arguments ad nauseum. You will receive at most one response from me.
We’ll play a simple mind game here. Let us pretend that you are on the side of good, and I am on the side of evil. Remember, this is just a rhetorical game here. We will take turns in an office which you have granted the power to censor the post. While you are in power, you can write a rule that determines what is and is not acceptable material for delivery. You can write any rule you want, constrained only by the fact that the rule must be interpretable without relying on some external oracle (i.e. “articles deemed inappropriate by @BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee are prohibited” is not allowed as a rule) After that, you leave office and it’s my turn in office. While in office, I will have the power to interpret the rule in any way I like, constrained only by the English language. After you have left office, all powers of interpretation are given to me (until I leave office).
Your goal is to write a rule that filters out all of the content that you deem “fascist”. My goal will then be to apply, interpret, and bend your rule to filter out benign or left-wing content.
Remember, the goal of this exercise is to prove to you that it is impossible to design such a rule that can adequately restrain the use of the power you have given this office without also giving me the power to censor articles you think are acceptable. If you do not wish to play this game or reply with anything other than a proposed rule, I will link to the explanation I gave the other person and there will be no more responses from me after that.
If you want to play, reply with your proposed rule. I will reply with a way to interpret it in such a way that can be used to censor unintended articles.
Are we allowed to kink shame whatever this is?
Not who you replied to, but let me give it a try if you don’t mind.
• All promotional mail must clearly state the organization it was created by and its intent. • Claims made to support that intent must be followed by evidence from an independent and peer reviewed journal, study, or survey from within the past 20 years and clearly cite those sources. • And must provide at least one source that disagrees with the claim if one exists.
If I can’t stop fascists sending mail, I’ll make sure the recipient has some tools and knowledge to debunk their bullshit. Also it will filter out low effort bullshit, and make factually wrong discrimination more difficult.
This one’s easy.
I’ll pretend not to notice material that violates these rules coming from fascist organisations while applying them with strict scrutiny to non-fascist organisations. When someone objects, I’ll tell them to fill out a long form, wait 6-8 weeks for processing, and then after that I’ll send a warning letter to the fascist organisations telling them that they had better stop breaking the rules or else I’ll send them another letter! !I’ll challenge every source cited by the non-fascists as not independent while accepting low-quality garbage sources cited by the facists.
Ah, well if enforcement is part of the thought experiment then that’s only a couple extra amendments. The clear enemy of fascism is democracy;
• Enforcement is led by an oversight committee that is democratically elected by the general population every four years
• The oversight committee is overseen by an AI trained in intellectual honesty, ethics, and democracy
• The AI is periodically trained and updated by Doug, a Minnesota resident who answers Survey Monkey questions on his opinion of ethics and democracy and is unaware of the consequences of his responses. Only the AI knows. No one else must know. Human bias has been conquered and postage peace has been achieved.
The rules of this game specify by that no external oracle is allowed.
But I understand what you’re saying. Leaving law enforcement decisions to AI is problematic in its own right, however I don’t really have the time to go into depth about that. Mostly it has to do with the fact that AI will have the same biases as the data it was trained on, and in many cases, also the subconscious biases of the people who designed or trained it.
Yeah Doug was just a tenuous reference to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’s secret Ruler of the Universe.
I agree, AI is problematic. In theory, that could work in my favor if I train it to be secretly biased towards my beliefs, and put in safeguards to prevent it from being retrained or removed. But I imagine in the real world that would fail spectacularly.
No system can be perfect with imperfect humans and bad actors at its core, and I don’t really think AI should have any power over humans. Sorry, I kinda brought this down a rabbit hole away from the original point of the post lol
I’m an anarchist, rules aren’t really my thing. There is no rule to perfectly encapsulate the problem, I’m aware of that. As a matter of fact, I’m so aware that my ideological framework for understanding the world around me is opposed to the very concept of writing such a rule. Human information analysis and synthesis, as well as their resulting actions are infinitely complex and unpredictable. You’re setting me up for an impossible task in an attempt to pull one over on me and make your point. I agree with your point. I disagree with how it should be handled.
That woman exercised her autonomy to act in the best interest of her community. Her community should be the only ones judging her actions. Not some duckweed manager, and certainly not laws. If her community found her actions unacceptable, then they should be the ones to determine how her wrongs are righted. I very much doubt most people in town would take issue with what she did. We can argue back and forth about what her community would think all night but neither of us truly know. She did.a good thing and she shouldn’t be punished for it
Well said. It’s great she stood up for what she believes in, but aside from common-sense exceptions like trafficking/bombs, couriers can’t have a say over what they deliver.
I kinda wish they did for junk mail. God please stop sending me 200 page catalogs trying to sell me boomer clothes.
I think she is a legend for what she did and I think USPS was absolutely right to fire her for it.
I hope the mail goes back to being apolitical and that she experiences a soft landing and strong launch career-wise
… She wasn’t fired lmao. People don’t read.
She was given a 5 day suspension.
