Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis isn’t the only person whose religious beliefs clash with her job duties. Here’s a private sector case:
(CNN) A Muslim flight attendant says she was suspended by ExpressJet for refusing to serve alcohol in accordance with her Islamic faith.
[snip]She wants to do her job without serving alcohol in accordance with her Islamic faith — just as she was doing before her suspension, her lawyer said.
“What this case comes down to is no one should have to choose between their career and religion and it’s incumbent upon employers to provide a safe environment where employees can feel they can practice their religion freely,” said Lena Masri, an attorney with Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Stanley, 40, started working for ExpressJet nearly three years ago. About two years ago she converted to Islam. This year she learned her faith prohibits her from not only consuming alcohol but serving it, too, Masri said.
She approached her supervisor on June 1 and was told to work out an arrangement for someone to fulfill passenger requests for alcohol.
[snip]It seemed to be working out until another flight attendant filed a complaint against Stanley on August 2 claiming she was not fulfilling her duties by refusing to serve alcohol, Masri said. The employee complaint also said Stanley had a book with “foreign writings” and wore a headdress.
The complaint about “foreign writings” and the “headdress” sound like bigoted bullshit — if the report is true, the complainer is likely a trouble-making asshole.
On the other hand, why should other flight attendants have to take up the slack for Stanley’s refusal to serve alcohol? As an occasional passenger, I’m under the impression that duty it is a significant rather than incidental part of the job, at least on US airlines.
I’m not a lawyer, but Stanley’s attorney’s assertion that “no one should have to choose between their career and religion” sounds like nonsense. Employers should make reasonable accommodations, but if your religion forbids you from fulfilling a fundamental part of your role, you should find another line of work, just like Kim Davis.
What say you?
Randy P
Are the GOP presidential candidates rushing to defend this person’s religious freedom? Has Glenn Beck made her a cause celebre yet? I’m sure it’s just a matter of hours.
But yeah, why is having a book written in a different language cause for a complaint? Especially on an airline.
Just to be clear, I think you should be willing to do your job duties. I think Hindu cooks should be willing to cook meat (and in fact I believe they do in Indian restaurants, uncomplainingly) and Jewish employees should be willing to serve bacon.
Renie
I agree; find another job. If we start allowing religious beliefs to dictate job responsibilities, who knows how far it will go.
bbleh
The key, of course, is “Employers should make reasonable accommodations.” The question is, what is “reasonable”? And the implication is that the customer / client must be accommodated.
If a pharmacist doesn’t want to dispense contraceptive meds, but there is ALWAYS someone on duty who will, and the favor is returned among the staffers in some way, then I would consider that reasonable. Ditto signing marriage licenses, serving alcohol, or coming within 10 feet of a Tea Partier. But the customer / client must be accommodated; that’s the nature of a public accommodation.
EBT
Maybe it’s just me and my opinion that faith is a poor substitute for spirituality, but if your religion says not to do something the onus is on you to not go out and look for situations to get in to that would require breaking a rule.
schrodinger's cat
Up next a devout Hindu working at McDonald’s who doesn’t want to cook or serve burgers.
Freemark
Agreed.
Hal
Also not a lawyer, but I automatically think of reasonable accommodation in cases like this. To me it’s not reasonable to expect that there is a portion of your job you will not perform due to your religious beliefs, and that your fellow employees will have to do for you. Maybe there is some other role she can fill in the company instead.
The Gray Adder
Alcohol isn’t essential by any stretch, no matter how much flying sucks, but I agree with you. This could easily get out of hand. If we let this one go, soon we’ll have pharmacies stuffed with staff who refuse to fill prescriptions for the Pill. Can you imagine having to shop around endlessly for a pharmacy willing to let you have your “whore pills,” for example?
Marc
There have also been cases of devout Muslim taxi drivers not wanting to pick up intoxicated passengers. I think the same thing of them that I do of fundamentalist Christian idiots (do your &*& job or find another), and at least these case have the value of perhaps making the reactionaries think about where their idiotic “principles” lead to.
shell
I agree….but at least she didnt bully her fellow attendants from serving alcohol as well.
Frankensteinbeck
What is ‘reasonable’? Refusing to provide marriage licenses isn’t. Not being the flight attendant who provides the alcohol… I don’t know. It sounds like her coworkers thought it was reasonable until one went racist apeshit, but I’m not a flight attendant. Maybe what she’s asking for isn’t reasonable.
