There are two points, a main one and a side one:
Telling people that they can’t put up personal religious holiday displays is stupidly PC. The example was cited to show that it does indeed happen.
An additional inanity is that in the given example a distinction is made between holiday trees and mistletoe. Not only is the over-arching attempt at limiting religious displays PC, this particular example is unfathomably arbitrary.
At the risk of muddying the waters even more I have a follow-up response:
I wonder if this is even legal. How is limiting personal holiday displays different from denying someone a job for wearing a hajib?
“Personal holiday displays,” in this case, really means “displays put up on employer property in a way that may suggest official endorsement of the display.” Of course that’s entirely different from a person wearing a personal religious symbol–are you not clear how it’s different?
I truly find it remarkable that you think it’s PC for an employer to limit how an employee decorates business spaces. How far do you take this? If a McDonald’s employer put “Accept Christ into your heart this Christmas” on the marquee, and her manager made her take it down, would you consider that to be too PC? Where do you draw that line, and on what grounds?
I notice that you’ve attempted to move this thread from what college kids can do on campuses to what employers require of their employees. Care to explain why you’re attempting to avoid the original discussion…you know, the “Let’s talk about Political Correctness on American college campuses” one?
Well, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt with your “…Christianity shouldn’t reign supreme”. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you were using a bit of hyperbole and not erecting and slain a Titan of a straw man in one felled swoop. So, why do you mean by that statement as it pertains to the discussion about PC idiots on college campuses?
I tend to agree - this sort of thing has been going on since forever (or at least, for a very long time 
). It was going on when I went to university in the late '80s, for sure.
New Model Army put the blame on the limp response of the oldsters to student challenges in its song “A Liberal Education”:
This was written in 1981 ... still just as relevant today.As long as everyone agrees that the mistletoe example is more strongly about employers telling employees what to do and not about what college kids are allowed to do (if you’re confused on that point, read the original guidelines and their explanations of what’s allowed by campus groups and in private parties unaffiliated with the university), I’m glad to be done with this; we’ll all just agree that the mistletoe thing is a nonexample of political correctness and move on. Agreed?
As for your other point about Christianity, if you want any sort of response from me you’ll need to clarify what you’re saying.
I’m trying to debate in good faith here and we’re just going to have to disagree on what the cite says. To me they first say that religious decorations are ok in private areas (their emphasis) and not in public areas. I’m generally fine with that.
They then go on and ask members to “be respectful” of religious diversity and are “encouraged to use an inclusive” display. I take this to be their suggestion on what is (and isn’t) inclusive in private displays. (Otherwise why use “encourage”? They’ve already said that religious displays are outright banned in public areas. They also mention combining religious symbols in a single display.) If that’s true then that is overly PC.
I’m done parsing PC missives. If you want to continue to disagree that’s fine.
It’s the employer’s decision. Just like it’s the employer’s decision to ban personal crosses, turbans, or beanies.
Anyone who bans beanies will have to deal with Cecil.
Did you know that “political correctness” is now a microagression?
Fucking idiots.
The only really alarming behavior I’ve seen from college kids lately is blacks trying ban whites from campus “spaces” / meetings. Even those incidents seem to be few and far between.
Yes, I see tidbits of what I’d call “PC idiocy”, but it doesn’t strike me as a big concern most of the time.
Shouldn’t be a surprise since the goal is to control thought through the tactic of controlling language.
John Mace, you’ve nailed it. I’m an agnostic drifting in the atheist direction and I have absolutely no problem with traditional Christmas (except for the turkey part - I would prefer pizza) and why should I? The PC stuff is absurd IMO. Is it really that difficult to see something (eg a creche) and ignore it. Offense by something like that is a conscience decision.
And on a related note, in another PC-related discussion, I mentioned an example from the University of Ottawa, in which a yoga instructor, who offered free yoga lessons, had to stop because she was accused of “cultural appropriation” because she wasn’t Indian.
Cite and link below:
I like to think of political correctness as the PC term for realism-challenged.
So basically you have to be an art major with a cross stuck in urine or a big fan of jagermeister to indulge in Christmas.
Since, according to the guidelines, you’re welcome to hold a midnight mass in our dorm room, or to do a traditional Christmas pageant in the theater as long as you’ve followed procedure for reserving space, that’s basically not what you have to do.
Except in one case it’s legally the employer’s decision, and in the other it’s not, because society is about balancing interests.
Except I was referring to decorations visible to others. But I suspect you knew that.
And nothing I said contradicts that. Students can, according to the guidelines, put religious displays in any space that they are allowed to put nonreligious displays, as long as they follow exactly the same guidelines for putting up nonreligious displays.
I harbor no suspicions whatsoever about what you knew, though :).
You know, I’ve seen so much liberal hypocrisy in my day that I would have thought that nothing could surprise me any more. But a major university hiring an outspoken anti-semite to work for the “Inclusive Excellence Center” and run the campaign against “microagressions”? That takes even me my surprise.
On the other hand, I do like the guy’s suggestion that we practice gender-neutral pronouns by talking to flowers. It shows a certain creative flair.
