“I recently went through a very bad breakup where my husband put me out of his home and kept everything I owned,” Carmelite Lofton said on the GoFundMe page she established in the summer of 2015.
“I've had to start from scratch and despite having a master’s degree in nonprofit management and an undergraduate degree in business administration I have searched employment here in Louisiana and have been unsuccessful,” she continued. “I have decided to transition to Dallas, Texas where I have family and a better opportunity for employment.”
Lofton raised half of her $1,500 goal (for relocation expenses?) in two months, but donations stopped after that, which is about the time she secured employment with BSN Sports in Dallas. After little more than a year, BSN put her, too.
Lofton doesn't explain on her GoFundMe page what caused her break-up, but she does offer – in a lawsuit filed in Dallas federal court last month – several explanations for her ouster from BSN: racism, disablism, anti-religious bigotry.
Lofton is black, has osteoarthritis in her knees, and is the self-hyping “pastor/CEO” in a church of her own creation: New Beginnings Women's Ministry, “where women . . . are encouraged to turn their pain into purpose!”
The purpose of her suit against BSN, perhaps, is to turn her alleged pain into payment, which might suggest a keener interest in profits than prophets – and not so much interest in turning the other cheek.
One of Lofton's biggest complaints against BSN is that the company “forced” her to attend an office Halloween party that lasted an hour. It was just candy and costumes and spirits of the liquid kind, but Lofton doesn't drink alcohol and the very idea of Halloween is offensive to her. Plus, she had to stand at the party, like everyone else, and that made her knees hurt.
Could the problem be that Lofton just rubs some people the wrong way?