Mike J
What happens if all of the FAs are “devout”?
Southern Goth
@schrodinger’s cat: Yeah, but that doesn’t involve actual beef.
dcloysmith
I’m sorry. My religious beliefs as a Catholic prevent me from selling you this Big Mac because it’s Friday during Lent. I’ll get you a Filet-O-Fish instead.
shell
Criminy, can you imagine if this moron ever takes an overseas trip (they must only fly domestic)
“Whats with these people? Why dont they just speak English. Whats with all this squiggly writing?”
Marc
@Mike J: Yes, this is the real reason why they should make no such exemptions. If all of the flight attendants are devout, no alcohol for you! They get to impose their religion on others. It’s the same reason why fundies don’t get to selectively refuse to marry gay couples – in the limit where every clerk is a fundy, the law is voided.
Amir Khalid
If I were Charee Stanley, I might have asked for a transfer to ground-based duties where I didn’t have to serve food or drinks. Because if ExpressJet serves food at all, I’m pretty sure some of it’s not halal, either. That said, the airline did grant the accommodation in the first place, presumably after considering the likely effect on Ms Stanley’s colleagues. Now it seems to have revoked it without good reason.
Suppose the airline had reconsidered the accommodation because her colleagues said it placed an unfair burden on them. Which, to my mind, would seem a good reason to do so. If so, it could surely have offered her that transfer to a ground-based job.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T (except it kind of fits under the “Religion” tag), but DWS has decided, unexpectedly, to support the Iran deal.
nytimes.com/2015/09/07/us/politics/iran-nuclear-deal-debbie-wasserman-schultz.html?_r=0
I heard just a snippet of her CNN interview a few minutes ago, in the car. She sounded near tears. Wonder what went on behind the scenes.
zanamu
If you follow CAIR [Council on American Islamic Relations], there isn’t much sympathy for her on their comments section. Most seem to feel that if she is so compromised, she should find another job — Saudi Air, for example, does not fly with alcohol. One wonders if she has consulted food content listings – does her airline ever serve pork products, salad dressings made with red wine vinegar, or cookies flavored with vanilla extract? All are forbidden.
If a cashier at Walmart is Jewish or Muslim, they are still expected to ring through pork & shellfish. A Mormon is still expected to sell alcohol & tobacco products.
If she is that much of a fundamentalist, I can’t imagine that she is happy working there, and she should probably find a different position in the company, or a different company.
Which is also the suggestion for the poor martyred county clerks who are opposed to gay marriage.
MattF
This is the sort of thing that just has to be fought out in each place and each circumstance– different cultures have different sets of constraints and rules. The trick is to do it in good faith, and not have bullshit complaints about headdresses or reading stuff in weird languages.
Mandalay
@Marc:
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, Muslim or otherwise.
In NYC a taxi driver has no obligation to pick up someone who appears intoxicated.
JaneE
I met a Hindu who worked in a megamart. Staff was rotated through all the departments, and she had to stock (not cut) beef and other meats. It made her nauseous, but she did her job. She was overjoyed when she could move to another area.
A Ghost To Most
@bbleh:
The problem is “reasonable”. It used to mean something, as in reality-based rather than magic-based. Now, not so much. There are now wildly divergent ideas of “reasonable”.
Amir Khalid
@Marc:
I suspect there are also plenty of non-Muslim cabbies who don’t fancy a drunk puking all over their cab.
ETA: I’ve heard the problem was with Muslim cabbies in some American airports refusing to accept passengers carrying duty-free alcohol.
Toschek
So if I convert to the Church of the SubGenius like my wife has been hassling me to do for the past 15 years I can tell my employer that actually working is against my religion and they can’t fire me? Since one of their chief commandments is to slack off as much as possible, I should be able to get somebody to represent me and keep raking it in while I sleep in and smoke dope all day.
Why hasn’t someone thought of this sooner?
Marc
@Amir Khalid: Truly intoxicated, legit. The cases I read about involved people who they thought had been drinking, not people who had misbehaved.
Derelict
Put me squarely in the camp of she should find other employment. Serving alcohol is an integral part of her job. She knew that before she converted. Her new belief system says no serving alcohol, so it’s also saying “Find other work.”
