That can't be right- can individuals be sued for discrimination in a situation like that? Craigslist is just an advertising site- can newspapers that run classified ads be sued in the same manner?
Well, I didn't read the link because it was broken, but now that I found the story I see that my question was answered- yes they can.
my list of dating dealbreakers was simply "believes in Creationism or Scientology"
And even that's not ironclad, no?
Yet, at the same time, I can't help but think the examples listed in the article ("African-Americans and Arabians tend to clash with me", "no minorities", etc.) are pretty ick. But if allowing racist comments helps flag someone as a douchebag I wouldn't want to live with, isn't that kind of a good thing?
Of course it is!
The current situation:
1) Douchebag puts up roommate ad which contains the sentence "African-Americans and Arabians tend to clash with me."
2) African-Americans and Arabians do not respond to ad.
3) Somebody tolerant of racism becomes his roommate.
The alternative situation:
1) Douchebag puts up roommate ad which contains the sentence "African-Americans and Arabians tend to clash with me."
2) Craigslist's dean of interfaith outreach sends Douchebag an email informing him that this sentence is unacceptable.
3) Douchebag has a roommate ad which does not indicate that he is a racist.
4) African-Americans and Arabians respond to his ad.
5) He responds to all of them saying "Are you an African-American or an Arabian? If so, you may clash with me."
6) Somebody tolerant of racism becomes his roommate.
I can't imagine how stating that you are a racist when looking for a roommate could be illegal. If you're a landlord looking for tenants, it's completely different.
This isn't my area, so statements about the law are unsourced and inaccurate, but I am pretty sure that the FHA doesn't apply to people looking for roommates or even landlords renting out the other half of a two-family house; they're limited to landlords of multi-unit dwellings over a certain size or where the landlord isn't living in the same dwelling. So the advertisers aren't violating the law by having racist standards of who they'll live with (in most Craigslist circumstances. I suppose there must be a couple of people renting out apartments in the buildings they own.)
For this suit to make sense, there must be a separate provision forbidding a newspaper from publishing a discriminatory ad, even when the advertiser would be permitted by law to discriminate. Given that there is such a provision (I'm deducing, but don't know) the question is whether Craigslist comes under it under the standards of the FHA.
How weird. I used craigslist to find a roommate last year, and it never occurred to me that they're under the Fair Housing Act. They're not a landlord.
To be fair, I don't think I could live with a lot of those Arabians, either.
It seems pretty ridiculous to have that restriction on someone only seeking a roommate/housemate *not* on a landlord or property owner renting out to them. But then again perhaps this can be sorted out with a brief study: I will offer my love dungeon for rent but will describe it as "family-friendly" (depends on your family, I guess) and see if I get any takers once I answer the door in my thong and bullwhip.
Being upfront about what kind of person you are and who you get along with seems to me to eliminate all kinds of wasted time when looking for prospective housemates.
becks, why not people who travel a lot as a job?
sounds pretty ideal to me as a housemate.
but then, i just swore off housemates, colocataires, whatever. being Too Damn Old to do that anymore.
Offhand, the suit looks supportable. The prohibition on discriminatory advertising is as follows:
To make, print, or publish, or cause to be made, printed, or published any notice, statement, or advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.
While there are exceptions pretty much as I described allowing you to actually discriminate in the selection of people you're going to live with, they don't apply to advertising. At least the advertisers, and I would guess Craigslist (does Craigslist 'make, print or publish' ads on it's site? Seems to me yes, also seems to me that you could argue about it quite a bit, and I expect people already have in other contexts. I don't know how cases about websites tend to come out.) are violating the FHA.
I don't want to live with someone who travels a lot because I travel a lot. I want at least one of us home most of the time in case a pipe bursts or something. When I lived with the Gay Indian Roommate, we both traveled for work and there were often occasions we'd both be gone for weeks at a time, which always made me nervous.
I think there's been a similar case to this (or so I've heard, I can't recall exactly what the case was) that was decided in favor of the posting board. I think it has to do with the fact that the boards don't restrict publishing of the ads so can't be held responsible for what's put on there.
but craiglist does restrict, right? you can flag stuff as offensive and they take it down, right?
It seems to me that the law, based on the quote posted by LB, could be unconstitutional. I wonder if it has ever been challenged. Or, if so, if it has been challenged lately after SCOTUS has turned toward according "commercial speech" more protection than it has in the past.
I don't think I could live with a lot of those Arabians, either.
