It’s been quite some time since I’ve done a Fascist Friday post. However, the left has risen (or shall we say fallen?), to the occasion. Apparently, disagreeing with the left is still wrong, characterized as hate, and very punishable.
Not following me? Thinking this is right wing lunacy? Take a look at this from Newsbusters, and decide for yourself.
The censorious intolerance of the gay left is on display again – a reporter was fired in Waterville, Maine. His offense? Sending an angry private e-mail to the Human Rights Campaign in Washington. The HRC wanted the reporter dismissed – and bang, he was terminated.
Via the Romenesko media news site, I found Al Diamon of Downeast.com reported that Larry Grard was fired after 17 years at the Waterville Sentinel and 35 years in journalism:
Grard was fired by Bill Thompson, editor of the Sentinel and its sister paper the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, shortly after the Nov. 3 election in which Maine voters repealed a same-sex marriage law approved by the Legislature. Grard said he arrived at work the morning after the vote to find an e-mailed press release from the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C., that blamed the outcome of the balloting on hatred of gays.
Grard, who said he’d gotten no sleep the night before, used his own e-mail to send a response. “They said the Yes-on-1 people were haters. I’m a Christian. I take offense at that,” he said. “I e-mailed them back and said basically, `We’re not the ones doing the hating. You’re the ones doing the hating.’
“I sent the same message in his face he sent in mine.”
Grard thought his response was anonymous, but it turned out to be anything but. One week later, he was summoned to Thompson’s office. He was told that Trevor Thomas, deputy communications director of the Human Rights Campaign, had Googled his name, discovered he was a reporter, and was demanding Grard be fired. According to Grard, Thompson said, “There’s no wiggle room.”
He was immediately dismissed.
Is this a new trend? Being Google-canned?
It didn’t matter that Grard sent an e-mail privately. It didn’t matter that Grard never covered the “gay marriage” initiative battle. He had taken offense at the HRC, and that was apparently grounds for firing:
Grard hadn’t covered the marriage issue or other gay-rights controversies for the Sentinel. He said that wasn’t because he was opposed to doing so, but “other people grabbed those assignments.”
According to Grard and his union, the Portland Newspaper Guild, he has never before had any disciplinary issues. Guild president Tom Bell said in an e-mail that a grievance has been filed on Grard’s behalf, and the Guild is awaiting a date for an arbitration hearing, which will probably take place in three or four months. “The Guild is defending the contract,” Bell said, “which requires that there be progressive discipline in situations like this.”
Grard said he wouldn’t be complaining if he’d been subjected to a lesser penalty, such as a reprimand or a suspension without pay, for his first offence. He said reporters frequently send personal e-mails from their own accounts during working hours without incurring management’s wrath.
Grard said he thinks his religious beliefs were a factor in his firing, calling it “anti-Christian bias.” “A lawyer said to me, `What if you’d agreed with [the Human Rights Campaign]? Would the company fire you for that? Of course they wouldn’t have,’” he said.
The Sentinel and the other MaineToday papers editorialized in favor of same-sex marriage.
The week after Grard was fired, he said, his wife, Lisa, who wrote a biweekly food column for the Sentinel as a freelancer, received an e-mail informing her that her work would no longer be needed.
Did HRC also demand the freelancing wife be fired? Of course, the people responsible for Grard’s firing are not responding to calls for comment – which is always amusing when the no-comment folks are editors and publicists:
Well then, leftists track this guy down, complain to his employer, and demand that he be fired. His crime? Did he advocate violence? Did he make personal threats to another person? Did he commit a crime? No my friends, he did none of those things. Not even close. He disagreed with a political agenda, nothing more. In our brave new world, to think differently from the left is a crime. It is hate! To believe in a God, especially the Christian variety, makes you guilty of hate, and in this new leftist world, you are not to be tolerated.
“Whoa!” you say? “Isn’t the left all about tolerance and diversity?” No, my friends, they are not. We must remember that when the left talks about “tolerance and diversity,” they only mean “tolerance” for themselves…NOT for you. You are NOT permitted to have ideas, let alone state them, that come into conflict with the left.
This follows right along with the attacks on people that supported Prop 8 in California. The threats, ridicule, and decreased grades for Conservatives at the Universities, and the treatment of the Tea Party and Town Hall protesters by the MSM are other examples. It will continue. The left cannot win a debate by honest means. They lie at every turn. To keep themselves from being exposed, they are constantly on the attack. As I have said so many times before, if a person is smeared or discredited, their ideas can be ignored. That, my friends, is the end goal.
For highly intelligent Conservative News and Opinion, please consider the The Liberty Pen . 
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I believe that future generations should have the same opportunities that myself, and those that came before me, had. My parents taught me that I could do anything I wanted to do. I don’t want to have to tell my daughter, “You can do whatever the government tells you to do.” We are at a crossroads in this country; are we going to be free, or are we going to be slaves to the nanny state. I choose freedom. 
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Theses type of tactics are more than indicative of the left. These tactics are marxist and communistic tools of control.
That they are!
How much you want to bet he’s already been contacted by conservative media for a job?
I would hope so. They guy got screwed for his personal opinion. If he was a lefty, he would have been hired for it!
The loons on the left go bananas when BLOGGERS post anti-Progressive stories, I have *drive-by* trolls all the time, calling for my blog to be shut down, calling me a racist, and worse, and all in all, seeking to deny ME my free speech, on my own page…
Libbers are such wonderful people… (/sarcasm)
I tend to agree with Mark Levin when he says liberals are fun when they aren’t in power…
Freedom of speech for the left means the freedom to agree with them as much as you want. Dissent is not an option.