Don’t read? More like can’t read!
I dunno, I decided to react to something while only informed by other uninformed comments. It was a poor choice.
This happened in Canada
Then he’s extra right that the USPS did nothing wrong here.
Well, then I hope she becomes Duchess of Canada. (I don’t know how things work up there)
Well, maybe I’d know that if I’d read the article. Did you ever consider that I was being lazy and vocal while uninformed?!
I don’t know why I’m making it seem like this is your fault, but I hope you’ve learned your lesson
Ha, let that be a lesson to them! They won’t soon again make the mistake of, uh, letting you be ill-informed? Hmm…
Agreed. I work in healthcare. As healthcare workers we are obligated to treat any patients regardless of their political affiliation or background. I just provided services to a guy the other day with a huge swastika tattooed on chest. Ive administered care to prisoners, bully/aggressive patients, racists, sexists, and others I would not normally would not align myself with. It does not mean i support anything my patients do or their viewpoint. You cannot have people determining on their own that they are not doing their job because x,y,z especially with more public services involved. It is a very slippery slope
You cant make exceptions for some circumstances without the effects/consequences extending to other cases for opposite side as this commenter noted. All mail legally needs to be delivered, even in Canada. Props to the postal worker for trying to stand up for what they believe but agreed they should lose their job for it.
There is a gigantic difference between being forced to provide healthcare for people, regardless of political affiliation, and being forced to disseminate political propaganda and misinformation, regardless of political affiliation.
The people have rights, the flyers do not. So while I agree that the postal worker had a duty to deliver the flyer per federal law, I disagree that anyone should be allowed to freely send hateful propaganda and rhetoric to every mailbox. It’s just that making a fair law around that is difficult.
Providing necessary healthcare is vastly different than providing hate-speech mailers. I’m OK with the post office having a rule about not delivering mailers with blatant misinformation and/or hate-speech aimed against marginalized minority groups.
You cannot have it both ways.
Ban the delivery of messages containing hate towards a group based on their identity.
Let me try to twist this rule.
The delivery of materials informing women of abortion resources is now prohibited as this represents hate towards foetuses on the basis of their unborn status and advocates for killing them.
The delivery of materials promoting diversity in hiring and criticising the makeup of the boards of directors of large companies as being overwhelmingly white and male is now prohibited as this represents hate against white male executives.
You see, the issue is that you cannot guarantee that the person interpreting the rule you want to impose will think the same way you do.
A fetus is not a person. There, twist untwisted.
Nope.
I’m a person who doesn’t agree with you and I find myself in the position to interpret the rule. Therefore, I am interpreting the rule in my favour. A foetus is a person. The articles will not be delivered.
Hopefully this makes the argument a bit more clear . In this hypothetical scenario, a malicious person who disagrees with you is in charge of interpreting the rule. You have no power here and none of your arguments will convince them otherwise.
The only thing you can do is design a system that is robust enough that the damage that can be done by that malicious person.
You say a foetus is not a person. That person says “nuh uh”. But they are in charge and you are not, so their interpretation stands and you have to suck it and now you regret giving that organisation the power to make that determination.
You can think of it all in terms of game theory. You get to write the rules, then I, a malicious entity, get to play by your rules, and you can only stand and watch. Once you put your pen down, I am in charge.
Now you can see that in this game, you would want to write rules that constrain what I can do as much as possible.
You need to be born to be a person. Otherwise where do we set the limit? Maybe for medical reasons, we should set it at a certain number of weeks, but for non medical reasons should be considered the moment of birth. Otherwise when does it become hatred? Can I say “I hate fetuses under 4 weeks” but not “I hate fetuses of 12 weeks”?
Following that logic, someone could consider masturbation as a crime, and menstruation too.
Well, you see, I am a malicious entity that doesn’t need to listen to your logic. All I need is the power that you have given me.
For your rules, since I am the malicious entity in charge, I can just say “I’m right, you’re wrong”, and there is nothing you can do about it.
But what I said can’t be twisted. To be a person you must be born.
There is no interpretation there. A fetus is not a person because it hasn’t been born.
I agree, humans won’t stop stochastic terrorism, because enough humans don’t give a shit, and they’re fine with people dying because they’re not white and heteronormative.
That’s why I don’t feel attached to humanity, and I don’t class myself as one.
I class myself as a humanity!
It’s their right to not do a task that is not agreeable with their views. Sure it’s against company rules and can lead to a reprimand and or discharge.
This is a hyperbole but this can be equated to a soldier not following an unlawful command by their superior.
That seems like a very backwards way to talk about “rights”. They don’t have the right to infringe upon the rights of others, which is the reason they face legal consequences for doing so.
It’d be like me saying “I have the right to kill indiscriminately, and the state has the right to punish me for it,” instead of simply “I don’t have the right to kill indiscriminately.”
As terrible as the flyers are, personal political and religious beliefs should not be enforced in any way at a workplace.
Functionally this is similar to that county clerk that refused to issue marriage certificates to same sex couples. Can’t be supportive of one and not the other without being hypocritical.
