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.
This is a non technical example of why we want net neutrality.
I don’t disagree in therory but there is no way we can let postal workers have a say in what they can or cannot deliver. Fire them for doing it and move on.
Tolerance may end with Intolerance, but idk how I feel about postal workers having the right to decide what does and does not get mailed.
It’s good actually that the mail doesn’t censor based on viewpoint
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 agree but this logic cuts both ways.
The people that disliked the courthouse lady shouldn’t be too surprised or upset now that the shoe’s on the other foot.
No I still believe actions have consequences, I’m saying either they do or they don’t and people who want to play it both ways need to STFU.
However, while of course you can’t police what goes out in an envelope, I don’t think these materials should have been allowed to ship. Of course, while they say little Billy knowing the 2 guys next door are in love is too much for his fragile little brain the “won’t someone think of the kids” crowd don’t bat an eye at little Billy running down to the mailbox and pulling out a fearmongering postcard about genital mutilation.
People can refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple.
People get punished for not delivering hate mail.
Why is it so easy for hatred to do things but so hard for decency to push back?
Because typically “decency” doesn’t use a 2x4 with nails driven through it to get the point across…
🎵 but the taaaahms they are a chaaaaangin’ 🎶
While I sympathize… That’s fair. Same as the people working in pharmacies and refusing to hand out birth control. If you have moral qualms about your job, find another job.
i assume there are federal laws on delivering mail to people, considering that like. That shits important sometimes.
People in this thread: sensible
I have nothing against trans but this person should have delivered them. If these are legal there is no reason not too. Just think of it as any other trash mail.
Y’all I just fell down a rabbit hole. I understood that Canada has a limited right to expression- meaning hate speech is prohibited, and checked the New Brunswick’s human rights act- gender expression and gender identity are protected classes.
BUT it seems really similar to this case: https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/12876/index.do where the court ruled that the material was not hateful enough to be hate speech? I wonder if the best thing to do is make their own (better) flyers promoting love. It’s unfortunate- falsehoods are actually protected under freedom of expression.
I can’t imagine how devastating it must be for that mother to have to handle and disperse materials that challenge her daughter’s right to exist and live in a way that makes her feel safe. I understand the importance of freedom of expression rules, but I have a feeling that if these flyers were going out saying that children with other medical conditions shouldn’t be receiving care, or children with disabilities shouldn’t receive accomodation in the classroom, there would be more of an uproar. It’s so sad that one group of children seems to be an acceptable target.
If I had this flyer delivered to me I’d use my reasoning skills to bin it, maybe mock it first. Seems silly not to deliver it. It’s only going to be read by the already bigoted. Any sensible individual knows what to do with it.
Devil’s advocate for a second here: do we all remember the baker that refused to make some LGBT wedding cake? He was crucified for that, so hateful, etc. But in basics, this is the same thing. Yes, the flyers are hateful, but that is not her job to determine or judge that. I get her issue with it for sure, but there is more than just her opinion.
If she can refuse to deliver this, then that baker can refuse to do an LGBT cake and love happily with that decision.
The difference is that one of them is officially acting on behalf of the federal government and one is just a bigoted private citizen.
The postal worker has violated federal law and should be held accountable legally.
The baker is a shitty person and was publicly called out for it but not legally punished.
I think the postal service is technically some weird in-between where its neither fully a part of the federal government but also not fully a wholly owned subsidiary of the federal government
That is correct. While not employed by the federal government, they do deliver the mail on behalf of the government and there are federal laws against obstructing the delivery of that mail.
the problem legally is that the post office is a federal institution and the bakery is a private business.
however, if i remember correctly, there was a woman who worked for a state office that was refusing to do gay marriage certificates and she got away with it.
i don’t know. laws are stupid to begin with which is why i say ignore them and do what’s right.
I believe you’re thinking of this peice of work: https://apnews.com/general-news-cf28301d7af44fa38bb29dddd4d5e1c2
Looks like she was not allowed to refuse to grant licenses, served jail time for the stunt and since then has received eye-watering legal bills and damages for her antics. I imagine as a county employee she wasn’t wealthy enough to pay 300k+ in damages and fees very easily, although maybe she was clever enough to be able to spin a lucrative book or speaking deal from the situation
yup. that’s her. see you next tuesday!
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.
This way of thinking is problematic. Freedom of speech is a social contract and hate speech is a violation of that contract.
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
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…
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’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.
The sword. A literal sword of Damocles, above “tHe MaLiCiOuS eNtITy”. Is that what you need to hear to feel you’ve won? The divine rights of kings and the paradox of tolerance to meet the same end, there’s a solution to your Gordian Knot.
Now hit me with the defeatist game theory take against the groups that already would take everything.
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
Are we allowed to kink shame whatever this is?
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
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.”
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?
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.
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.
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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.
