* Since when did Black churches accept openly LGBT pastors? I blame it on the crossdressing Madea films.
* He acknowledged his actions, but did he actually apologize?
He sounds mentally unstable:
“For me, it was humiliating,” he said then, “because being a pastor who is also openly gay, I’ve had to deal with this in the past and literally the feeling that I had just resurfaced a bunch of painful memories of things that have happened to me.”
Apparently, self-inflicted fake accusations are humiliating and painful–because he’s had to deal with self-inflicted fake accusations, in the past.
* A fraud wrapped in a hoax inside a light crust of stupidity.
* Whole Foods probably didn’t want the stigma of prosecuting someone who was gay. The problem is, if scammers get caught and realize that all they have to do to avoid trouble is apologize, then they won’t quit. You need to start making examples out of these crooks and sticking them in jail to make them stop. People who have decided to scam don’t just do it once. If it pays off, they’ll do it again. A lot scammers try to do their work below the media radar so they don’t become notorious enough to be found out. They target small businesses instead of nationally known companies, and the lawsuit may not even make the local paper.
Do you know how many people run car accident insurance scams? Mountains of them.
* As to whether criminal charges are appropriate, it depends on whether the complaint was signed under penalty of perjury. Certainly not, however, because otherwise the People would prosecute.
In most jurisdictions this complaint constitutes instituting a (now admittedly) frivolous lawsuit, which is subject to monetary sanctions on motion by the defendant.
If Whole Foods has abandoned this remedy, there was no doubt a deal made not to pursue it in exchange for the “pastor’s” admission.
[Based on personal experience (including clinical experience), I think male homosexuals are prone to lie capriciously.]
* I have seen news reports where some women who have filed false rape reports have been charged for just that — filing a false report. This probably varies by jurisdiction, but I do not think there was any police involvement here.
Looks like straight up extortion to me, but I think Whole Foods vigorously defending itself by counter suing may sober up some of these morons. He was probably expecting them to roll over and offer him $$ just to go away. Kudos to WF.
* Gay man here; as part of the social compact for protecting gay people from targeted violence, I support punishing this hoaxer, possibly much more than he’d be punished for committing a hate crime.
The legal reasoning for creating the category of hate crimes is that the crime is intended to hurt or terrorize an entire community. Their target extends beyond the immediate victim, much as terrorism is felt to be worse than conventional crime. The same reasoning must apply to hate hoaxes, which damage the reputation of the community and the credibility of reports of actual hate crime. Some research on the extent of the community-reputation damage done by high-profile hoaxes would help in determining an appropriate punishment, but it doesn’t seem impossible that hoaxes could have a much worse effect than actual hate crimes. Perhaps the death penalty would be appropriate.
* The idea that a Whole Foods bakery in Austin, TX would be a hotbed of homophobia strained credulity to begin with. Imagine if it were a mom & pop bakery without surveillance cameras in, say, Dallas? They might have found it harder to fight a false claim like this.
* The Gay Black pastor broke one of The Ten Commandments, which is thou shall not bear false witness.
* Because he was making an accusation that likely cost WF hundreds of thousands (if not millions) in sales. If he had gotten away with his hoax, there’s little doubt that WF’s reputation would have been tarnished for years, again causing the loss of millions of dollars.
WF should be allowed to destroy this guy financially, including garnishing future wages because he nearly cost them millions. What’s the difference if the guy managed to destroy a million dollars worth of WF inventory? Nothing, except in that case he would go to prison. In this case, you can’t send him to prison so you should be able to bankrupt him.
That would send a clear message to other hoaxers.
Sicking evil lawyers on people works, just ask the ACLU.
* Perhaps iSteve may choose to comment on the latest in “misogyny”: an LA weather girl who was forced to put on a sweater, because she’s so darn cute. This, too, is being blamed on the patriarchy:
In reality, both of these cases are about women, and about women who are having trouble coping with other women who are better looking than they are, on the one hand, and women who aren’t even women but who want to pretend that they are.
I think we should support modern women to work it out, all by themselves.
Justice Kennedy’s future supreme court decision: “The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity by relieving their bladder and bowels in a place of their own choosing.”
* Mental illness in the African American community is something no one on the Left wants to talk about. To them it is a taboo subject just like Black crime.
* …the black community is also riddled with one man church operations that are basically scams. I suspect he’s one of them. He’s probably just starting out hence the hoax for attention.