Liberals seem to be so unsure of their positions that they fear anyone who challenges them and seek to shut them down in anyway possible. Diverse, ha! Tolerant, ha! Closed minded, yep!
They can’t win straight up on facts, their policies are meant to reduce everyone’s standard of living and reduce them to being slaves to the nanny state. Hence, they lying and silencing of dissent.
Why is this not surprising?
Because it’s happened before, and it will happen again.
Its ironic how the liberals who claim to be tolerant are actually the least tolerant people in the world. The left is against diversity of speech. They are against free speech and distort the truth every chance they get. They disgust me so much.
Hypocrisy should be their middle name.
Matt – this makes me think of someone I know who was a manager and ended up losing their job because an employee said they were making derogatory remarks about them being gay. The comments never happened but the individual was canned immediately. They tried to fight it legally but all that mattered was that a gay person made the accusation and the rest was history!
People should never really engage in management type conversations without witnesses.
I think comments really say it all. Tolerance is great unless you disagree.
Pretty much Trestin. Everything is upside down anyway. Might as well have tolerance be intolerance.
I have found that if I want to bring the liberals out of the woodwork, all I have to do is write an article about homosexuality. They always seem to find the article and invariably, they try to turn the article into something it is not. It’s gotten to the point that a pastor or preacher even has to be careful about what they say from the pulpit. Failing to do so may very well subject them to scrutiny for possible “hate speech” or other “crimes”. As many have already said, these people are very intolerant of any view that does not applaud homosexuality.
I generally frame the debate in that the gay rights crowd just another part of the left. They use the same methods to silence any dissent. Just like the feminazis, the AGW crowd, the ACORN and SEIU goons…it’s all Alinsky and other thuggery. They’re just another division, if you will, of the left. I try to dissect them all equally.
Matt, these people make the Inquisition look like Sesame Street characters.
So much for “tolerance.” It’s apparent that what the homosexual super-citizens mean by that is tolerance only for themselves. Not simply tolerance, either, but open support.
That’s a good point Karen. They can’t even agree to “live and let live.” They will settle for nothing more than fawning obedience.
When they release this next Friday, comment on the goodfaithclause.com. It would be interesting to see how left and right feel about integrity required on both. I see both sides crying how unfair it would be to prevent them for them God-given rights to distort and lie. The last not a commentary on this article, where I agree with your position. Difference of opinions are fine and encouraged, but without it being a foundation of the good faith clause, the playing field will always be unfair for one side. In this case, the reporter was wronged.
Chris, I will check that out. I think we are able to have discussions here. Often times though, people come here and hurl insults. So, most of them don’t leave my mod queue. I just don’t have time to respond to folks that want me to waste my time getting into and insult-fest.
This is a disturbing story, Matt. I sure hope this man get hired by a conservative paper. The Pro-Gay goons and all the other Alinsky radicals are like tentacles out of a 3000 armed hydra. They make me sick, for all the reasons listed above.
People with their own agenda’s can make up any lie they want about people now days, tell it to management, and instead of investigations, management will just can the person.
Also, I hope everyone knows if they have a problem at work DON”T go to HR, they are there to protect the employer NOT YOU! Everyone should carry around a notebook (in their purse or pocket, bring home every nite) and document, dates, times places, witnesses, every weird convo….you never know when someone will try to get you canned, just ’cause they don’t like you,…it might not save your job, but it will be good proof when you have to sue the employer, or at the very least, apply for unemployment benefits.
I hope this gentleman gets a good lawyer too. I never use my home email, or sign on my blog, or other peoples at work. Just general news sites.
This is also why I have a “pen name” and would never divulge my real name, People can google AB all they want, and there I am….you google my real name! NOTHING! Not a thing….I’m keeping it that way, until the proper time. Then, I’ll be viral
Good plan. I do wonder if there are legal options for people that are losing their jobs and businesses due to intimidation. I wonder, specifically, if the groups pressuring employers can be sued? That would make things interesting, and level the playing field.
Absolutely awful.
The Left may not outlaw certain views through legislation, but they will work towards the same end by making any views with which they disagree difficult and costly to hold – through personal stigma, public shaming, loss of opportunities, etc.
I detest their absolutist mindset. They cannot contemplate anything outside of their narrow boundaries. I think that we should pollute less, but do not believe in AGW; people can do whatever they like in the privacy of their own homes, but I would prefer for marriage to remain between one man and one woman; abortion repulses me, but I accept that it is necessary under some very limited circumstances; I pay progressive income tax, but would rather pay a flat tax.
But those on the Left cannot do this. They cannot deviate at all from their programming.
Very true Track. Their narrow-mindedness puts many at risk.
I still view them as acting as spiteful children. It’s kind of like one group of kids shunning another because they aren’t wearing the right kind of shoes, or something like that.
This is precisely why we don’t hear of things in MSM such as Libs idolizing and quoting Mao Tse Tung, or the filthily czars like Jennings. It is fear of losing their jobs, networks, access to Washington, etc. That and they seek to put in only those of a like mind and get rid of the rest. Freedom of speech has been in danger since the 2008 elections. This guy had every right to send his PRIVATE email without any intervention from his employer.
True, but that didn’t stop them from firing him, and his wife. I have some research to do on wrongful termination.