Anti-Discrimination vs. Religious Belief

Rock, meet hornets nest. You could have just titled this thread "Gnarff-bait."

 

Thank you, BTA. I've been beating my head against the wall as to a proper subject where I can sound off.

Religious beliefs are deep seated beliefs. People through the centuries have died for their religious beliefs, suffered persecution, persecuted others and added immensely to our literature, art and music. Wars have been fought over religious beliefs but religious beliefs have brought love, generosity and hope to people and places with out these. Destroy a person's religious belief and you open a path for a thousand demons to enter.

A person's religious beliefs may change over the years, mine certainly have but that is usually a gradual process, thought out and chosen. I hope that I am getting across that I believe that a person's religious beliefs are an integral part of the person. Politics and religion are two subjects that can cause more arguments, fights, anger and hatred than anything else I can think of at the moment.

I do not think the government should force a private business or individuals to supply services or goods that they fundamentally believe are wrong. Further more I believe that it is laws such as this that terrify deeply religious people. "If they can pass a law forcing a doctor to perform abortions what else can and might they force people or institutions to do?"

I am no authority on the USA Constitution but I have read it and studied it as well as our early history. It is a document written by men for men. It is the law of our country and all other laws are supposed to conform to it. It is difficult to amend which is as it should be but it can be amended and has been.

For those who believe that their Holy Scriptures are the infallible Word of an omnipotent deity those scriptures take precedent over anything written by humans for humans.

Now laws can be just or unjust. I certainly believe that the burning of so called witches was unjust yet the Bible says that a witch should be burned. We do have people in this day and age that call themselves witches.
We don't burn them and they are protected by our constitution as long as they don't break any laws.

The Constitution guarantees me the right to believe whatever I want to believe as long as it does not injure someone else. I can even believe the earth is flat and that the sun, moon and stars revolve around it if I wish.

Specifically I do not believe that the government should force a person to act against his religious beliefs unless he is working for the government. A publically funded institution belongs in a sense to the public; a private business or practice is private. It has responsibilities to those it serves and to the general population. This brings to mind the problem of a pharmacy and its employees to distribute something that they believe to be morally wrong based on religious belief. IMO if you are an employee of a business you abide by their rules. If the business refuses to sell or provide something we do get into a grey area and I think it would be a case by case debate.

We have the government and institutions funded by the government with our taxes. We have companies that offer stock to the general public and are thus funded by the general public.

We have more restricted stock companies and we have companies that are privately owned. It is these that I believe should not be forced by law to provide something that they believe to be against their religious beliefs.

Note: I have run spell check on this and hope I didn't make any glaring errors

 

Hokay BTA, force vs require. I'm no lawyer so am not gifted with words. To me requiring someone to do or not do something or give up their livelihood is a form of force.

I agree that no one should be forced or required to do something that they believe to be wrong but right now I admit I'm more interested in the religious angle.

 

In the public sector I think if you sign up to serve everyone in accordance to government legislation then you don't truly have a grounds to deny service to anyone. It is not your place as you have chosen to work in a government legislated field.

However, in the private sector I believe you should be able to turn down work based on religious beliefs as long as you have somebody you can deferr the work to. Stating calmly to clients you can no longer deal with their case for personal reasons and are passing it onto an equally qualified collegue, or in some instances turning down a customer and referring them to other companies that provide the same or similar service. Even if it's as passive as having leaflets in the entrance call or waiting room.

 

I think Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and a lot of other blacks (not to mention non-blacks) would disagree with you. I realize that this has nothing to do with religion, but your statement doesn't appear to be restricted to religious reasons.

On topic, I think denying service on religious grounds is just another form of discrimination. To me, it's no different than denying service to blacks because they disapprove of African-Americans. If it's not illegal to provide the service/product in the first place, then you shouldn't be able to withhold that service/product from people who are legally entitled to receive it.

 

How many think that this will be overturned once it gets to the U.S. Supreme Court?

I, personally, think that you should be able to deny service to anyone you want as long as it is a private business.

