An Australian party company is under fire after its owner, Madlin Sims, sacked one of her employees over his opposition to Australia’s upcoming same-sex marriage referendum.
Sims posted on Facebook Monday that she’d fired one of her contractors after she’d expressed a contrary view to her own, about legalizing same sex marriage. Likening her political position to “racism,” and calling his argument “hate speech,” Sims claims she booted the employee on the spot because “it’s not okay to be homophobic.”
According to a follow up interview Sims gave to News.com.au, the firing stemmed from a Facebook post the employee had put up, publicising her view that the same sex marriage referendum would turn problematic. Sims and her brother apparently approached the employee and asked her to take the post down. When she refused, they booted her.
“Today I fired a staff member who made it public knowledge that they feel ‘it’s okay to vote no.’ Advertising your desire to vote no for SSM is, in my eyes, hate speech,” Sims posted. “Voting no is homophobic. Advertising your homophobia is hate speech. As a business owner I can’t have somebody who publicly represents my business posting hate speech online.
“It’s not okay to vote no. It’s not okay to be homophobic,” she went on. “This isn’t a matter of opinion or even religion. It’s a matter of the love and livelihood of real human beings. Freedom of speech is there for a reason and so are consequences. Vote against homophobia. Vote for equality. Vote yes.”
After making the initial post – and after the post went viral and sparked fierce online debate – Sims returned to “clarify” her remarks and ended up making her situation worse, claiming that she’d known for some time about her employee’s contrary views, and simply could no longer tolerate his intolerance.
“FYI this wasn’t a “you’re voting no, you’re fired” situation. There were prior conversations had. As a business that works with children of all kinds, we have a responsibility to working with vulnerable people and having someone who is out & proud about their beliefs (of which are statistically proven to have horrible effects on young members of the gay community) is a risk for the wellbeing of the children we work with,” she updated.
Sims told a newspaper in Australia that she’s received a “torrent” of abuse for her actions, but defended firing her contractor, saying it was all done in a polite and respectful manner (except, of course, the whole putting-it-on-Facebook part).
Sims also claims that she didn’t fire the employee because of her views on same sex marriage, but because the employee refused to keep those views under wraps. You can believe what you want, apparently, but you aren’t allowed to be public with your viewpoint around Ms. Sims if you want to keep your job.
Its not clear, at the moment, whether the fired employee has a case against Ms. Sims for discrimination.
Australia isn’t due to vote on whether to legalize same sex marriage until later this year. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has mailed out a postal survey to Australian citizens to guage their support for the measure, and those results won’t be available until November 15. On the whole, Australians appear to be split on the issue, with support for same sex marriage actually declining by about five points in recent weeks.
