Cancel Culture Claims Another Christian

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Posted on 10/31/2024 10:55:00 AM PDT by SJackson

28 years as a United Airlines employee; now his Catholic values got him fired.

When Kamala Harris told a couple of pro-life activists at a recent rally that they were at the wrong event, she was signaling to the approving crowd that she shared their open contempt for Christians and Christian values. Leftists hate Jews and Christians primarily because Judeo-Christian morality is the greatest obstacle to the communist Left’s cult of sexual libertinism and self-deification.

Another notable recent example came when the editor of the far-Left Mother Jones magazine complained that a flight attendant had shared a “Christian nationalist dog-whistle” by merely wishing the passengers a “blessed” night at the end of a flight. The editor even tried to pressure Alaska Airlines publicly to take action against that horrible bigot to ensure that no passenger would ever again be oppressed by the “dominant culture enforcing its norms.”

This is the sort of soft totalitarianism routinely directed at Christians by our cultural elites, who control the dominant culture and who have no reservations about enforcing their norms, such as kink-promoting “Pride” parades, transgender flags adorning classrooms, and pushing pornography in school libraries.

Another example, also involving an airline (a common flashpoint in the culture wars): a long-time United Airlines employee, Ruben D. Sanchez, Jr., was terminated recently after a self-identified transgender customer alleged that Sanchez, a devout Catholic, made bigoted remarks to a fellow flight attendant.

Full disclosure: Ruben has been a friend of mine for many years, and thus I can personally vouch for him as one of the most good-hearted, unbigoted people I know. He has friends from all political persuasions. He is a consummate professional in his long-standing career. He is gay. But none of who Ruben really is means anything to the Cancel Culture crowd; they simply wield their ruthless politics of personal destruction against anyone who doesn’t conform to Leftist orthodoxy, ruin that victim’s life, and move on to the next target. Ruben is a conservative patriot, and that is sufficient to mark him as human “garbage,” as deposed ex-President Joe Biden recently put it, by the new Red Guard of the Democrat Party.

I approached Ruben with some questions about his experience.

Mark Tapson: Ruben, can you give us a little background about who you are, what you do, and about your military service?

Ruben Sanchez: I graduated from the University of Southern California in 1994 and began working at United Airlines in January 1996. I traveled all over the world and felt like life couldn’t get any better. Then, [the terror attacks of] Sept. 11^th happened, and it occurred to me that I had a very nice life because I lived in America, and now my country needed healthy young men to fight for her. I joined the Air Force Reserves and shipped off to Basic Training at the age of 33. Since 2005, I’ve done both military reserve duty and flown for United. I’m now in my 19^th year with the military, and while I will qualify to retire in April 2025, I am being deployed at that time and I want to go, so I plan to stay in a little longer.

MT: So you worked for United for 28 years without incident. Presumably they had no issues with you or your performance, but then came an incident that turned everything upside down. Can you describe what happened?

RS: Yes, 28 years at United Airlines, and at the time of the incident I had no performance issues. On 30 May, 2023, a transgender passenger who describes himself on X [formerly Twitter] as a “deepthroat pro” and who had tweeted about the joys of anal double penetration, sent a tweet to United that he overheard me say “I hate all black people” and “I’m proudly anti-trans.”

This happened on a “redeye” flight from Los Angeles to Cleveland, so most everybody was asleep. I was having a conversation with my co-worker, the lead flight attendant. He told me that his father had just converted to Catholicism. As I am also Catholic, I told him how happy I was. As it was a day before PRIDE month started, I did say that PRIDE is not something Catholics should be affirming, celebrating, or participating in. Further, I said that the Church would never support the idea that men can give birth and women can have penises. When we deviate from the idea of God over Man, Man over Woman, Woman over Child, we shouldn’t be surprised when chaos results.

About the transgender thing, I brought up the book When Harry Became Sally by a Catholic scholar, Dr. Ryan T. Anderson. I said we need to treat transgenders with compassion and love as Jesus has taught us. Nothing hateful or disrespectful ever came out of either of our mouths.

MT: An investigator looked into this complaint by combing your social media posts going back nearly 15 years, looking for evidence of bigotry on your part. These are posts that had nothing to do with United or its customers or employees, correct? But the investigator decided your values didn’t align with the company you’d served for nearly three decades.

