I have gotten some funny e-mails on political correctness in response to my article yesterday about the religious-discrimination case that was argued at the Fifth Circuit, Morgan v. Swanson. Here is just one of them:
This afternoon, my husband (who is employed by a federal agency) noticed a number of his colleagues eating cupcakes at the office. He asked one of the secretaries where folks had gotten them so that he might partake as well. The secretary looked at him like she had been caught red-handed and in hushed tones, said, “Follow me.” She led my husband to an office whose door was closed. In that office, on the desk, sat a tray of left-over cupcakes from the Communion party of one of his other coworker’s kids. The cupcakes were decorated with small crosses.
The secretary looked at my husband and said, “I’m sure you can understand why we put them in here instead of in the kitchen. We didn’t want to offend anybody.” My husband pointed out to the secretary the inanity of hiding the cupcakes because they had crosses, but his comments basically went in one ear and out the next.
When he got back to his desk, he realized that he had been sent an email announcing the location of the cupcakes, though that email left certain employees off the distribution list — specifically, a Muslim and a Jewish colleague of his. No Jesus cupcakes for them!
So, in an effort not to “offend” anyone’s religious sensibilities, these employees were left out of the serving of a nice dessert at the office. As Corner regular Peter Kirsanow (with whom I shared this e-mail) said, don’t you have to question the sanity of someone who would be offended by a cross topping on a cupcake?
Political correctness gone amuck — unfortunately no surprise in a federal government agency. Fortunately, as Peter Kirsanow also said, anyone who would challenge such a cupcake topping on First Amendment grounds is too tightly-wound to have standing (See Abbott v. Costello, 231 F.4th 684 (2015)).