Video Game CEO fired over pro-life social media post

Belk

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It absolutely is when that belief is a major tenet of your religion.

The EEOC ruled against frito last year for firing a seventh day adventist for refusing to work on Saturdays. The EEOC also ordered a company reinstate a pentecostal woman (again, last year) because she wanted to wear a skirt instead of pants because her religion tells her to dress modestly. They're also seeking backpay, compensatory damages, etc etc.

I'm not trying to be rude, but you don't know what you're talking about.


Understood. I am not trying to be rude either but I am thinking the same about you. :wave:
 
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Arcangl86

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It's absurd that you'd claim that, given he clearly states his pro-life position. The only possible argument the company could make, legally speaking, is an attempt to claim in court that anyone can be against abortion, even the non-religious. The next question from any competent defense attorney is going to be whether or not they knew he was religious, at which point it becomes a farce and you've annoyed the judge, which is why no one would even try to make that argument.
Actually the argument the company can make is that he violated company policy. You can't just ignore company policy because of your religion.

Second, it doesn't matter if his statement does not represent the company culture. That doesn't change existing religious discrimination laws. Private corporations are not exempt because of company culture. The civil rights act only allows for very, very narrow exemptions. For example, you have a for-profit company selling atheist clothing marketed specifically towards atheists. They could refuse to hire/or fire a religious person for a job involving outreach towards fellow atheists, but not for something like say, accounting. It doesn't matter if their entire organization is geared towards atheist products for atheist people, they still have to hire anyone regardless of their religious background unless that job's function requires atheism. They also have to prove it, and the standards are very, very strict.

You're trying to trot out the 'freedom from consequences' nonsense I see constantly, but the law is very clear on this, and not on your side.

The law is very clear on this, and the law states that you cannot be fired for simply being a member of a protected class. That doesn't give you cart blanche to do whatever you want and try to justify it in a cloak of religious expression.
 
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Tiberius Lee

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It's absurd that you'd claim that, given he clearly states his pro-life position. The only possible argument the company could make, legally speaking, is an attempt to claim in court that anyone can be against abortion, even the non-religious. The next question from any competent defense attorney is going to be whether or not they knew he was religious, at which point it becomes a farce and you've annoyed the judge, which is why no one would even try to make that argument.

Second, it doesn't matter if his statement does not represent the company culture. That doesn't change existing religious discrimination laws. Private corporations are not exempt because of company culture. The civil rights act only allows for very, very narrow exemptions. For example, you have a for-profit company selling atheist clothing marketed specifically towards atheists. They could refuse to hire/or fire a religious person for a job involving outreach towards fellow atheists, but not for something like say, accounting. It doesn't matter if their entire organization is geared towards atheist products for atheist people, they still have to hire anyone regardless of their religious background unless that job's function requires atheism. They also have to prove it, and the standards are very, very strict.

You're trying to trot out the 'freedom from consequences' nonsense I see constantly, but the law is very clear on this, and not on your side.

We don’t know what the company policies are. If the company didn’t have a policy, and over night they came up with the policy and fired him, then John has legal option against the company.

My friend is a teacher of a Christian School. She has been teaching there over 25 years and follow all the school policy. If today she goes to grocery wearing Jeans, she will be fired. That is against school policy. Is that discrimination. May be , but she agreed to follow the rules. She is teaching in a fundamental Baptist School, if tomorrow she became member of a Lutheran Church, she will be fired. Because school policy says all staff member must be member of the Church of that school.

I agree with you about “ freedom of religion”, but when you are hired, you agreed to abide by company policy, if you break those policy you will be fired. You can argue if you agree with the policy or not, but you can’t break those policy once you agreed to abide by them.
 
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EricaMeeran

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Actually the argument the company can make is that he violated company policy. You can't just ignore company policy because of your religion.

The law is very clear on this, and the law states that you cannot be fired for simply being a member of a protected class. That doesn't give you cart blanche to do whatever you want and try to justify it in a cloak of religious expression.

True, and that would be a valid argument if they had a policy against speaking out on politics and religion on company accounts (which he did not use, so good luck there). What do you think the chances of that are? I'm guessing next to zero.