RS: Yes, the supervisor conducting the investigation told me that since the customer used X to complain about me, the supervisor told me that my entire X timeline from January 2010 was subject to scrutiny and fair game. He showed me some tweets he personally found offensive. One was a retweeted, unflattering photo of Michelle Obama I joked about. Another was a joke about Chris Christie’s weight. The first retweet was deemed racist, and the other he considered offensive and shaming to “passengers of size.” Neither had anything to do with the passenger’s original complaint.

When asked why I reposted certain things, I said I am a Roman Catholic and cannot support a lot of what I see in leftwing politics today, especially when it comes to family dynamics. Catholicism, more than any other Christian denomination, has been consistent in its teachings on gender roles, sexuality, and the sacraments. When I gave faith-based answers, the investigator treated me like I was ignoring his questions.

NONE of my supposedly “offensive” posts were made while I was on company time, using company equipment, or while in uniform on my days off. Further, as I was covered by a collective bargaining agreement, I am allowed to speak about working conditions with other colleagues at work. Discussing PRIDE events sanctioned by United is a protected workplace conversation.

There was one photo of me in uniform with a pilot buddy in uniform on my shoulders. It was a cute photo that I shared on many United employee sites, and it got so many likes it almost went viral. That photo is what the investigator claimed created a nexus between United and all my years on Twitter.

MT: So you were terminated, and then the union refused to defend you at an arbitration?

RS: During my investigation, I did have union representation. Once I was terminated, the union filed a grievance, and I was entitled to two appeals. Neither went my way, and the union decided they would NOT defend me at arbitration. To defend myself at arbitration would cost $15,000, and it all had to be paid in full by 11 October 2024, or my arbitration would be canceled and my grievance withdrawn.

Elon Musk had tweeted that he would pay the legal fees of anyone who has gotten in trouble at work for what they said on Twitter. I did all I could to get hold of him, but also felt I shouldn’t feel entitled to his generosity and help. This was my fight.

I never felt comfortable doing a GoFundMe page, but a friend convinced me and I’m forever grateful, because I raised $10K in about 48 hours, which was great, but it wasn’t enough by the deadline, so I am now terminated with cause.

MT: You mention on your GoFundMe page that you feel that God has a purpose for you in this personal trial. Can you talk about that?

RS: Yes. I was terminated for defending Catholic teachings that go against the Godless woke mob’s groupthink. I realized during these 16 months that this is a battle God has chosen for me, and yet, I didn’t think I was ready to fight it. I had asked so many people to pray for me and that I accept whatever God has for me, and if it isn’t what I want, I had asked that they pray that I be given the grace to accept it.

I should feel depressed, angry, and vengeful, but I feel none of those things anymore. I was at first, but the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to the many people that have stood firm in their convictions when it was potentially detrimental to their livelihoods. When I heard [pro football player] Harrison Butker’s commencement speech that attracted so many haters to him and his family, I didn’t feel alone anymore, and that is when I started holding my head high and welcomed all the adversity that this would bring me. I felt I was on the right path and that God would give me the grace to continue and persevere in my mission to clear my name and get justice.

I serve in the United States Armed Forces, currently with the 176^th Airlift Wing of the Alaska AIR National Guard in Thunder Bay, Ontario. I made an oath to defend the Constitution, and one of the rights that the Constitution protects is my right to live as a man of faith. People flee Communist regimes to come here to escape the kind of treatment that I received from both United Airlines and my union, the Association of Flight Attendants. Courage is contagious, so I want to express my sincere gratitude to God and to everyone I have met on this journey who has shown me so much love and support.

MT: What’s the best way for people to help you out, Ruben?

RS: The best way to help me is to make a donation to my GoFundMe page. I would really appreciate prayers, Mass intentions, etc. Prayer is so powerful, I couldn’t have come this far without an army of prayer warriors by my side. I have the best group of friends, and I know I’m doing the right thing!

1 posted on 10/31/2024 10:55:00 AM PDT by SJackson

To: dennisw; Cachelot; Nix 2; veronica; Catspaw; knighthawk; Alouette; Optimist; weikel; Lent; GregB; ..

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2 posted on 10/31/2024 10:56:09 AM PDT by SJackson (Lot of people put my grandpa through hell, and he’s still standing, Kai Trump)

To: SJackson

3 posted on 10/31/2024 11:03:18 AM PDT by mikelets456

To: SJackson

To: mikelets456

5 posted on 10/31/2024 11:13:17 AM PDT by lgjhn23 ("On the 8th day, Satan created the progressive liberal to destroy all the good that God created..." )

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