I have to admit that the case of Los Angeles County lifeguard captain Jeffrey Little has me scratching my head.
Little is the veteran lifeguard who last month filed a religious discrimination, harassment and retaliation lawsuit against the county Fire Department, which includes the lifeguards. Little alleges that he was forced to work under a rainbow-hued version of the Pride flag during June, which is celebrated as LGBTQ+ Pride month, in violation of his deeply held religious beliefs.
Little believes it is a violation of his civil rights to be required to raise the flag or supervise the people who raise it. He also sounds like she doesn't want to work on any beach where he waves the flag. The lawsuit is a bit confusing on those points.
Anyway, I believe him when he says he is sincerely offended by displays of queer and transgender pride. But I would also describe his position as intolerant, along the lines of those who invoke their Christian faith to explain why they oppose interracial marriage, for example. I am not a fan of people who use the Bible to deny the very humanity of others.
Little claims in his lawsuit that the Progress Pride flag in question symbolizes and promotes “a variety of controversial religious and moral views, including on the family, the nature of marriage, and human sexuality, including the promotion of certain sexual practices, and the identity, nature and purpose of the human person.”
sexual practices? I think you are reading a lot into a brightly colored fabric swatch.
Little also states that he opposes the flag because it has “appeared prominently during Pride parades around the world, including those in which adults wear little or no clothing in the presence of children.”
Excuse me, what does the Los Angeles lifeguard say?
Hasn't the good captain noticed how many people run almost naked on the beaches of Los Angeles on a normal sunny day? I mean, nowadays it would be hard to tell the difference between a bikini and dental floss. In fact, sometimes it's hard to tell who's wearing a thong and who's really naked.
But hey, as long as you're not asked your sexual orientation while you're stuck on a high tide, even lifeguards can be bigoted, at least in private.
However, imposing their religion on the rest of us is where I draw the line. Same-sex marriage was legalized in 2015. Gender is non-binary. Trans people exist and deserve respect. Flying the Pride flag is a symbolic way of saying, “You belong too.”
I think Little's bosses probably mishandled his complaints; They should have anticipated that his fights with him would lead to a juicy lawsuit like the one filed by lawyers working with the Thomas More Society, a conservative Catholic legal advocacy group.
This saga began in March 2023, when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to fly the Progress Pride flag at county facilities each June.
This particular flag is a variation of the Pride flag that debuted in San Francisco in 1978. The original flag, as the supervisors noted, “contained eight stripes, each a different color of the rainbow, plus Hot pink.” The colors represent sex, life, healing, sunlight, nature, magic and art, serenity and spirit.
Over the years, the design of the flag has evolved. The widely adopted iteration in question complements the original colors with black and brown chevron stripes (representing marginalized LGBTQ+ people of color and those who have died or are living with HIV/AIDS), as well as pink, blue and white (which incorporate the trans flag).
Interestingly, in at least part of the lawsuit, Little does not challenge the county's right to fly the flag, allowing “the government to convey its own messages.” However, he opposes being required to raise the flag himself.
At first, he says, the department allowed him to work on a beach where the Pride flag was not displayed. (Some lifeguard stations lacked the equipment to display the flag.) But he alleges that toward the end of last June, he came to work at Dockweiler State Beach and discovered that the Pride flag had been raised on two lifeguard towers and another building, which he claimed amounted to religious discrimination.
His first reaction, he says, was confusion, “since I was under the impression that I wouldn't have to deal with working in these conditions.” And then he lowered the flags.
That was nonsense. As you can imagine, this act of apparent insubordination was not well received by his bosses. He says his waiver was revoked to avoid beaches with Pride flags.
This was a classic power struggle. Little claims that the head of the lifeguard division, Fernando Boiteux, whom the lawsuit characterizes as much older than Little and “trained in martial arts,” physically and verbally intimidated him. “You have to stop doing what you're doing,” Little claims Boiteux told him. “You are an employee of Los Angeles County; That's all that matters. “Your religious beliefs don’t matter.”
I don't know if Boiteux actually said that (the Fire Department won't comment on the case), but, of course, religious beliefs. do affair. Even when they are outdated, wrong or intolerant.
If Little's account is correct, his superiors certainly could have been more tactful and less abrasive in their dealings with him. That could have saved them the ordeal of being sued in federal court at a time when our Supreme Court is enshrining religious intolerance into law.
It's a shame, but probably inevitable, that the Progress Pride flag has become a battleground in the culture war. And it's a shame Little didn't try a little harder to love her neighbor.