He wasn't doing 'whatever he wanted' he was stating his belief in a tenet of Christianity, which is the point I have been consistently making here.
 
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Tiberius Lee

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True, and that would be a valid argument if they had a policy against speaking out on politics and religion on company accounts (which he did not use, so good luck there). What do you think the chances of that are? I'm guessing next to zero.

He wasn't doing 'whatever he wanted' he was stating his belief in a tenet of Christianity, which is the point I have been consistently making here.

Oh so you started the thread because your are “guessing next to zero” about the company policy. Now I agree with you!
 
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Arcangl86

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True, and that would be a valid argument if they had a policy against speaking out on politics and religion on company accounts (which he did not use, so good luck there). What do you think the chances of that are? I'm guessing next to zero.

He wasn't doing 'whatever he wanted' he was stating his belief in a tenet of Christianity, which is the point I have been consistently making here.
Actually, the chances that there was a specific social media policy he violated is pretty high, especially considering he was the CEO.

And he himself never said anything about his religion. In fact, he explicitly stated that it was a political statement, which is not protected under the CRA. The Fair Employment Practices Act isn't even relevant because it only governs state employers.
 
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Goonie

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You can't be fired for your religion. But last time I checked, believing that abortion should be illegal wasn't a core tenet of the Christian faith.
The argument from the religious right is that abortion is nothing more than an act/method of murder since they believe life begins at conception, not at first breath. Ergo abortion violates a core part of Christianity.
 
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Nithavela

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You can't be fired for your religion. But last time I checked, believing that abortion should be illegal wasn't a core tenet of the Christian faith.
Maybe you checked at the wrong branch of christianity.
 
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Strathos

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The argument from the religious right is that abortion is nothing more than an act/method of murder since they believe life begins at conception, not at first breath. Ergo abortion violates a core part of Christianity.

Then they should also be against the death penalty, the military, and police using deadly force.
 
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Hank77

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I'll never understand why so many people are misinformed that private business owners can do whatever they want. It hasn't been true for decades and it's only gotten less true over time.
Accommodation laws are between the business and their customer/client, (the CO baker baking a cake for a same-sex wedding, a hotel turning someone away because of race, etc).

I don't know of any accommodation type laws that require one business to do business with another business.
 
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Fantine

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I don't see why developing a "first-person shooter video game" (bolding yours) and being pro-life should be mutually exclusive.

And today I saw a car window decal of the American eagle with an assault weapon in each hand. "In God we trust. Our backup is guns."

"Pro-lifers" are often pro-gun and apparently pro violent video games.

And to a non-violent person like myself it often seems that their "Pro-life" stance has more to do with controlling others than a sincere reverence for life.

If you favor laws allowing people to shoot to kill burglars running off with a TV, you have a whole lot of atonement to do.
 
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Nithavela

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And today I saw a car window decal of the American eagle with an assault weapon in each hand. "In God we trust. Our backup is guns."

"Pro-lifers" are often pro-gun and apparently pro violent video games.

And to a non-violent person like myself it often seems that their "Pro-life" stance has more to do with controlling others than a sincere reverence for life.

If you favor laws allowing people to shoot to kill burglars running off with a TV, you have a whole lot of atonement to do.
I don't see how you made the leap from a car window decal to the pro lifer stance on violent video games.
 
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Kentonio

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Basically everyone in video games is working under serious NDAs and contracts that place quite strict restrictions on public statements. The company won't care that he expressed an opinion, they'll care because his public statement risks a PR backlash and potentially large financial losses, and that's not something that any sensible company will allow.

It was a really silly thing for any games exec to do, and particularly so for a CEO who absolutely should have known better. His position was clearly untenable, and no amount of petitions is going to change that. Its unlikely he'd even want to change it, as he'll know perfectly well the damage he caused and probably has no desire to harm any further a company he was a major part of.
 
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Sparagmos

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My son recently sent me a post from a video gaming forum he frequents, and I was concerned enough to finally stop browsing this forum and actually make an account to post myself after I didn't find it anywhere here or in the gaming forum. It also finally gave me an excuse to read the rules just to be sure I wasn't breaking them with this post.

