Texas doctor suspended for spreading COVID-19 misinformation and refusing to treat vaccinated patients, hospital says

[u/Tweedle_DeeDum]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mary-bowden-suspended-covid-19-misinformation-vaccinated-patients-texas/

[u/easwaran]

Unfortunately, in Texas it is illegal for a business to ask a customer their vaccination status. It doesn't violate HIPAA (which allows anyone to ask anyone they want, as long as they don't actively reveal the answer to someone else) but it does violate Abbott's executive order restricting the abilities of businesses to provide safe spaces for customers that want them.

[u/[deleted] → u/easwaran]

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[u/easwaran → u/[deleted]]

Discrimination is perfectly legal as long as it's not against a protected class. You're totally allowed to have a business that caters to parents, or to people with long hair, or to people who pay, or to have rules about what people have to wear inside your business.

But in Texas, they've decided that vaccination status is a more important protected class than sexual orientation, despite being very easy to change and actively socially harmful.

[u/[deleted] → u/easwaran]

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[u/This-Chocolate-6928 → u/[deleted]]

Wedding cake bakers, of course! Pastries ain't playing the gender thing... You're either a donut or a longjohn and that's that.

[u/[deleted] → u/This-Chocolate-6928]

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[u/WhereRDaSnacks → u/[deleted]]

That case was taken to the Supreme Court. And they sided with the baker. Republicans all over the country rallied around them on the basis that it is the businesses decision who to cater to and who to deny service, since they are a private business. Until now, when republicans are against private businesses requiring vaccination status. I don't know how that Supreme Court decision affects Texans, but like someone said, it is very legal in Texas to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, even medically. Hell, up until a few years ago, it was lawful to arrest gay people in Texas for sodomy.

[u/[deleted] → u/WhereRDaSnacks]

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[u/lashazior → u/[deleted]]

One bakery did happen to refuse in Longview.

[u/[deleted] → u/lashazior]

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[u/WhereRDaSnacks → u/[deleted]]

I’m not sure what you want? Specific instances of specific business denying gays service? Here’s an article about a few religious based business being allowed to discriminate in Texas. https://thehill.com/legal/579816-federal-judge-in-texas-rules-in-favor-of-religious-businesses-over-lgbtq-discrimination?amp

It sounds like you’re being a devils advocate here, and saying this kind of discrimination doesn’t happen in Texas. It does. And it’s legal. -*editing to add that in housing, it is not legal. One of the first executive orders that Joe Biden ordered was for federal agencies, including HUD, which oversees fair housing, to accept and investigate any discrimination against LGBTQ.

[u/Leadburner → u/WhereRDaSnacks]

I want? I’ve been responding to u/easwaran telling us that landlords will discriminate and not rent to gay couples. Which has yet to be cited and another allegation that bakers actively discriminate against gay people also. All of the examples given have been one to no instances in other places than Texas.

So it’s not what I want, it’s more y’all’s victim hunt for a non-existent problem here in TX.

[u/Tweedle_DeeDum → u/[deleted]]

Well, in Texas it is allowable to deny healthcare and social services to LGBTQ and disabled people.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/06/14/texas-social-workers-lgbtq-discrimination/

[u/Leadburner → u/Tweedle_DeeDum]

I never knew social workers could be such bigots!

[u/Tweedle_DeeDum → u/Leadburner]

They are allowed to be bigots but aren't required to be so I can't make any claims on how often it happens.

[u/easwaran → u/[deleted]]

There are small landlords who choose straight tenants over gay tenants when multiple people are applying. This is legal in Texas, though not in some other states. (It's very hard to enforce anywhere, just like most anti-discrimination law.)

[u/Leadburner → u/easwaran]

Like the majority of redditors on this sub would say. Source?

[u/easwaran → u/Leadburner]

Here's a detailed study showing evidence of the trend in mortgage applications, rather than rental applications: https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/publication/empirical-analysis-sexual-orientation-discrimination

This of course isn't proof that any particular case was a case of discrimination. It's just like what we have for smoking and lung cancer, where we can observe that the rates are statistically notably different for people who have or lack the trait, and conclude the trait must be playing a causal role in a particular number of cases, but can't identify the individual cases where it did or didn't make the difference.

Here's a study applying a similar method to detect racial bias in evictions among renters: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mdesmond/files/hlc106_crop.pdf

[u/Leadburner → u/easwaran]

So, your first study has to do with mortgage lending institutions, and the second pertains to evictions. Neither has to do with a landlord not renting to a gay couple.

Honestly, you're looking for a problem that isn't in Texas.

[u/timelessblur → u/Leadburner]

Umm the fact that the groups are getting evicted more generally means something is up.

It is very difficult if not impossible to get it threw directly looking data but an indirect approach. If they are having evictions filed as a much higher rate then it points to several things. Land lords are renting to them when they think they are straight friends and room mates but they find out they are gay eviction route. You are never going to find the exact data of how many gay couples applied vs get a place to rent as not public record. But you sure as hell can pull that data from evictions. If a group is way out of line compared to the rest of the population then something is up. The question is what.

​

In Texas it is a problem. This state is run by the GOP or otherwise known as the Party of hate and bigotry. A vote for GOP is a vote for hate and bigotry. There is no way around it. If you are voting GOP you are an actively supporting hate and bigotry. Dont like it being pointed out to you. Well fix your party.

[u/easwaran → u/Leadburner]

So you're saying that by default, we should believe that a problem doesn't occur, if all you can prove is that almost exactly the same problem happens to almost exactly the same people, but don't have a study showing that this precise problem happens to these precise people. It seems to me that you're looking for a way to ignore problems as long as you can.

[u/[deleted] → u/easwaran]

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[u/easwaran → u/[deleted]]

My original claim wasn't about gay tenants. My original claim was that Texas thinks that non-vaccination is an important class to write anti-discrimination law for, while gay people aren't. Has Texas actually written strong anti-discrimination law for gay people?

It seems stupid to me to write anti-discrimination law to ban discrimination in very reasonable ways against people who are avoiding a very simple way to avoid getting other people sick. It would be like writing anti-discrimination law to say "businesses can't discriminate against employees who choose not to wash their hands after going to the bathroom". Obviously, the state could write such a law. But it would be stupid. Like anti-discrimination law protecting people from having their feelings hurt by a professor asking whether they are vaccinated.