During the Obama administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) did nice things like fight in court for the notion that yes, Title IX prohibits gender discrimination, therefore it prohibits discrimination against transgender people, hello, "gender" is right there in the word, you dipwads. They fought for the notion that discrimination against LGBT people was, again, gender discrimination. The Supreme Court (with NEIL GORSUCH!) ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits workplace discrimination, but in so many ways, the Trump adminstration has stomped on the rights of LGBTQ people across America, often in the name of RELIGIOUS FREEEEEEEEDOM!
Well, they're at it again. And this time, they're doing it dumber than ever.
Trump's EEOC has sued Kroger, you know, the place what sells the strawberries and the Ding Dongs, for violating the RELIGIOUS FREEEEEEDOM of two old dumbass women who worked there in Conway, Arkansas. The case was filed in the Eastern District of Arkansas.
Kroger, one of the country's largest supermarket chains, is being sued in federal court after two former employees claimed they were wrongfully terminated for refusing to wear an apron with a rainbow symbol.
The ex-employees, who identify as Christian, cited religious objections in their refusal to wear what they believed was an "endorsement of the LGBTQ community," according to the lawsuit.
You ready for the punchline?
No, you wait.
OK, so Brenda Lawson and Trudy Rickerd, who were 72 and 57 respectively when Kroger fired them, are the plaintiffs here. And they worked at the Kroger, slinging strawberries and Ding Dongs. And they were fired because they were supposed to wear these doohickeys on their aprons, and they would not wear them because they were pretty sure Jesus would roast them on a spit in hell for all eternity if they did, as a symbol of His true and abiding love.
It was a gay symbol, or so they said. Was it two men doing buttfucks on Fire Island while watching "Golden Girls"? No, that's what they wear at Publix. (LIES, WONKETTE LIES.)
It was a rainbow, they said.
You ready for the punchline?
No, you wait.
They wanted to just cover up the gay symbol, we guess to hide it from Christ, who we never took for being so easily fooled. Kroger said NO, YOU PUT THE BIG DILDO ON YOUR APRON AND GO KROGER-ING! Except it wasn't a dildo, it was a rainbow, they said.
The lawsuit states that both women "believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible" and "hold a sincerely held religious belief that homosexuality is a sin." Lawson and Rickerd both, it continued, each "believed wearing the logo showed her advocacy of the [LGBTQ] community, which she could not do."
You're gonna wanna remember the thing about the "literal interpretation of the Bible" when we tell you the punchline in a minute.
NBC News asked Kroger if it was forcing these ladies to wear the official symbol of gay upon their bosoms, and Kroger would not comment, on account of the ongoing lawsuit, in which the women are asking for all kinds of GoFundMe-style bullshit from Kroger, owing to their "emotional pain and suffering, humiliation, inconvenience, and loss of enjoyment of life."
Well, if they're not feeling "humiliation" yet, they should be, and so should the Trump EEOC. Internet sleuths did some sleuthing to see what kinda ghastly "RuPaul's Drag Race" aprons they're makin' the Arkansas ladies wear upon their bosoms at the Kroger in Conway, and they discovered ... this:
Look, here it is on some Kroger employees!
Kroger via PR Newswire
That, children, is not a rainbow, neither the kind what God made after He had a holy tantrum and killed everything on earth with a flood, nor the kind He makes in the sky whenever two men or two women who love each other very much decide to bang the spitfire out of each other.
That is a heart with three outer layers, in the primary colors of yellow, blue, and red.
For any Arkansas readers (and we are from there, so fuck off), let's review:
A rainbow is the thing with seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, which you can remember with the helpful acronym ROY G. BIV.
The longest-running gay rainbow symbol was only six colors, because fuck indigo. (The original had hot pink in it, according to Wikipedia, which is a free website available to the plaintiffs in this lawsuit and the Trump EEOC.) There are other versions of the LGBTQ+ rainbow flag, newer, more inclusive versions, what have black and brown and light blue and pink, recognizing the racial diversity of the community, and also transgender people.
There is no version of the gay rainbow symbol or flag what is red, yellow and blue and shaped like a heart.
As it turns out — AS IT TURNS OUT! — that symbol is for what appears to be some kind of corporate bullshit Kroger campaign about "purpose and promise," regarding how employees serve their customers or something. We found this out from Google, which is also a free website available to the plaintiffs and to the Trump EEOC:
At Kroger, Our Purpose is to Feed the Human Spirit™. We do that through Our Promise to be friendly and caring, provide everything fresh, to uplift every way, and improve every day.
Look, pictures!
But sure, y'all. Keep fightin' your fight for "religious freedom."
You don't look like hateful dumbfucks or anything. Surely not. Nope!
[NBC News]
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