Mnemosyne (tablet)
My knee-jerk reaction is, “Yes, she needs to do her job or find a new line of work,” but the obvious bigotry also contained in the complaint leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@A Ghost To Most:
Is complaining because your co-worker has a book with “foreign writings” and wears a headscarf reality-based or magic-based?
Amir Khalid
I have a comment in moderation. Please help.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
IIRC during the Bush (II) years it was fashionable among some GOP pols to brag that they’d never had a passport and never wanted to. I think it was Dick Armey who got huge laughs when he snarled (Armey snarls when he wishes his probably terrified grandchildren Merry Christmas, which he only does to spite imagined secularists) “I’ve been to Europe. I don’t need to go back”.
@SiubhanDuinne: now if they can do something about that “Ineffective” part… My observer’s guess is that Jennifer Granholm, who might well have the electoral bug out of her system, and certainly seems a lot less worried about being “respectable”, would be better at the media stuff than DWS. The behind the scenes stuff, fund-raising and recruiting of candidates, I don’t know.
Another Holocene Human
@Amir Khalid: I’m trying to think of, as a former Catholic, what job duty my religion would have barred me from. I know Catholics today like to grandstand about contraception and abortion, but I was taught that the choice was the person involved’s choice. There are a lot of people in the world and they’re not all Catholic, and I certainly don’t have a religious duty to impede their choices.
Now, maybe as a tax payer if my taxes are going to fund unjust wars or if my state is executing prisoners, then I have participated in that sin.
If I believe I can’t work on Sunday (note: I worked on Sunday!! lolol) then if my employer is compelling me to do so and I don’t quit that job, I’m committing a sin. (Two Catholic women sued Walmart in Massachusetts and lost over this.)
But if someone is claiming their Catholic religion prohibits them from dispensing birth control as a pharmacist, that’s as much nonsense as saying I’d be committing a sin by not rounding up a posse to storm The Corrib [eta: Irish Pub] on Sunday morning and frog-marching all the not-so-penitent down to St T’s Centre St entrance.
All that forcing people to commit religious obligations should have been left and buried in the Middle Ages.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
In the 70s in Norway cabbies would not let you open or close the door even if you were stone sober. They had an inordinate level of care for their cars, I think they owned the Mercedes is why. Allow a drunk in their car? Not a chance.
Another Holocene Human
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She could hardly be worse.
Bruuuuce
@bbleh: You picked exactly the wrong example, from my POV. Specifically, all licensed professionals should be required to fulfill all aspects of their profession (barring specialization such as doctors and attorneys), particularly where they’re in public-facing positions.
Count me in among those who think religion is something best practiced outside the workplace, and that anyone who fails to fulfill their known job requirements needs to find another job or make some accommodation. Here’s the case of an Oregon judge who is failing to conduct marriages, but who’s so far being covered by other judges. I hope his bigoted butt gets thrown off the bench for this, but, as with Kim Davis, removing him is apparently not an easy process to complete.
schrodinger's cat
I once took Gulf Air while traveling to India, the alcohol flowed freely until we were flying over the gulf countries and a little bit after we left the airport at Dubai, alcoholic beverage services were resumed.
Amir Khalid
@Ruckus:
Then how did drunken Norwegians get home from the pub?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mandalay: Yeah, that’s a possible safety and even more possible hygiene issue. I was in a cab not long ago and noticed the posted “vomit clean up charge”, which made me a little ill just thinking about it.
Haydnseek
@Marc: Yep, because the best thing to do if someone might be impaired is to ignore them. Let them drive their own drunk asses home. What could possibly go wrong?
Mike in NC
Special snowflakes who refuse to do part of their job are subject to dismissal by their employer. Thus has it always been.
Gvg
My impression was reasonable accommodation generally meant trying to schedule people according to their holy day of the week preference and important religious holidays. In other words if you try to give Sunday off to your most religious Christian employees, then you take into account Muslim, and Jewish employees preferences too. How much that means can depend on the business, the industry and the area. some types of employers who are open 7 days and long hours pretty much ignore all preferences, other places give some effort and find it beneficial to employ a cross section on purpose. also it is up to employees to say whether they care. some people want overtime or holiday pay
satby
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Yeah, me too. And for a short time accommodation was worked out, so that set a bit of a precedent. But it’s more reasonable for her to transfer to a different job, and she should have just done that after she found out serving alcohol was also haram.
