Some of these people make me sick. But a law’s been broken here. You do remember the law, don’t you?
The Federal Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits discrimination against otherwise qualified handicapped persons who are able to perform the duties required by their employment. Although the ruling did not address the specific issue of HIV and AIDS discrimination…
This is the essence of discrimination: formulating opinions about others not based on their individual merits, but rather on their membership in a group with assumed characteristics.
We’re standing here in Philadelphia, the, uh, city of brotherly love, the birthplace of freedom, where the, uh, founding fathers authored the Declaration of Independence, and I don’t recall that glorious document saying anything about all straight men are created equal. I believe it says all men are created equal.
Explain this to me like I’m a six year old, didn’t you have an obligation to tell your employers you had this deadly infectious disease?
And they don’t want to fire you for having AIDS so in spite of your brilliance they make you look incompetent thus the mysterious is that what you’re trying to tell me?
Thank you. Your honor
, imagine how the children in this neighborhood are being made to feel: the constant pounding o-of construction ringing in their ears as this skyscraper – a *tribute* to mankind’s greed – grows daily; casting an ominous shadow over their lives, filling them with dread even as they are surrounded by this toxic dust.
Let’s not go off the deep end gentlemen. You’ve made an articulate and compelling presentation Mr. Miller, but I don’t believe you’ve proven irreparable harm.
Not yet your honor.
ladies and gentlemen of the jury: forget everything you’ve seen on television and in the movies. There’s not going to be any last minute surprise witnesses, nobody’s going to break down on the stand with a tearful confession, you’re going to be presented with simple facts. Andrew Beckett was fired and you’ll two explanations on why he was fired, ours and theirs it’s up to you to sit through layer upon layer of truth until you determine for yourself which version sounds the most true. There’s certain points I must prove to you: point number one: Andrew Beckett was… is a brilliant lawyer, a great lawyer, point number two: my client afflicted with a disabling disease made the understandable, the personal, and the legal choice to keep the fact of his illness to himself point number three: his employers discovered his illness and ladies and gentlemen the illness I’m referring to is AIDS point number four: they panicked and in their panic they did what most would do which is just get “it” and everybody who has “it” as far as away as possible, the behavior of my client’s employers seem reasonable to you, it does to me, after all AIDS is a deadly incurable disease but no matter how you come to judge Charles Wheeler and his partners in ethical and moral and inhuman terms, the fact of the matter is when they fired Andrew Beckett because he has AIDS they broke the law.
