The Atlanta government may not yet be burning books, but they sure burned a man who wrote one. The Georgia city’s mayor, Kasim Reed, announced Tuesday that he had terminated Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran (shown). The reason?
Cochran expressed disapproval of homosexual behavior in a self-published book.
The chief had already endured a 30-day suspension without pay after the book, entitled Who Told You That You Were Naked?, was brought to light by a retired, openly lesbian Atlanta Fire Department captain named Cindy Thompson. The book, which concerns the importance of Christ’s salvation, expresses many authentic Christian beliefs, including the lines that raised homosexual activists’ ire:
Uncleanness — whatever is opposite of purity; including sodomy, homosexuality, lesbianism, pederasty, bestiality, all other forms of sexual perversion.
Naked men refuse to give in, so they pursue sexual fulfillment through multiple partners, with the opposite sex, the same sex and sex outside of marriage and many other vile, vulgar and inappropriate ways which defile their body-temple and dishonor God.
Penning such a book is considered contrary to Atlanta city policy, which, it seems, curiously aligns with the policy objectives of homosexual-activist groups. One of these is Georgia Equality, whose executive director, Jeff Graham, had lobbied for Cochran’s ouster. As GA Voice tells us:
Cochran’s anti-gay views could only make for a hostile work environment, Graham noted.
“This is not about his religious views but about his ability to lead a diverse work force,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that this had to happen. I feel the mayor has done the right thing to ensure all employees are treated fairly.”
And Mayor Reed certainly seems to agree. As GA Voice wrote reporting on a press conference on the matter:
Reed reiterated the city’s nondiscrimination policy that prohibits prejudice based upon sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as race, color, religion, and sex.
“His personal religious beliefs are not the issue at all despite the number of comments and emails I have been receiving on a daily basis,” Reed said.
Yet many would say this doesn’t ring true. Note that Cochran was not accused of discrimination, which involves action, but for the beliefs he expressed — exercising his First Amendment rights — in a book composed during his private time. It doesn’t appear that Cochran “discriminated” against anyone.
Some may note that, according to Mayor Reed, his city’s policies also include a prohibition against “prejudice,” which, of course, does involve mere thoughts or beliefs. But what is prejudice? The term’s first definition at Dictionary.com is “an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.”
There’s the rub. Even if one agrees that government should be allowed to fire someone for expressed beliefs (which seems like a First Amendment violation), are today’s public officials qualified to judge whether a view really was formed “without knowledge, thought, or reason”? And do Cochran’s positions — the norm for virtually all the last 2000 years and likely still embraced by a healthy world majority today — fit that description? Also note that we all have biases, which can be negative or positive. The only question is whether we’re biased in favor of the Truth — or a lie.
Speaking of biases, is there prejudice in determining who will get fired and why? After all, if we’re going to conflate belief with behavior (discrimination), consider that Cochran also inveighed against fornication (“sex outside of marriage”) and polyamory. Does this mean he intended to discriminate against his department’s polyamorists and fornicators? Does this also, as Graham said, create “a hostile work environment” and an inability “to lead a diverse work force”?
The reality is that the prejudices exhibited by Graham are so seamlessly woven into the secularist world view that the contradiction isn’t even noticed. Someone can express disfavor with a host of sexual behaviors and it doesn’t evoke activist animus; at most, people may chuckle and view the person as an anachronistic “Church Lady” type. But woe betide the individual who expresses disfavor with one particular sexual behavior.
This places matters in perspective. The fashionable view today is that disapproval of homosexual activity is synonymous with hatred of homosexuals and now, according to Graham and Mayor Reed, constitutes discrimination against them and warrants job termination. But given that virtually everyone in today’s secular and sexualized America engages in some activity traditional Christians label a sin, does it follow that Christians “hate” most everyone? Should they be assumed to discriminate unfairly against virtually everybody? Do they also hate themselves, since they believe they’re sinners as well? Are we back to ancient Roman times, in which the pagans called Christians “haters of humanity”?
The truth is that many today simply want a special sin-hierarchy dispensation for one select sexual behavior. But this renders the Christian model — and any traditional model — for man’s sexuality thoroughly untenable. As I wrote in October, is Christianity “supposed to say adultery is a sin, fornication is a sin, self-gratification is a sin, viewing pornography is a sin, but homosexuality is, what? A lifestyle choice, sort of like living on a houseboat?” This would create a “what’s wrong with this picture” scenario. So, in essence, what homosexual activists and their allies are demanding would lead to the total collapse of the Christian sexual model.
The fact is, everyone has a negative opinion about something. If a city official writes a book in which he criticizes Protestantism, Catholicism, communism, materialism, atheism, soccer, rap music, Mexican food, or skimpy attire, is it synonymous with discrimination against those associated with that thing? Is the only type of person who could work in such a position someone who doesn’t exist: that mythical value-neutral individual?
This is why, despite Mayor Reed’s protestations to the contrary, the firing of Kelvin Cochran had everything to do with his religious views — and the secular views and great-sexual-heresy vice of today’s big government and big ideology. It’s the same force that cost former Mozilla CEO and pro-marriage Proposition 8 supporter Brendan Eich his job, that led to the punishment of bakers who refused to provide “wedding” cakes for same-sex couples and to the persecution of other Christian businessmen. Just as Sharia-believing Muslims enforce their code of behavior, Western modernists enforce theirs — despite railing against the imposition of moral codes. Perhaps this is why, instead, they have given us an immoral code.