The Arabian Military Action Girl passes. She'd need to store the machine gun off-premesis, though.
Totally legal to say you want a gay / straight roommate, though.
Next thing you know all those 420 friendly houses are going to get investigated for substance abuse.
The Communications Decency Act, specifically section 230(c)(1), provides extremely broad immunity for internet services with respect to the information others post using those services (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ts_search.pl?title=47&sec=230). I believe that this is the law that the commenter in #12 might be thinking about.
The issue would be whether the CDA provision provides immunity to craig's from the Fair Housing Act.
Only one case, based on an admittedly cursory search, addresses this issue, and the case is unpublished. But I've quoted the relevant portion below (forgive the long comment):
"The FHA is not among the types of laws which are specifically exempted from the CDA. As such, and without evidence of contrary legislative intent, a court may not create an exemption for the fair housing laws without violating the maxim expressio unius est exclusio alterius. " 'Where Congress explicitly enumerates certain exceptions to a general prohibition, additional exceptions are not to be implied, in the absence of evidence of a contrary legislative intent." ' In the absence of contrary legislative intent, therefore, the Court finds that the CDA applies to shield Roommate from liability for the FHA violations alleged by Plaintiffs to the extent that Plaintiffs seek to make Roommate liable for the content provided by its users." Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommate.Com, LLC., No. CV 03-09386PA(RZX), 2005 WL 3299077, at *3 (C.D.Cal. Sep. 30, 2005).
Looks persuasive to me. I say Craigslist wins!
18... that's the one... it was roommate.com.
Thread Hijack: I need to come up with a list of English words that differ only in the placement of stress (e.g. RE-cord vs. re-CORD). Can anyone help me come up with some more?
So far I have:
record
defense
offense
convict
incense
defect
incite/insight
conquer/concur
Well, now that those pesky legal issues are resolved, shall we follow Becks' lead and move on to roommate criteria?
Seems almost more revealing than SO criteria...
Yes, Stanley! I was hoping people would go there.
I'm curious about "not divorced," Becks. How come?
(I haven't had a roommate for a while, so I have no idea about my preferences.)
I don't know - the "not divorced" thing isn't as in stone as some of the others. I guess it's more of a proxy for other things that I try to screen for, like people with a lot of personal drama or are depressed and negative or have crazy exes who will be calling the house day and night. I guess it's an unfair assumption since I've had single, non-divorced roommates with issues like that and some people have very amicable divorces.
Re #21:
Refuse
Assay (ASS-ay as a noun or in science, a-SAY as a verb)
Thanks CN! Refuse is definitely one I should have remembered. I wasn't aware of the noun assay; what does it mean?
Also "resume", given that "résumé" is given its accents roughly 1% of the time it is typed.
And "permit".
I don't know about including "conquer/concur". That seems to be a different phenomenon. It's a short step from there to "anus/a noose".
I work in a science lab, and I'm sure I use the noun "assay" every day. It basically means "procedure", and is sort of used to mean "simple experiment", of the kind where you put in Ingredient A, perform various steps, and get an easily-quantifiable Result B which shows you something about Ingredient A.
I guess that sounds like a description of literally every experiment, but it's more like a procedure, a tool used to get a specific answer. If you go to a biological catalog like appliedbiosystems.com and search for "assay", you get hundreds of results, listing kits that you can use to perform various assays.
Permit is another one I should have remembered. Resume doesn't count because the two readings have different numbers of syllables. I do think conquer/concur is an example of what I'm looking for.
Thanks for the info on assay. That's a good one for my purposes.
re 21
Consist
I suspect many of these are verb /noun distinctions made audible.
Consist? Really? What does CON-sist mean?
(Not that I doubt you, this is just totally unfamiliar to me. And yeah, most of them are verb/noun pairs.)
If conquer/concur qualifies, does enter/inter?
Enter/inter: no, because the initial vowels are different (at least in my dialect). That's a cool pair, though.
Excellent! I can't believe I forgot that one.
retard, if you count the offensive slang term.
detail, though that may only work for certain accents.
Apostropher is the hero. Those are all really helpful.
