Home Page for the Delaware Office of Human Relations
Time for some straight talking and clear thinking, folks. Unless you’ve had your head in the sand for a decade or more, you’ll know that any type of ‘Human Rights’ or ‘Race Relations’ or ‘Equality’ commission or board or other quango group is appallingly biased and myopically focused not on free, full, and fair rights for all, but instead obsessed with finding often imaginary slights and affronts that may possibly relate to certain minority pressure groups, and blowing these up into major deals.
Meanwhile, those of us who form what is rapidly becoming an even more disadvantaged minority group – middle aged, middle class, European-Americans (hey – how come every other group has a double-barreled description of their ethnicity except us – why can’t we be proud European-Americans?) get to suffer the reverse-discrimination forced on us by these non-elected bodies (usually peopled by non European-Americans, and definitely peopled only by those with political opinions far left of center).
It is our fault, we are told, that almost every other group in the country doesn’t work as hard as us, isn’t as gainfully employed as us, doesn’t study as conscientiously, isn’t as healthy, and gets in more trouble with the law (notable exception to this – Asian-Americans).
Unfortunately, we can’t always just laugh and ignore their ridiculous posturing and victim-seeking mentalities. Sometimes they have enforcement type authority and the ability to fine people and companies who run a-foul of their nonsense.
And so it was in Delaware, where the state Human Relations Commission fined a movie theater $80,000 for violating the state Equal Accommodations Law.
You need to read this article to see what the imaginary offense was, how it got to be presented to the Human Rights Commission, and what happened when the theater appealed to the state Supreme Court.
The facts are stark, and to make sure you don’t miss them, what happened was the director of the state’s Office of Human Relations was in a movie audience and felt slighted by a request for everyone to turn off their cell phones. So, without telling any other patrons who she was – indeed, she vaguely pretended to be either a generic lawyer or someone who worked for a lawyer – she rabble roused the other theater goers then arranged for her Office of Human Relations to get the other attendees to agree to file a complaint, together with her, to the Human Relations Commission.
Except that at the last minute she took her own name off the complaint, so as not to be ‘a distraction’ to the process, and tried to slip into invisibility in the background, making it seem as if this was a spontaneous group of people who acted independently with no encouragement or coordination by her and her office.
Judging by the Supreme Court’s verdict, the Human Rights Commission created a kangaroo court that – of course – found the theater guilty, without explaining how it could make such a finding in face of credible evidence to the contrary, and compounded its errors of fact finding with errors of application of the law. The Commission’s $80,000 fine was over-ruled by the Supreme Court.
But – and here’s the most important part of the whole story. Who is accountable for an action that should never have been presented, and a very wrongful decision that should never have been made? And who will pay the costs for the theater company in defending itself twice – first to the commission and secondly to the Supreme Court?
Yes, it’s great that – eventually – justice was served, but at what cost? There has been a huge consequence to the theater group, and for sure their legal costs will have matched or exceeded the $80,000 fine they were first stuck with, and they’ll have got plenty of bad publicity all the way through this three and a half year process.
The innocent – the theater – has been severely punished. The guilty – the woman director, her ‘Office of Human Relations’, and the Human Rights Commission, all walk away totally free of any censure or negative consequence.
Something’s awfully wrong here, folks.