It's kind of funny in that another business they URGE you to discriminate.
Page 29 of the N.C Alcoholic Beverage Control Retail guide to permitees states: "Any employee can refuse to sell alcoholic beverages to any person, for any reason. There is no legal recourse by a customer that you have refused for any reason"

So i can refuse to serve blacks, whites, homosexuals or whatever all i want but only as far as the alcohol goes? I would still be required to sell them everything thing else available in my store & would be fined if i didn't! what kind of reasoning(governmental or otherwise) is that?

 

So, if I were a doctor in a private practice, I would be within my rights in refusing service to someone because they are a Christian? Or a Muslim?

 

I think this is a bit disingenuous, don't you? Servers of alcohol are specifically protected because if they allow someone to drink too much, they are held liable. Given your stated line of work, I'd imagine you already knew that. The last thing we want to see is a bar getting sued for denying service to a man who was so drunk he could barely stand and dangerously close to alcohol poisoning.

 

You don't tell them that though. You just say you're not serving them and that you don't need a reason to do so. Seriously though, given the problems associated with alcohol related disorder staff do need as much power to refuse service to people that they may, frankly, be afraid of. I'd be surprised if someone blatantly discriminating against a particular group would get away with it.

On the compulsion vs religion issue, I'd have to side with the government, despite the nanny overtones. The law has to apply to a wide array of situations, including those where people mightn't have any alternative services available. A coffee shop in Chicago refusing to serve coffee to gays is a silly inconvenience. A doctor in an isolated rural community refusing to treat gays is obviously far more serious. God help him if he contracts some rare condition and the regional specialist is a devout man. I don't see how you can try to split hairs between behaviour which is ultimately more harmful to the discriminator and that which seriously harms the disriminated against.

 

Well, based on the posts in this thread (including those of BTA, who started it), the topic seems to have moved from discrimination on religious grounds to discrimination in general. (BTA might want to consider renaming the topic.) So I'll comment on this:

There's a big difference between discrimination against a person who can do something about it (i.e. put on a goddamn shirt), and someone who can't (change your skin colour (Michael Jackson notwithstanding)).

While I agree that there are economic consequences to discrimination, some people might actually support the idea of not allowing, say, blacks into a restaurant, and thus offset the losses of people that choose to go elsewhere. Not to mention the indignity of being forced to go somewhere else because your skin is the "wrong" colour.

To me, allowing businesses to discriminate amounts to a validation of intolerance. In societies (such as most Western societies) that pride themselves of diversity (cultural, religious, or otherwise), I find that a bit (or a lot) hypocritical.

 

This might be a case where laws differ depending on where you live. In Canada (or at least Manitoba), human rights laws basically prohibit discrimination on any grounds, whether the status is legally protected or not. Granted, this can sometimes lead to silly results, but "silly results" is in the eye of the beholder, and generally I agree with the overall principle.

Agreed on the "hurting-of-business" part. And part of me wants to think that society as a whole will shut down these kind of operations quickly and painlessly, without any outside help. But the part of me that recognizes that, sometimes, regulation is needed, says that laws should be established to ensure that the people who would otherwise be discriminated against, aren't.

(And no, I’m not trying to turn this topic into a discussion about governmental regulation. )

And I'll repeat myself from my previous post:

 

I find this disturbing in that the doctors referred her to another clinic and didn't humiliate her or make it so that she couldn't receice the treatment at all. Given that this was not life threatening material, I find this legislation to be extremely intrusive. It's not as though she couldn't (and didn't, in fact) get the treatment somewhere else. Why did she even bother launching the lawsuit? Where are the damages inflicted on her? She should respect the religious beliefs of the doctors just as she expects them to respect her homosexual lifestyle.

 

I'm reminded of Christ healing the sick person on the Sabbath and being told that it was "against the prevailing religious doctines of the Church," by the priests of His day. There's nothing like a good rule-breaker to set things right.

 

I think that a business should be able to refuse service based on religious beliefs only if they receive no government money, including Medicare/Medicaid. This is where most of the medical community would have to give, since there are very few practices that could survive without receiving these monies.