Ryan
Maybe promote her into management?
Jay C
This, to me, has to be the worst part of the whole affair:
Bigoted bullshit indeed: but it seems ExpressJet was wiling to suspend (without pay) an employee based (unless there is more info unrevealed) on a single complaint. Nice corporate values at work..
That said, though:I think if Charee Stanley can’t/won’t do all of the job she was hired to do (or can’t find a satisfactory work-around), she should be transferred to a position where her beliefs won’t be an issue.
Another Holocene Human
@SiubhanDuinne: I had a boss like DWS. Loose cannon, backstabber, gladhander.
Ever so often he would go too far and get disciplined by his bosses. You have to realize how rare this is that management would get disciplined like that.
One time he tried to screw another supervisor over a wage and hour thing or a schedule thing or something like that and she gave him an atomic wedgie. He got disciplined and the word went around that he got a suspension and was crying in his office.
Boy that sounded good but two years later he was still working there in the same position. And still sucked at his job.
I don’t give a shit what the threats are, if they don’t can the clown it doesn’t count.
People like DWS and that boss don’t change.
Another Holocene Human
@Jay C: Our brave new un-unionized world.
trollhattan
@Toschek:
Slack-slack is okay!
Sloegin
It’s a part of the job. It isn’t 100 percent of the duties, but a significant part. If she were tending bar it would be open and shut. What percentage then of a job is ok for refusing to do the work?
MattF
@Another Holocene Human: People seem to have forgotten that– not so long ago– there were vast, endless libraries full of tomes on religious law and religious philosophy. And it was all enforced, the law of the land.
Nowadays, religious law and religious philosophy are mostly a do-it-yourself project, but people are still expecting the state to enforce the rules. It’s easy to see why that doesn’t work, but it’s unclear what procedure or authority to replace it with.
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Holocene Human:
Indeed. I’m glad she’s a Yes vote, but I still want to see her out on her ass as Chair of the DNC. She has been not only ineffective, I would say she has been actively counterproductive. And I agree, she is unlikely to change, no matter what kind of arm-twisting may have occurred on the Iran deal. Just go away, Debbie.
Gex
@Another Holocene Human: honestly there are Catholics who have argued that police officers and doctors shouldn’t have to help gay people. The sins of gay people are like cooties I guess, whereas all the sins of the straight people they help are not contagious.
I wonder if any of them stop to wonder why this sin is the only unforgivable sin, and those who sin this way cannot be tolerated. Or if they ever notice that it corresponded with massive fundraising drives by religious and political leaders.
Another Holocene Human
@Gvg: Yeah, I’m pretty sure following the Walmart case there’s no employer duty in the US to give you holy days off.
Some states have mandated special pay for weekend days and certain holidays. Other folks have unions. Some people work for employers that me too their pay because everyone else is unionized.
I think some Orthodox Jews have also gotten into employer disputes over Friday night–Saturday but AFAIK they didn’t succeed either even though the religious obligation is pretty clear.
Joel
Belichick 4:17
“Do your job.”
Amir Khalid
@Gvg:
Jewish people are forbidden to work (or do work-like things e.g. operate machinery, as I understand) on the Sabbath, from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday. But Friday is not a sabbath for Muslims as it is for Jews; while many Muslim countries have the weekend on Thursday and Friday, many others don’t.
Betty Cracker
@Sloegin:
That’s a great question. I don’t know. If I were writing the law, it would be a very small percentage, and the impact to other employees would have to be truly negligible and repaid in some fashion.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
This. In this case there really are two sides. The woman not doing her job and the person being a bigot. Is one worse? Yes, the bigot. The woman appeared to have gotten accommodation for her faith from her employer but I bet it was limited to and provided by her immediate supervisor – as long as the other flight attendants are OK with it and are willing to do her work for her. Turned out not to be so in every instance. But the complainant? Had to add the bigotry to it. Could have just stuck with not doing the job and that probably would have worked and been true.
swanksalot
I always thought it odd when I moved to Illinois that under-21 grocery store clerks couldn’t even handle a bottle of wine or beer, but had to call over someone older to ring it up. As if the magical alcohol demons would jump through the bottle and corrupt little Jimmy…
Another Holocene Human
@Gex: It’s all a big distraction from the enormous sins of the Bishops.