Personally, I think refraining from distributing genocidal propaganda is pretty functionally dissimilar to being a bigot.
I don’t want to come off as abrasive and I don’t want to assume any ill-intent on your part, but it’s fucking frustrating hearing takes like this as a trans person. Equating the refusal to participate in a hateful disinformation campaign to refusing to marry a gay couple is deifying the liberal concepts of law & order at the expense of human decency. It is not hypocrisy to support anti-fascist actions whilst denouncing fascist actions, even if they express those actions in a similar fashion. For example, I largely support Just Stop Oil’s disruptive protests, whereas I would be disgusted if fascists defaced artworks by spray-painting swastikas all over. Is that hypocritical?
Again, sorry if I come on strongly in this comment, my frustrations are definitely from society at large rather than your comment, but having your right to exist being framed as a “political belief” is frankly exhausting.
I feel like there’s a “law as it currently exists” thing versus the ideal. The law as it currently exists makes it illegal to discriminate based on content. This has historically been an important vector for, say, allowing civil rights activists to send essays to be published in newspapers. But much as it was illegal to deny a gay couple their marriage license, it ought be somehow made illegal to spread damaging lies about trans people in order to stir up a hate campaign.
In this case I’d say that 5 days fully paid suspension is probably an appropriate consequence for this rule-breaking, and could only be made more appropriate if it actually included tickets to spend those days someplace warmer and friendlier than that part of Canada and a knowing wink from the postmaster general.
I think what you’re getting at is the heart of dysfunction with the Western world’s conception of free speech. We perceive free speech as the government getting out of the way and letting people say what they want, but if that’s the only thing you do then your free speech is very, very shallow. How do you stop bigots from shouting over minorities by clogging the mail? How do you stop the wealthy from owning all of the TV channels and controlling the public conversation? How do you stop corporations or foreign governments from astroturfing every online forum with misinformation?
Free speech, counterintuitively, actually requires a democratically accountable government to take responsibility for maintaining it. It does not simply come into existence by their absence.
That’s like saying if you support gay rights protestors, you have to also support nazi protestors, or you’re being hypocritical. You’re looking at things on the wrong axis.
Yeah that’s exactly correct. Protestors and counter protestors both have a right to express their views, regardless of what I think of those views. As long as they don’t violate any laws in the process. That is literally one of the pillars the US is built on for instance. I don’t have to agree with you to defend your right to say those things I disagree with. The right to that freedom of expression is literally the 1st Amendment in the US.
I don’t know what the limits are on speech in Canada, but they’re likely similar, just not as extremely biased towards protection. The US defends too much honestly.
That doesn’t mean that your opinions and expressions are immune from controversy or disagreement. And speech is limited in certain circumstances, like direct threats. That’s not what’s happening here though.
It’s why I would argue that it’s a duty of care not to distribute as it spreads hate and hurt in the community and workplace. Probably wouldn’t fly in the US though.
Who decides what is hurtful though?
If it is the person delivering the leaflets then a Nazi postal worker can decide not to deliver postal votes as they see democracy as hurtful to their cause.
I was thinking more about the “can’t force me to make a cake for a gay wedding” thing
As others have said it’s a government position and it’s delivering mail. I’m not sure if Canadian law, but in think that’s a pretty severe crime in the US.
What if the person didn’t want to deliver medicine because they believed that god will heal everything?
While the mail is hateful, it needs to be delivered.
Also consider that someone paid for the flyers and paid to have them mailed. So this guy is effectively robbing them of two different transactions.
To be clear, I don’t support the flyers in any way, but what the guy did was wrong.
Canada isn’t under the jurisdiction of American law.
That one too. Although that was a private business, not a governmental organization.
The postal worker in question doesn’t own Canada Post.
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of spite stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds
This is in Canada not the US.
What have we become? Like, maybe we should be lifting our citizens up and not denigrating them? Maybe. I’m not with the government anymore. What do I know?
Freedom only applies to cakes apparently
Canada Post is legally obligated to deliver whatever meets the postal regulations and has proper postage affixed to it.
Yes, and the decision about what they deliver isn’t up to the delivery driver.
But it’s up to the delivery driver to refuse it. Canada Post certainly has more than one deliverer, right?
Any worker can refuse any task, of course.
They’ll just have to be prepared to lose their job.That’s it. You count the cost and choose whether or not to pay it.
She should have taken them and deliver straight to rubbish bin.
I don’t believe that the Government being able to destroy mail containing viewpoints it deems objectionable is a power they should have.
There should be no tolerance for the enemy of tolerance.
I don’t disagree with this statement.
My issue with the policy proposal that follows is that the people in charge of determining what is intolerant will not necessarily be on your side.
And that’s where trouble brews. This rule only works when good, knowledgeable, and tolerant people are in charge of administering it. And God knows that this does not always describe the people actually in charge
That’s not what the word tolerance means, at all.
Yeah? In what way?