Oh, look! The motherlode.
absent - abstract - address - affect - affix - ally - attribute - combat - combine - compact - compost - compound - compress - commune - concert - conduct - confines - conflict - conscript - console - consort - construct - consult - content - contest - contract - contrast - converse - convert - convict - default - defect - desert - digest - discharge - dismount - entrance - escort - exploit - export - extract - finance - impact - impound - import - incense - incline - - increase - intercept - insert - insult - invite - object - overcount - overlay - overlook - perfect - permit - perfume - pervert - present - proceeds - produce - progress - project - protest - rebel - recall - recap - recess - record - redirect - redress - refund - refuse - regress - reject - relapse - remake - research - retake - retard - retract - subject - survey - suspect - transform - transplant - transect - transpose - transport - undercount - update - uplift - upset
Sweet! I was looking for something like that, but came up empty. Thanks.
Also, the discussion page has a few more.
Man, a whole lot of prescriptivism in those comments.
Thanks everyone. I think I have enough now. I'm particularly looking for ones that don't have [r] or [l] in them (most do), so if anyone can think of any like that that aren't on the Wikipedia page, post them here.
18: To play devil's advocate, there is a counter-canon for every canon. While Karl Llewellyn claims the counter-canon for expressio unius is "the language may fairly comprehend many different cases where some only are expressly mentioned by way of example," one could also argue the canon against implicit repeal (even implicit partial repeal) should apply.
I can't seem to get anything but -ate words.
subordinate
What about "deplane" -- counting the Herve Villechaize line.
I'm curious as to why you need ones without [r] or [l]; my speculation is that you're testing them on native speakers of a language (say, Japanese, if I know what I'm talking about) that treats stress differently from English and that doesn't distinguish [r] and [l].
Would "outback" (in Australia) vs. "out back" (where to find the barbecue) work?
re 33
CONsist is a technical term. But it is an old one.
Wiki says:
"In American railway terminology, and increasingly in the United Kingdom, a consist is used to describe the group of rail vehicles which make up a train."
Google's define finds similar definitions.
I would throw out envelop and envelope as being almost there (and obviously related). "The Carthagians enveloped the Roman army." Hannibal didn't mail them in at Cannae.
Tia, I don't want to be too much of a lint puppet, but in most of these cases isn't the difference in the pronunciation of the final syllable rather than in the stress pattern? e.g., corr'-uh-layt' vs. corr'-uh-lut'. approx.
Darn it, I had a joke, but it turned out to be surprisingly identifying.
To pick a nit, these -ate words don't differ in stress so much as in the length and value of the final vowel sound.
Let's see, in dialects that render the noun "police" as po'-lice, is the verb form still rendered as po-lice'?
Hmm. I thought I was hearing the stress differently, but maybe I was just imagining it.
I'm just being snitty because I can't think of any good ones.
peeking/Peking? I'm not sure how "Peking" is supposed to be pronounced.
Missouri/Missourah
Louisiana/Looziana
Y'all need to acquire accents with a wider variety of vowel sounds.
Some of the apparent homophones with differingly placed stress also contain different vowel phonemes in my accent.
All of the -ate ones, for example. As per Weiner in 61. But also some of the others.
banquet vs. banquette? There may not be enough consensus on how to pronounce these.
70 -- my way of saying these words is "BANK-wet" and "bank-ETT" -- what about you?
re: 70
Yeah, I'd also change the vowels.
BANK-wet versus bawnk-ETT
Where the latter is sort of nasalised and frenchified.
I pronounce them like Osner, but I suspect that I'm pronouncing 'banquet' wrong. McG had me stupefied until I decided that it's the first syllable, not the second, that's nasalized and frenchified.
What about British/American differences, like laboratory?
re: 73
Yeah, it's the first syllable.
re: 74
As well as just general pronunciation difference, as a Scot I have a much wider range of monophthongal vowels than most American speakers so a lot of these words that are homophones in GenAm are very much not homophones in my accent.
In one of my undergrad phonology classes we had some Americans pronounce the sentence:
"Merry mary wants to mary"
and it's noticeable that in some, but not all, American accents the central vowel in each of the 'm' words is the same.
In most British accents anhd especially in Scottish accents they are all different.
On the other hand, Scots often pronounce 'cot' and 'caught' the same and that isn't the case in some GenAm accents.
[Scots as a general rule have a wider range of monophthongal vowel phonemes and a smaller range of diphthongal vowel phonemes than English English speakers...]
Shite,
that should be 'Merry mary wants to marry'
Matt McG -- isn't one of the spellings -- I think "Marry" -- used as an interjection in Shakespeare?
I once disputed with a friend in a bar thus: he claimed it wasn't possible to pronounce "merry, "mary," and "marry" separately, even though I was actually doing it at the time.
