“When Payne-Elliott sued the school for letting him go, he said he hoped it would “put a stop to the targeting of LGBTQ employees and their families.” That’s a convenient argument, but a phony one.”
I found this to be such an odd comment by Payne-Elliot. Presumably the school didn’t recruit him and hire him under false pretenses. Other articles that I have read indicated that this teacher signed a statement of faith and conduct as a condition of his employment. If anything, it appears that he signed this contract in bad faith, targeting the school for its pre-existing policy. It is bewildering to me that people these days join organizations with the intent to fundamentally coerce the organization to accept their personal viewpoints rather than to adapt to the viewpoints of the organizations they join or join organizations which share the same values that they do on an individual level. The nature of free association is that both parties freely engage in a mutually beneficial relationship. When one party enters into the relationship under false pretenses, they should not be subject to government protection. All this does is encourages the formation of bad faith arrangements that one side can walk out on with impunity. This is particularly true for organizations that are explicitly religious and subject to the protections of the First Amendment.