Fired for Blogging. Attention, all bloggers across the blogosphere and everyone who has expressed a political view on the Internet (websites, newsgroups, open bulletin boards, and the like): You can be fired for political views you express on the Internet, even if you do not so much as imply that your employer agrees with your views, even if you never so much as mention your employer by name. That just happened to me. Or at least I think it happened. The possibility exists that I was fired for other reasons and my blog and other websites were used as a pretext for that firing. Do you have any attribute that your employer might want to discriminate against you for but cannot because of the law? Well, perhaps your employer can get rid of you after all by seizing upon your political activities as pretext.
+
(Having received a letter threatening legal action if I do not remove the name of the firm from this blog, I am acceding to that demand ONLY until I get advice from the ACLU or other defenders of free speech that I am entitled to be specific as to these bastards. For now, January 13th, I am substituting "[firm name]" for the actual name of that odious piece-of-sh*t collection of bigots.)
+
Last Tuesday, January 4th, I was called into a conference room with the office manager and her assistant and told, point blank, that my blog and other websites had come to the attention of various of the partners of the LAW FIRM that I worked for; they found them offensive, "disgusting" (I think she said) and, ironically, "discriminatory" (I know she said — as tho I had fired her or taken an adverse employment action against people for reasons of their political views, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.! — so I was being terminated immediately. I asked if I would get severance pay and was told no. None, even tho I had worked there for almost three years. I remarked that I thought a law firm would have more respect for freedom of speech, and the meeting was over. Then I was allowed to remove my personal property from my desk, and was escorted out of the building.
+
Never was I told exactly what about my blog or websites — nor even WHICH website(s), for I have several — was offensive or "disgusting". As for the preposterous "discriminatory", merely speaking one's mind does not constitute discrimination! Firing someone for his political beliefs is discrimination. Never had I been warned that anything I was doing jeopardized my employment.
+
I know the firm's legal staff was about half Jewish, and I am (nominally) Christian in distinct preference to accepting Judaism, and am as well outspokenly anti-Zionist — precisely because Zionism DISCRIMINATES against Arabs and other non-Jews! Perhaps I was fired because I openly reject the Jewish "God of Wrath" in preference for the Christian "God of Love" and reject as well the antihomosexualism, animal sacrifice, and dietary laws mandated by the Old Testament (Jewish) book of Leviticus. That would be illegal discrimination on the basis of religion.
+
This blog and all my websites are consistently hostile to discrimination, save the right of any group (e.g., gay men) to have private places of their own into which government may not intrude. I have consistently spoken out against discrimination, especially the hideous, indeed murderous discrimination Israel commits every day against non-Jews, and have called upon progressive American Jews to be consistent in their principles rather than making a unique exception for Israel.
+
It also strikes me as bizarre and profoundly unwise for Jews, a tiny, tiny minority, to fire someone for his religion, political views, or sexual orientation, since Jews have long (and loud) complained about discrimination against Jews. Would they really like to have employers, college admissions officers, landlords and rental offices, etc., etc., inquire into their political views and, upon finding they are pro-Zionist, discriminate against them for that political view? or use it as a pretext to keep them out of a given college, housing development, or country club, or to terminate or refuse to renew their commercial lease because of their religion? I suspect they would not.
+
But then it occurred to me that perhaps "disgusting" was meant to apply to my being homosexual. "Disgusting" is, after all, a word more typically used against homosexuality than political or religious stances.
+
So it occurred to me that perhaps the firm, which at almost 100 employees, has no openly gay or lesbian people among the legal or nonlegal staff, was really firing me for being gay but using my politics as a pretext because sexual orientation is a protected category in New Jersey's antidiscrimination laws and the firm even gives lip service to that stance in its own personnel policies.
+
One of my sisters in California discussed my situation with a law professor of her acquaintance, and he said that not only was my homosexuality a possible real reason for my firing, but my age and disability status were also possible causes, for which my political views were used as pretext. I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense.
