A Tiny Victory for Free Expression: Brothers Booted by HGTV for Expressing Adherence to Forbidden Bible Permitted To Keep Their Relationship With Their Banker, At Least

Well, in this new age of darkness, that is something. Not much, but something.

The Bentham Brothers' bank, Sun Trust, had decided to end their association with them due to their Forbidden Words about homosexuality. Given that they're businessmen, that's a big thing.

Or I assume this is a big thing. Frankly I don't understand what SunTrust did.

That's people pressuring a bank into basically saying that people don't even have the right to pursue an honest trade if they commit a Speechcraft crime, and the bank agreeing.

But Sun Trust has reversed that decision.

The beginning of this story is so convoluted I can't follow it -- and that convolution probably owes to Sun Trust deliberately convoluting the story of whose decision this was -- but they now say this:

“While we do not publicly comment on specific vendor relationships, we don’t make choices on suppliers nor base business decisions on political factors, nor do we direct our third party vendors to do so.”

“SunTrust supports the rights of all Americans to fully exercise their freedoms granted under the Constitution, including those with respect to free speech and freedom of religion.”

There are conservatives who continue to take the corporatist position that "If a business does it, it's okay."

I'm constantly seeing conservative say idiotic things like "Well, the bank/corporation/NFL/NBA had the right to fire/fine/assign to reeducation camp a person deemed to have committed Speechcraft, so there's no First Amendment implications."

And I'll continue to ask these lunatics: And in what other sphere of human activity to we ever stop the analysis at whether or not an organization or individual has the naked right to do something, without asking further if it is ethical or right-minded to do that thing?

Never, that's when.

Except in the case of corporations canning conservatives for speaking Forbidden Thoughts.

Then thousands of conservatives immediately just say, "Well, the business had to protect itself, didn't it?"

This is insane.

Have any of these Corporate-Rights-Must-Be-Defended-At-All-Costs people sort of noted that corporations are declaring open season on conservative political thought and no other?

I can only guess at the rationale for this: Some people are trying to remain consistent with their past claims that corporations were right to fire people for expressing forbidden progressive thoughts. This attempt at consistency requires them, they think, to bless each fresh corporate purge of a conservative speaker.

Consistency is good. However, if consistency is to be achieved, how about finding that consistency on the other side of the issue?

That is, instead of trying to be consistent by declaring that people can and should be fired for saying virtually anything conservative at all, how about attempting the opposite consistency of declaring that people generally should not be fired for their personal political beliefs?

I just find this insane. Not a week goes by without another business being pressurized by the hard left to fire a conservative, and not a week goes by without a business giving in to the demands of the mob for This Week's Purge.

If people wish to remain consistent, how about just saying "Maybe I was wrong to support this previously, but will support this no longer"?

I just don't get it. It now happens literally every single week, and conservative thought is always the target, and yet conservatives continue to hew to the corporatist line that Whatever's Good For Business Is Good For America.

Anon Y. Mouse Explains What Happens? Here's his explanation:

Ace, I think you have this a bit wrong. It is not that the bank closed the brothers' bank account. Rather, it is the properties that the bank had listed for sale with the brothers. The vendor they used to make the listings pulled all those listings from the brothers real estate business. The vendor told the brothers that the did so because the bank told them to. Now the bank reversed the decision, but placed the blame with the vendor.

Okay don't understand that either.

posted by Ace at 06:48 PM

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