crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters

One of the most effective tactics of the religious right is to truncate an incident to claim that lgbts are violent and intolerant or that Christians are in danger of losing their rights if pro-lgbt legislation passes.

We've seen it in the case the group Repent America who was arrested at a Pride festival after they wouldn't comply with police. Religious right grous made it seem that they were unfairly arrested.

We've seen it in the case of talking head Matt Barber who claimed that he was fired from AllState Insurance for righting an anti-gay piece "on his own time." Of course Barber and everyone else who pushed this narrative conviently left out that he still used company equipment to write the piece and identified himself as an employee of AllState Insurance in short biography of the piece.

Now from Massachusetts comes a new phony narrative just in time for the ENDA hearings courtesy of the anti-gay hate group Mass Resistance:

A Massachusetts man was fired from a national retail corporation because of his traditional beliefs on same-sex marriage. Peter Vadala was formally dismissed from his job as second deputy manager of the Brookstone store at Boston’s Logan Airport on August 12, 2009, after a supervisor reported him to Human Resources regarding an incident two days earlier.

. . .As Peter described the incident, he came to work on August 10 and began his day normally. A female manager from another store was in the store and began talking to Peter about her upcoming marriage. When Peter asked “where is he taking you for the honeymoon,” she corrected him and said she was not getting married to "he" but to another woman.

Peter did not immediately react, but when the manager sensed Peter’s discomfort with the subject of same-sex “marriage”, the woman apparently continued bringing it up to Peter throughout the day, reiterating that she was getting married to another woman. Finally, after the fourth or fifth time she brought it up, Peter remarked that his Christian beliefs did not accept same-sex marriage. At that point the woman became very angry and bluntly told Peter that he needed to “get over it” and said that she would be immediately contacting the Human Resources department.

A few hours later Peter was notified by a Human Resources representative that he was suspended from work without pay, effective immediately. Two days later, on August 12, after some further interaction with the Human Resources department, he was formally notified that he was terminated from the company.

Never mind that the story is one-sided, in that we don't know the incident from the perspective of the female employee or the store, because it is now being used to galvanize the other side. The narrative on a few sites is that "Peter Vadala was fired for saying that homosexuality is a sin."

However, no matter how clean he can make himself out, Vadala, I think, hangs himself with his own words in the video he helped to create about the incident:

Like I said, the entire story has yet to be told. It's only Vadala's version that is making the rounds. But even then, I don't think he has a case. He didn't simply talk about his Christian beliefs. He made a very rude comment to the woman about her life.

While Vadala has a right to his personal belief about homosexuality, there is nothing wrong with the woman talking about her upcoming marriage. I would be excited if I had her luck.

Notice how he tries to make it seem that the employee was wrong because she had the nerve to talk about her impending nuptials four times.

It's obvious that no one was trying to force Vadala into a corner and no one was trying to use the woman's marriage in an attempt to belittle him or his beliefs.

It comes down to this fact - Peter Vadala thought that his negative beliefs of homosexuality should be given special considerations; that the lesbian employee had to observe special rules regarding her wedding (a perfectly legal event in the state of Massachusetts by the way) that dictated that she kept quiet, that she abided by some ridiculous idea that what she was doing was wrong and that she needed to be ashamed.

What if it had been an interracial marriage instead of an lgbt marriage? Should it have to make a difference?

And while the other side is spinning this thing to make Vadala sound like a victim, we need to ask ourselves something.

If lgbts are supposed to abide by different rules when talking about our weddings, commitment ceremonies, etc. then what's next?

Can we put pictures on our desks of our partners and families without fear of verbal reprisal? Or how about inviting our partners and families at company events?

Bottom line: Vidala is no martyr, he is simply a man who discovered the hard way that he needed to respect lgbts in the work place.

And true to form, Mass Resistance is exploiting this case just as it did the David Parker case. That was the incident in which a man, David Parker, claimed that he was arrested for "trying to keep his son from being taught about homosexuality."

But it came down to the simple fact that Parker didn't want the school to acknowledge the existence of lgbt parents.

So now in this case, Vadala doesn't want to acknowledge the existence of happy, marriage-oriented lgbt employees.

Bascially it's all about putting us in a psychological closet.

Despite the narrative going around crowning Vadala as some sort of martyr, the attempt to undermine lgbt normalcy and happiness is the real crime here.