+
I became 60 years old 15 days before I was fired. Coincidence? Or did the firm want to get rid of me for someone who might be with the firm longer, required less money in matching funds for the firm's retirement plan (I was putting in the maximum), and would work cheaper?
+
I am partially disabled, having had both my knees fail catastrophically a year and a half apart, as had to be remedied by very expensive surgery. When I was hired, I had problems with one knee. About 15 months after I was hired full-time (I had worked there part-time for several months but had no health insurance coverage as a part-timer), that knee was repaired by surgery, which required me to be out of the office for about three weeks. Three months after that surgery, however, I had another accident, to the other knee, which undid the surgery to the first when I fell and the first knee hit the pavement. That required a second expensive surgery covered by the firm's group plan, which required me to be out of work for several more weeks, since both legs were in braces. And then I had to have a third surgery, on the first leg again, which also required me to be out of work for a few weeks. I had been back to work for a bit more than five months. I was unable to use the firm's internal stairways but had to travel between floors by elevator and could not walk quickly, but that did not interfere with my job performance as a word processor/legal secretary.
+
Quite the contrary. On December 13th, a mere three weeks before I was fired, I was praised in the firm's newsletter, emailed to everyone in the firm by the marketing director:

I, for one, am reassured each weekday afternoon when Craig Schoonmaker's e-mail missive arrives in my mailbox. I don't usually need his assistance but it's nice to know he's there. And on those occasions when we're preparing for seminars and other presentations (usually the night before!), he really is there. So there!

Shortly thereafter, the firm's managing partner had a very serious heart attack. He was admitted to the cardiac-care unit at a hospital near his home in New Jersey, then transferred to a New York hospital with better facilities, and has been in the hospital ever since. He may require a heart transplant, with all its attendant costs.
+
The firm's health insurance rates went substantially higher this past year, in part, we were told in a meeting with the firm's insurance brokers, because there had been some major claims within our relatively small group (not just my operations but two knee replacements for a partner and various other significant claims) and partly because health costs generally are rising sharply. Maybe the firm's management was afraid that since I am old and have had serious difficulty with my knees, I might need future, expensive surgeries, at a time when the firm's health insurance coverage may be strained by the enormous costs of the managing partner's life-threatening difficulties, so it was prudent to prevent future such expenses by firing me. That, however, would entail both age discrimination and disability discrimination, and thus put the firm in serious trouble with state and even federal law. So perhaps they seized upon politics, which may not be protected, to get rid of me. I cannot know.
+
Certainly it is unusual for a mixed Jewish-Christian law firm in New Jersey, one of the bluest of Blue States, to fire someone because of his political views, with the potential disgrace in the legal community that such behavior risks. Some clients might even be so offended by such behavior that they would pull their business. There are lots of law firms in New Jersey that would love to have their clients' business. (One can get a partial list of their clients from the Internet).
+
Against such possible, but strictly hypothetical costs, which the firm's management may have regarded as unlikely or minimal, the possibility of an elderly employee's needing further expensive surgery at a time when the firm's insurance carrier may already be very tempted to raise rates drastically because of the strain of the managing partner's extremely expensive ongoing care, may have seemed a far worse risk.
+
Let us, however, assume for the moment that the firm's management really did object to my blogs and other websites. Which ones did they object to, for what reason? Did they object to this blog? For my religious views (protected by antidiscrimination legislation), or my political views (unprotected)? Did they object to my homosexual self-assertion website — because they are antihomosexual, a forbidden reason to fire someone?
+
Did they object to my Newark-booster website and blog on this service? My Simpler Spelling Word of the Day or main spelling reform websites? Does it matter? Or should what someone says beyond the office be irrelevant to his employment?