While this concerns video games I believe it's more politics than anything else, so I'm posting it here. I'm going to copy some of what my son sent me verbatim, but I have heavily edited the text in the image he sent me to remove any profanity. I try my best, but teenagers... and he didn't say any of it himself.

I triple checked the information on the public officials, and it's all available for the public. I didn't want to accidentally post anyone's private information, so I can promise you there's none of that below.



I wanted to spread this here in the hopes that others will stand up for what's right like John Gibson tried to do. This is bigger than him now, it's about all of us and our right to not be fired for holding a view that most of the country does! Over eighty percent of America believes there should be at least some restrictions on abortion, and forty percent believe it should be illegal in all or most cases. This is a religious belief, so it's protected by law.

I live in the South in the U.S., and have already sent messages to my Governor and Lt. Governor on facebook and left voicemails with both of their offices. I don't have that other social media website listed, but I encourage anyone who does to send messages.

My son exclusively uses gaming forums, so I wouldn't be surprised if no one here had heard about this. I certainly hadn't!

It took me a while and judicious use of MS Paint, but I managed to crop out an image of John Gibson's social media post that started that for everyone here to see.View attachment 305546
If we can't even say this much without discrimination, then the law isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Aww, the poor CEO. He has a contract, sounds like he chose to sever it and I imagine is walking away far better off than any of us here.

Seriously, though, do you want Christian companies to be forced to employ CEO’s who tweet about their Satanism or support of abortion rights? Or does this principle only go one way?
 
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Sparagmos

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True, and that would be a valid argument if they had a policy against speaking out on politics and religion on company accounts (which he did not use, so good luck there). What do you think the chances of that are? I'm guessing next to zero.
. The chances are extremely high. As far as I know, all CEO contracts include clauses about social media posts/public actions that could cause customer backlash or reflect negatively on the company. It’s also standard in most large corporation policies, although employees have more legal protection than CEO’S in this matter.
 
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TLK Valentine

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My son recently sent me a post from a video gaming forum he frequents, and I was concerned enough to finally stop browsing this forum and actually make an account to post myself after I didn't find it anywhere here or in the gaming forum. It also finally gave me an excuse to read the rules just to be sure I wasn't breaking them with this post.

While this concerns video games I believe it's more politics than anything else, so I'm posting it here. I'm going to copy some of what my son sent me verbatim, but I have heavily edited the text in the image he sent me to remove any profanity. I try my best, but teenagers... and he didn't say any of it himself.

I triple checked the information on the public officials, and it's all available for the public. I didn't want to accidentally post anyone's private information, so I can promise you there's none of that below.



I wanted to spread this here in the hopes that others will stand up for what's right like John Gibson tried to do. This is bigger than him now, it's about all of us and our right to not be fired for holding a view that most of the country does! Over eighty percent of America believes there should be at least some restrictions on abortion, and forty percent believe it should be illegal in all or most cases. This is a religious belief, so it's protected by law.

I live in the South in the U.S., and have already sent messages to my Governor and Lt. Governor on facebook and left voicemails with both of their offices. I don't have that other social media website listed, but I encourage anyone who does to send messages.

My son exclusively uses gaming forums, so I wouldn't be surprised if no one here had heard about this. I certainly hadn't!

It took me a while and judicious use of MS Paint, but I managed to crop out an image of John Gibson's social media post that started that for everyone here to see.View attachment 305546
If we can't even say this much without discrimination, then the law isn't worth the paper it's written on.

So... what exactly do you want the Governor and Lt. Governor to do? Reinstate Gibson as CEO because "pro-life" is a religious, not political position?
 
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ArmenianJohn

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I don't see why developing a "first-person shooter video game" (bolding yours) and being pro-life should be mutually exclusive.
You don't? Seriously? Or being facetious?
 
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ArmenianJohn

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It's funny because I brought that up with my son. He told me it was about zombies, not people. I'm not exactly a "gamer" myself. Too old!
So it would be the same if the game were about a first-person doctor game where your job is to abort as many Zombie pregnancies as you can - that would be OK also for your son or other kids to play and it wouldn't conflict with pro-life views, right? (Interestingly, the zombie abortion game could also be called "Killing Floor"!!!)
 
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