That reminds me, I have to figure out why S5-reiterated sentences in quantified modal logic are considered assumptions for the purpose of universal generalization.
heh @ 78
It's the usual problem - if people don't distinguish between phonemes, i.e. if they are all allophones of the same phoneme for them, then they literally cannot hear the difference.
What MM said about distinguishing, phonemes, so that even when he pronounced Merry, Mary, Marry distinctly to his own ears, hearers for whom each of his would be allophones didn't hear the difference as significant, can be turned around. Outsiders often hear allophones of the same phoneme when the speaker doesn't. Two examples: the Canadian can clearly tell the difference when he says "a boat" and "about," but they are too close for the average American hearer. Similarly, Midland (Appalachia) in the US pronounces creek and crick so that I can't hear a difference, but I'll bet they can.
Weiner and McGrattan are correct that the -ate words don't count; what I'm looking for here are words that are exactly the same except for the stress placement (so banquet/banquette doesn't count either). I have enough, though. Thanks to everyone who contributed.
I'm collecting these for a project for a phonetics class I'm taking, in which we have to examine vowel duration in a language not our own. "But wait!" you say. "Does this mean the mysterious teofilo does not speak English natively?" Alas, no. I'm working on Korean, and the Korean grad student who is my informant is working on English; I'm his informant. Looking at these words was his idea, and he requested that they not have [r] or [l], ideally, since those sounds can have notable acoustic effects on the surrounding vowels. They have to be pairs that have only a stress contrast in my dialect (General American English, which doesn't contrast Mary/merry/marry or caught/cot) since that's the dialect he's working on.
Hope that clears up all the questions.
I speak General American English, and I can hear the difference in all of those words.
My wife grew up in Connecticut, and uses a glottal stop instead of a dental plosive (that's what you call a 't' sound, right?) for words with a tt in the middle--kitten, mitten, etc. She can hear the difference if I really lay it on thick, but it's definitely hard.
Doesn't French have three different "r" sounds, the difference between which the American can't hear?
East Coast American distinguishes the M's, I believe, at least I do and I'm a New Yorker with a bland accent. The people who can't are, IME, from the west side of the Appalachians. (I know, that's most of the country.)
I might be wrong about where the line is drawn - that's just a guess from people I know.
I can hear the difference, too, but I pronounce them all the same. And yes, east coast dialects tend to make two or three distinctions (Philadelphia distinguishes marry from Mary/merry; I think most NY dialects distinguish all three); it's General American, spoken (roughly) west of the Mississippi, that collapses them into one.
re: 83 and 84
Yeah, I suspect that's right. Holdovers in east coast US speech from British English, possibly. It's also noticeable that east coast accents are very geographically specific. Almost but not quite as specific as British accents.
[Britain is ridiculous in this respect. It's often possible to locate people within an incredibly narrow geographic area based on accent.]
Re: French and three 'r' sounds. As far as I know that's not correct in terms of phonemes - they do have a 'uvular' r sound though that's not used in English.
Italian, I believe, has two - a short tapped 'r' and a long trilled or rolled 'r'.
Czech, which I am vaguely attempting to learn (my wife is Czech) has a wierd trilled fricative 'r' thing happening (the 'r' with a haček on top - ř). They distinguish between that and a normal 'r'.
Non Czech speakers find it pretty hard to distinguish that from an /r/ followed by a normal voiced alveolar fricative i.e. a 'zh' sound e.g. like the sound in the middle of 'Borgia'.
Inability to consistently pronounce the ř pretty much immediately marks you out as a dumb foreigner.
81/82 -- I too am going to dispute that standard American English makes no distinction between 'caught' and 'cot' -- the vowel in the first is way longer than in the second.
east coast accents are very geographically specific
I can distinguish eastern North Carolina accents from western NC ones from central NC ones.
I'm pretty sure that I can't hear the difference between "cot" and "caught" and the last time I tried to hear the 3 M's they all sounded the same to me. But I know that people do pronounce them differently and I suspect that with practice I could pick them up (hearing -- I'm not sure I could pick up saying them differently).
86 - I don't know, I just recorded myself saying "I caught a cold" and "That cot is nice" and the vowels were almost exactly the same length. I'm pretty sure I pronounce them exactly the same. There may be subdialects where "caught" is longer, though. The main point is that GAE doesn't have a quality distinction, the way some east coast dialects do.