+
The office manager asserted that I had "involved the firm" in my views by posting a webpage about the firm's softball tournament in September 2004. But (a) I had been encouraged by a co-captain of one of the teams to take pictures at the tournament and create a page about it; (b) I had told Everyone (an email group in the firm's internal email system) about that page; and (c) not only was I not told that it was inappropriate for me to post such a page and thereby associate my name with the firm on the Internet, but I was also both thanked and praised for that page by, among others, the office manager herself!
+
Had I really "involved the firm" in my more than 130 other webpages and thus in identification with either my political views or forthright advocacy of 'the homosexual agenda'? No, I assuredly had not.
+
As anyone could have seen from this blog before I was forced to redact it, there is no link from this blog to that softball tournament page. If you were to have searched this blog and its archives, you would not once have found the name of the firm I used to work for — and actually was proud to work for, at the time, tho I am ashamed of that now, in any entry other than this one. If you had clicked on the link at my profile above, to the Expansionist Party of the United States, and searched that page for [firm name], you would not have found it. Nor would you have fnd a link to the softball-tournament page on that site, nor on the Homosexuals Intransigent!/Mr. Gay Pride website; nor on the Resurgence City website; nor on my Newark blog; nor at my No Iraq Attack! page on GeoCities; nor on my Fanetik spelling-reform website nor on any of the many, many webpages I currently have on the Internet save ONE: my PERSONAL homepage, which lists all my websites and also gives a bio in which I make plain that I am homosexual.
+
You cannot get to that personal homepage directly from this blog. You can get to it from some of my other webpages, but you would have to follow a link OFFSITE to another location on the Internet to do so. You cannot find my name and the firm's name linked by doing a Google search for "craig schoonmaker [firm name]". Google reports that such a search "does not match any documents". I emphatically did NOT "involve the firm" in my views.
+
The mere fact that one picture of me happens to appear on the Expansionist Party webpage in which I am sitting at my workstation at [firm name] does not show a connection to [firm name] because it does not say that it is taken at [firm name], and no one outside the firm would know that the desk I was sitting at was at [firm name], especially given that the monitor displays a screensaver that says "Expansionist Party", so one would naturally assume that it was taken at the Expansionist Party's own office or my personal home office. (I needed a picture for an application to the Showtime reality program American Candidate, and it was convenient to have a co-worker take a picture of me when I happened to be at the office. I then used that photo as an illustration on the XP page without, of course, naming [firm name] in the caption to that photo.) That is NOT "involv[ing] the firm" in my political or gay-rights websites.
+
Nowhere do I claim that [firm name] shares my views ON ANYTHING nor encouraged me to say what I say ABOUT ANYTHING. By contrast, one of the partners of the firm displayed, last I knew, an Israeli flag on the wall of his office, even tho he works on matters for Arab clients who might be offended and pull their business if they were to see that flag in the firm's offices!
+
Still, I was fired from a very good job with very good benefits, supposedly for what I say on the Internet. Was that really the reason? Or were they trying to save money on employer contributions to two of those very good benefits I used to enjoy, a generous health insurance program and a 401(k) plan, and take a step to limit increases in future health-insurance premiums by firing an old man with knee problems? I really don't know.
+
To the extent my political views or openly saying on the Internet that I am homosexual cost me a $50,000 a year job, everyone who says anything on the Internet should be worried lest something they say offend their boss and get them fired. And everyone on the Internet who believes that firing someone for his political beliefs is detestable, inexcusably abusive, and un-American should unite to fight that censorship. Tell your friends; warn everyone you know who publishes on the Internet. Let the clients of [firm name], the bar associations of New Jersey and New York (where the firm recently took conference-center space), and everyone else who should care about civil liberties know about this abuse. Freedom of conscience is a very serious matter.
+
(I have skipped a few days in posting to this blog because I was stunned by my firing and had to consult with family and friends, then think about what to do in response. I will, however, resume posting several times a week — and will not be silenced by bigots at my former employer — a bunch of sh*theads who will likely see their fortunes decline in short order.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:27 PM