Wednesday, May 07, 2014

The War Against Dr. Eric Walsh Continues

The Pasadena, California, Director of Public Health, Dr. Eric Walsh, is being persecuted for his personal beliefs to the point that it appears he will lose his position as the pound of flesh to shut up the "social justice" fanatics.'
Let's take a walk back to last week when I first wrote about the assault on Dr. Walsh. Please make sure to read the links.
Understand that Dr. Walsh was asked to be the Pasadena City College commencement speaker as a second choice. The reason that he was second choice is because the original gentleman that was asked, Dustin Lance Black, a PCC alumnus, Academy Award winner and openly gay, was unceremoniously disinvited. I don't know if Mr. Black was going to speak about homosexuality primarily, but the college got the heebie jeebies due to the scandal involving former professor, Hugo Schwyzer. And it does not help that Mr. Black had some racy photos on the internets.
Enter Dr. Walsh.
He was invited in place of Mr. Black to deliver the commencement address.
But the "social justice" crowd, led by a group called Students For Social Justice, decided to find some dirt on Dr. Walsh.
And boy, did they.
As noted in the link above, this group found some sermons that Dr. Walsh had given as a part-time minister of the Altadena Seventh-day Adventist church. And at least one sermon was about the evils of homosexuality. Again, look at the link for more information.
And the "social justice" crowd whipped the Pasadena citizenry into self-righteous wanting to get rid of the guy. Not for anything work related, but what are his religious beliefs.
Before I continue, I have written a couple of posts calling him out by his name not for his views on homosexuality and homosexuals, but his performance as Pasadena Director of Public Health and they are here and here.http://rightviewfromtheleftcoast.blogspot.com/2013/11/pasadenas-idiocy-is-my-churchs-gain.html See, I care about what he does in his role as the Director of Public Health. What he says in his pulpit has not proven to be relevant.
But now that the "social justice" crowd has forced the city to have a full blown investigation of Dr. Walsh, of course they will find something, anything, to use when they do the inevitable and fire Dr. Walsh.
And it looks like they may have a smoking gun according to the local fish wrap, the Pasadena Star-News.
Yes, Dr. Walsh failed to file a disclosure form for outside income sources to prevent any potential conflict of interest. It is known as California form 700. It is not a bad thing, but the city had to know that he did not file the form from the time that he was hired in 2010. And it took until 2014 to discover this anomaly that could have been corrected under regular circumstances? Understand that Dr. Walsh is on administrative leave while the city manager, Michael Beck, completes an "investigation" that is supposed to focus only on whether the multiple controversial sermons affected his role as Public Health Director. But if there was no "investigation", no one would apparently know about Dr. Walsh' failure to file the California 700 form. That is what I get out of it.
I do not doubt that this is what is going to be used to rid the city of this otherwise decent employee. In this Star-News article it notes that Dr. Walsh has pretty much been an advocate for aspects of his job that probably conflicts with his religious views. Here is a money paragraph:

In contrast to his statements at the pulpit, at public events Walsh has spoken about the negative effects of discrimination and has championed progressive causes at the Public Health Department, including opening the state’s first city-run dental clinic for HIV patients.

See, his religious views did not affect his job as Public Health Director.
But the "social justice" police will have none of that.
Of course the AIDS Healthcare members chimed in at the city council meeting condemning Dr. Walsh as a pastor and saying, even though the evidence proves otherwise, that he just can't provide services unique to AIDS and or HIV positive patients.
A group from New York City, the Catholic League, weighed in on the issue because at least in one sermon, Dr. Walsh suggested that there are differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants. The Seventh-day Adventists are Protestant Christians. It may shock Bill Donohue that some Protestants still hold negative views about the Roman Catholic church, but there are. And again, I do not see any evidence that Dr. Walsh intentionally sought out Roman Catholics and openly or secretly discriminated against them due to them being Roman Catholic. But Mr. Donohue wants to discriminate as evidenced by this statement:

“The first I learned of Dr. Eric Walsh was last week when he was asked to give the commencement address at Pasadena City College. After reading some of his hateful, and astonishingly ignorant, statements on Catholicism, I wondered why anyone would invite him to speak anywhere, never mind a college. Dr. Walsh is not fit to be the head of Pasadena’s Public Health Department. It is not worth attempting to rebut the man’s bigotry, so outlandish is it. Anyone whose judgment is that impaired has no legitimate role to play in public life.”

Yes, I do agree that they are probably ignorant statements about the Roman Catholic church. But to say that because of that a person has "no legitimate role to play in public life" is also very ignorant.
Say, Mr. Donohue, what do you think of you coreligionist, actor Mel Gibson and his anti-Protestant and anti-Semitic views? Views based on his being raised a very ardent Roman Catholic. Are you happy that he has been shunned by the entertainment industry? That he cannot work and provide for his family? Get back to me, Mr Donohue.
If that is not enough, it appears that his own denomination is turning on him.
Once again in the Star-News, they report that the Southern California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists are not only saying that Dr. Walsh does not represent the views of the church, but that he is not even ordained or hold ministerial credentials of the church. Yet the Conference pays Dr. Walsh's salary.
Can I get a Whiskey? Tango? Foxtrot? on that one?!
Betty Cooney is a spokesman for the Conference and wrote this statement to the Star-News:

“He does not hold ministerial credentials from the Adventist Church, does not speak on behalf of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, and as far as we know, does not represent his views as anything other than his own.”

Maybe not completely accurate. For you see, the SDA church is pretty clear about homosexuality according to their own 28 Fundamental Beliefs. It does not explicitly come out against homosexuality in general, but it is pretty clear that marriage only is the way to have sexual relations. And in this from Wikipedia, the fount of all information, they state that the church does in fact have a very strong stand against homosexuality. And yep, they do refer to the Roman Catholic church as The Great Whore of Babylon. So me thinks that Miss Cooney needs to take a primer on her denomination's basic beliefs.
So yes, it appears that through no fault of his own, Dr. Walsh was asked to be a replacement speaker at the PCC commencement as a second choice. And because the first choice was not properly vetted by the powers that be in PCC, Dr. Walsh has been the victim of "social justice".
It does not matter that there is no, I mean no evidence, that Dr. Walsh let his clearly very traditional if not unusual Christian beliefs affect his job as the Pasadena Director of Public Health.
A question I have is this.
What if PCC had invited Dr. Walsh in the first place, would there have been such a hue and cry from the "social justice" crowd? The Roman Catholics? Gay rights activists?
I think not.
But don't worry.
In the name of "social justice" a man that appeared to meet job requirements at the time of hire in 2010 and had no complaints about his job performance in any way will be ousted because of some people that needed a pound of flesh. The "social justice" crowd.






1 comment:

Our Sword said...

I applaud your seemingly fair and unbiased assessment of the situation and parties involved, despite disagreeing with Eric Walsh. :-)