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February 10, 2012
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David G. Savage: Why activists may not be in a hurry to have High Court rule on alternative marriage
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Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
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February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
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Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
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Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
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Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
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Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
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Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
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Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
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January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
July 27, 2005
/ 20 Tammuz, 5765
Love-crushing law is striving to sterilize the workplace
By
John Stossel
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Work has always been a good place to find love. It's where Bogie
met Bacall. It's where I met my wife she worked for "Good Morning
America." Since we spend so much time at work, we often get to know one
another better than we do in settings specially designed to help us find
romance.
But in an effort to prevent discomfort and discrimination,
America's rule makers are piling law upon love-crushing law, striving to
sterilize the workplace.
The latest headline is from California, where this month, the
state Supreme Court decided that if you have an affair with your boss, your
colleagues can sue.
The boss in the case, a state prison warden, bent rules and
played favorites outrageously to help a junior employee with whom he was
having an affair; he had affairs with three different subordinates and once
said he "should have chosen" one of the plaintiffs. Should he have been
fired? Probably.
But in letting workers who didn't have an affair with the warden
sue the state, the California Supreme Court held that favoring the person
you love can count as sexually harassing everyone else. Sexual harassment
law is no longer limited to protecting women from unwanted advances; in
California, it now protects women from having their colleagues respond to
wanted ones.
Taking its cue from a statement Clarence Thomas approved when he
led the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the court said: "widespread
sexual favoritism may create a hostile work environment . . . by sending the
demeaning message that managers view female employees as 'sexual
playthings'" or that "'the way for women to get ahead in the workplace is by
engaging in sexual conduct.'"
I see the logic, but consider where it leads. In sexual
harassment law, "messages" are not judged by the intent of the people
sending them they're judged by how others respond. The
offended get to decide which speech is offensive.
"What is inappropriate really exists only through the eyes of
the person experiencing it," said Olivet Jones, a $2,000-per-day consultant
who conducted a workplace seminar on sexual harassment ABC News videotaped.
I found it frightening. "So the person who hears it gets to
determine if it's offensive?" I asked. "Even if your intention is good?"
"It doesn't matter, John. If I shoot you dead," she asked, "do
you care that I didn't mean to?"
Shooting equals speaking? There's a difference between bullets
and words.
"No," Jones says. "They have the same power."
That's a dangerous concept. In a free society, we are supposed
to be able to say whatever (or nearly whatever) we want.
But since the law says that words can create a harassing
"hostile environment," some employers are so afraid of being sued that they
keep their own rules even more restrictive than the law.
Some forbid dating in the office altogether, a policy that will
no doubt become more popular now that the California Supreme Court says it
can lead to lawsuits from colleagues who aren't involved. An overreaction to
sexual harassment law? That's what happens. Given what lawsuits cost,
managers must take desperate measures. If workers lose freedom of speech, so
what? If they miss out on relationships that could have added joy to their
lives, who cares? Better safe than sorry.
America is supposed to be a land of self-reliant, hardy
individualists who cherish their freedom. But sexual harassment law treats
women as so weak and vulnerable that not only can they not handle rude and
boorish insults, they can't even handle gallant compliments. At the
"harassment seminar," Jones told us we must make sure we do not engage in
even the most basic kinds of friendly, human interaction. "Don't touch a
co-worker on the shoulder. And be careful of compliments!"
"Are you becoming a bland person?" said Jones? "Yes, you are."
Everyone must become bland? I don't want to! I want to joke and
flirt. One seminar participant complained Jones' rules would make the
workplace "cold, unhealthy, less fun." I agree. Yet by seminar's end, Jones
had convinced most participants that workplace speech should be censored.
How easily we give up our freedoms.
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