Thanks for stopping by.

elsewhere but not here until later. This is the main group for some members.

Is that a problem?

You see, there are several people in this forum who believe one or more of the following, and have made many posts to these points:

-Christians in this country are persecuted.
-Religious persecution is the sole purview, and default position, of non-believers.
-Christian persecution of other believers (and non-believers) in this country has gone by the wayside, and if it exists at all, it is only performed by a tiny minority.
-Christian theology has evolved past the point where such actions would be performed by its followers.

This convert was surrounded by people who persecuted her for her beliefs, and given the location of this occurrence (near my old stomping grounds) I have very little doubt of the religious background of those who participated in her persecution. If they are, as I suspect, a general mix of Protestant denominations including those considered "mainstream" by posters here, then I would hope that the people who espouse one or more ideas in the list above would take that as an object lesson in their wrongness.

because you used to live near there.

I get it, I guess.

than the average of the USA. It is, after all, the seat of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, a haven for many large Amish communities, a major focal point in Southern Baptist Convention politics, a frequent stop for Promise Keepers conventions, the state where they filmed Jesus Camp, one of the battleground states for some of the most anti-choice, anti-woman, religion-based legislation to be found in America...etc.

I've spent all but 3 years of my life there.

And again you claim that my conclusion based on a mountain of observation and evidence is merely an assumption. That's a piss-poor attempt at dismissal.

christians.

BTW, TMO had a church in MO for many years. You ought to check it out.

Dismissed.

I'm happy to wait for confirmation, assuming we ever get any. However, judging by the amazing statistics in the region I have "faith" in that confirmation.

The people who did this are obviously hateful bigots. That is something about which we probably agree.

Why did you feel the need to make this about christians? Why the need to make it divisive?

taking everything back to square one, as if nothing has ever been said, discovered or decided before the current moment.

"hateful bigotry" can never be motivated by someone's religion, or that, when it is, the motivation should just be ignored.

Yeah, I can see people reading Dawkins and getting into such a frenzy that they rip of a Muslim woman's head covering.

It must get tiring carrying around that big bat looking for something to hit all the time.

(to your utter astonishment), will you stick to your label of "assholes" to refer to them, even if they were motivated to do what they did by their deeply held religious beliefs? Or will you only be calling them "assholes" if they are Jews or Hindus or atheists?

Face it, you are as sure as the rest of us that the people who harassed her are Christians. You're just hoping fervently that no one will come up with any explicit evidence and make your disingenuous denial impossible.

If she has a complaint against individual employees she can sue them under a different legal theory.

So if these people were hostile toward her because of their religion, the legal theory makes that not so for the purpose of Internet discussion?

Whatever point you want to make has an existence all its own, prior to, during, and doubtlessly after the article. It exists entirely outside the time and place of the article. One might almost call it eternal.

When did I miss that memo? Who made you the arbiter of what can be discussed? Certainly you don't want to be held to that standard since I'm pretty sure you go outside the purview of the articles linked at times.

If the point is just the legal theory, then there should really be no discussion on here except for those that are attorneys and I would probably want some proof they are before they have that discussion.

FWIW, those who directly did this should receive consequences.

The word "assume" would be the key there.

I mean inappropriate sure, the boss needs to be fired (as he no doubt was), but if this is the largest jury verdict for workplace discrimination in Missouri history that means she's getting a lot more than employees who were actually abused and sexually harassed, which is pretty wrong.

The snatching of the headscarf was but one example of said harassment. The article was pretty clear about that from the very first sentence. Please don't pretend it was just one incident.

It's probably a lot harder for someone who's been sexually harassed to make such a convincing case to the jury, because sexual harassment isn't much done in front of a bunch of witnesses anymore. These days, at least in some parts of the country, it's much more socially acceptable to persecute certain religious minorities than it is to sexually harass employees.