And it’s more Catholic than the Pope-ism. Now, gay cooties comes from Pope Benedicts pre-papal “Halloween letter” where he called homosexuality “objectively disordered” which sounded better in the original German, fa fa. Seriously, it’s a new term he coined for “not a sin in and of itself but it’s icky, really, really icky”. But shunning gay people is pure conservative congregation + conservative Bishop a-Biblical nonsense, but perfectly understandable if you understand that they were on a tribalistic tear.
You know, being the kind of people Jesus was always ranting about. Hypocrites.
Bruce Webb
BTW “reasonable accommodation” relates to the ADA – the American Disabilities Act and not to my knowledge to First Amendment Claims. And the emphasis is on “reasonable”. If you are wheelchair bound you don’t get a pass to work on a road crew. On the other hand you might well be entitled to a special desk and telephone handset so you can work at a tech support call center. The idea has at its core the notion that if you can satisfy the large majority of your job duties but have issues with specific tasks that management should work with you. Which is mostly common courtesy. If you work with people who are “height challenged” you pull things off of tall shelves. If Ol’ Bruce who knows everything about everything and helps you out all the time kind of struggles lifting that full box of copy paper you jump in. Gosh some people even hold the doors for people who have their hands full. ADA “reasonable accommodation” is just a formalized extension of that that prevents employers and supervisors from being dicks for arbitrary reasons.
But it doesn’t mean a Quaker can sign up to be a Marine rifleman and refuse to shoot people while still demanding the full benefits of the GI Bill. The “reasonableness” cuts both ways.
shell
Whos DWS?
MattF
@shell: Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Ruckus
@Bruuuuce:
Just a small point. My reading on the judge is that he is not required to perform any marriages. He is not being derelict in his duties. He is being an ass and in my view still wrong but not abdicating his oath. Now if my info is wrong…..
Mike J
@Joel: Did you hear about the new Deflategate? The left rear tire of Lewis Hamilton’s F1 car was, according to Pirelli , .3 psi low. Mercedes says it was ok when they checked it. For the last 5 laps, Mercedes told Hamilton to drive flat out to extend his lead in case they got a time penalty.
In the end, the stewards found that Mercedes had followed proper procedures and weren’t penalized.
Mandalay
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yes, she was close to tears, and this is obviously a deeply emotional issue for her. That said, I despise her even more after seeing that interview.
She could have done so much more for the President and the Democratic Party to secure this deal if she had had the courage and decency to speak out in support of this deal two months ago. All we saw in that revolting interview was “Debbie-Debbie-Debbie-Israel-Israel-Israel”.
She disgusts me more than any other politician.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
Don’t know, not sure they did. It is possible the police took them, it was in a smallish city.
SRW1
I am all for accomodation where a solution can be found. But serving stuff to passengers would appear to be a farirly constitutive part of the job of flight attendants. Would she have been offered the job if she would have objected to serving alcohol to passengers when she was interviewing for it? If the answer is No and she absolutely finds it unacceptable to do that part of her job, she should look for one where that is not a problem.
This is not to say that the snitch wasn’t a bigot. But the evidence for that lies in the complaints about the ‘foreign writing’ (why is that his/her f*cking business?) and the headdress.
@shell:
I suspect it’s a good guess that ‘foreign writing’ means Arabic.
Betty Cracker
@Mandalay: She disgusts you more than Louie Gohmert, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz?
I get why people want DWS shit-canned from her DNC chairmanship. I’m routinely irritated by her chumminess with South Florida wingnuts. But the DWS hate seems out of proportion to her transgressions, IMO.
Splitting Image
There is a material difference between what the flight attendant wanted and what Kim Davis wanted. The flight attendant wanted to be excused from one of the duties associated with her job, which would have required the other employees to pick up the slack. Davis wanted to be excused from one of her duties and to prevent her entire office from doing it in her stead.
