Moral Uprightness

Moral Uprightness

There was a time when certain behaviors were so outside of the realm of acceptable norms that no matter how well you did your job--how calmly and privately you lived your alternative lifestyle--it didn't matter: you were considered morally depraved. Professor Volokh points to a modern equivalent:

1. In 2001, Kevin Allen Ake was living at a YMCA in Illinois, apparently "so that he could assist an elderly member of his church who lived there." Several months after moving in, he was evicted, in his view because of his "efforts to begin a bible study program at the YMCA." As a result, he left a bunch of messages on the voice-mail of the YMCA's executive director, who was a lesbian; he denies that the messages contained explicit threats, but says he "basically shared what the Bible talked about was -- with that kind of unnatural lifestyle -- about lesbians and homosexuality."

Ake was then prosecuted and convicted for telephone harassment, which covers telephone calls made "with intent to abuse, threaten or harass." Two newspaper accounts reported that he was found guilty of leaving threatening messages, but nothing in the Illinois indictment, or in the Pennsylvania opinions that I read, makes it clear -- it seems possible that the finding was simply that he made the calls with the intent to "abuse ... or harass" rather than with the intent to threaten.

...

Ake is an accountant, and in 2007 he applied to reactivate his Pennsylvania CPA license. He had it reactivated despite his felony conviction, but then the State Board of Accountancy moved to revoke the license because of that conviction. And the Board did revoke the license -- not just because of the conviction itself (which wouldn't automatically disqualify him, especially since the conviction didn't involve the sort of financial misconduct that most directly bears on fitness to be an accountant), but because of his continuing hostility to homosexuals and his perception that he was victimized by homosexuals:

It turns out that the State Board of Accountancy argued that he shouldn't have a license because his homophobia had demonstrated that he lacked "unquestioned moral character." Now, the courts overturned this--but barely.

What just amazes me are the comments arguing that sure, the government should impose "moral uprightness" requirements for licensing, and that anyone who doesn't approve of homosexuality is obviously not morally upright. As recently as 1960--or even 1970--this same argument was used to refuse government jobs to homosexuals. But now that homosexuals are back on top--well, moral uprightness has been turned upside down.

Now, it's true that Ake was convicted of a felony--but it wasn't that many years ago that homosexuals complained that Texas's law prohibiting homosexuality prevented homosexuals from being police officers, because they were intrinsically breaking the law.