Your beliefs are 'your' beliefs... Not mine or anyone else's. You are welcome to them, but do not impose them on other people, and we will not impose ours on you. Don't create an issue of them when there was none before you expressed your views, because they are in fact... "Your views".
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There is a lot of buzz these days about Kim Davis, a Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk who defied a U.S. Federal Court order requiring that she issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
https://en.wikipedia.org/
Then another story came up, that of a Muslim flight attendant, Ms Stanley, who filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claiming she was suspended from her job for not serving alcohol, which is against her religious beliefs.
http://www.cbsnews.com/
Exemptions to job duties are covered under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), which requires reasonable accommodation of employees’ sincerely held religious beliefs, observances, and practices when requested, unless accommodation would impose an undue hardship on business operations.
http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/
But in both of those cases, the employees refused to perform a task central to their job description, so that the above exemption can hardly apply. They are breaking their side of the contract they have with their employer (not to mention Davis defied an actual court order).
Additionally, they are both obstructing other people's actions. This is a serious misunderstanding of what religious freedom means. If the state forced Davis to marry a same-sex person herself, and if the airline forced Stanley to drink alcohol herself, then we would be looking at very different stories.
However, religion is a choice. What is entailed by being a member of a religion applies only to those who are members of that religion. If a person's religion clashes with a central task of a job, then it is unreasonable for that person to expect that their religious beliefs should be accommodated by the employer. Admittedly, the employer-employee relationship is usually unfairly favourable for the former, but these specific cases are exceptions to that "rule".
The irrationality of those expectations becomes obvious when we realize that this would open up the floodgates for people to refuse to perform their jobs for any and all reasons on the grounds of moral objection.
A flight attendant could sue the airline for asking her to be on a plane, while she has a moral objection to flying. The statement would look like this:
"It is an infringement upon my civil liberties that my employer threatened to fire me if I keep refusing to get on a plane. This is discrimination against us A-aviation-ists, that believe that flying machines are against nature and are the cause for all the moral short-comings of our society. I demand to be treated equally, regardless of my beliefs."
Or, indeed, a fast food worker could refuse serving an over-weight person on the grounds of enabling their "sinful" lifestyle, as this cartoon shows.
Clearly, this kind of immature expectation that society is expected to cater to every single personal sensitivity is a perfect example of selfish entitlement.
So, the bottom line is, whatever your religious beliefs, you are not above the law. The law should be secular, neither discriminating against nor favouring one religious status to another, and have as a priority the functionality of the society and not the accommodation of beliefs. Given most people in the world have a different religious status than ours, whichever ours is, one would think everyone would realize that a secular society is actually in everyone's favour.
~Tania
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