What the flight attendant wants might or might not be reasonable, depending on whether or not some of her co-workers are willing to trade some other parts of the job with her. Working on Sunday (or Friday or Saturday) is another thing that might or might not be reasonable. If there are enough other employees that you can juggle shifts around and make everybody happy, why not do it? On the other hand, there is a point where your faith has to start being about helping other people out rather than them helping you out. If you getting the next Sunday off is going to mean somebody else works 13 days straight, maybe helping that person with their load is more important than “observing the Sabbath”.
Davis’ situation is completely different. She is doing a very specific job and is the only person in her county doing it. Her argument is that if she decides her religion forbids her from doing something, then that something simply shouldn’t get done. It’s like getting elected to the U.S. Congress and saying that your religion forbids you from going to Washington.
Before I make up my mind about the flight attendant, I would probably ask a few people doing that job whether that is a particularly bad part of the work. Serving alcohol to people getting progressively more drunk can be an unpleasant job, and if one person is shirking the work and making the others take up the slack, that could become a real problem.
Bruuuuce
@Ruckus: Your data appears to be correct. He is apparently causing some hardship to the rest of the judges in the court, but is within the bounds of his rights. In this case, his dickery may well prevail, though it would be nice if his peers pushed him out.
Amir Khalid
For what it’s worth: while flying on MAS, I have seen Muslim cabin crew (usually Malaysians) serving alcoholic drinks to non-Muslim passengers. I always figured just serving the drinks was okay. (The food on board MAS flights is always halal, though.)
Mack
debbie wasserman schultz
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
Thursday and Friday? That’s interesting. The Jewish Sabbath is based on Saturday being the seventh day of the week when God rested. The Catholic Sabbath is based on the church switching from Saturday to Sunday for apparently political reasons, so early in their history that the details are unrecorded. The Protestant Sabbath is Sunday because the vast majority of Protestant denominations swallow Catholic interpretations whole without thinking, while pretending they’re doing their own thinking about everything. What’s the reasoning on the Muslim weekend?
Joel
@Mike J: The Ginger Hammer would not let this stand!
MazeDancer
@Marc:
That’s the essence. True religious freedom means, by law, no one can do that.
As many have noted, this flight attendant needs a different job.
Have noticed an uptick on Twitter of people saying:
Which is true. And a well-placed twist on all those RWNJ screams about “Gay Privilege” when Americans were simply seeking their equal Constitutional Rights.
Allan
Actual (former) practicing HR person here.
This is not a mom & pop store with one employee. “Reasonable” varies with the size and scale of a company. An airline employs many flight attendants and more than one are on board each flight, so it should have no problem accommodating the request without denying passengers the ability to purchase and drink alcohol. In fact, this arrangement was working until one employee complained.
My company had a call center that operated 7 days a week. When an employee would indicate they can’t work on their Sabbath, management grumbled, but I reminded them that the first question a judge would answer is, do you have enough employees that you can accommodate the request and still fully staff each day?
Is it “fair” to other employees that they have to cover duties a coworker won’t perform, or that they get a more preferable work schedule for not working on the Sabbath? These are not valid reasons for denying the request.
Amir Khalid
@SRW1:
Charee Stanley only converted to Islam after she’d been with ExpressJet for a year. So she could not have mentioned her religious scruples at the job interview. When she did have those scruples to raise, it was about three months ago. It was the airline, or a supervisor of hers (which is surely the same thing) that suggested the accommodation that has now been revoked.
eric
@Betty Cracker: because when someone for the other team takes a dumb penalty, they are a douche but on the other team. She is on our team and not only takes dumb penalties but own goals it way too much and costs us losses to the other team.
Mandalay
@Betty Cracker:
Yes, absolutely. While I do not agree with their political positions, they do not pretend to be anything other than what they are, and they do far less harm to the Democratic Party than DWS.
Amir Khalid
@Frankensteinbeck:
Keep Friday free for going to mosque.
Mandalay
@eric:
Exactly.
eric
@Allan: that is not the same thing. if the sabbath person is sitting in the call center and not taking calls but getting paid that is a problem.
if they make this accommodation for others but not her based upon her religion that is a problem. If they do not make it to her only then it is not a problem. If they fire her for this as pretext that is a problem. If they fire her for this because she wont do it, then it is not a problem. from a PR perspective would it make sense to give her a different job, likely not if there are salary differentials involved.
El Caganer
If your religion tells you not to drink alcohol or marry somebody of the same sex, cool. You’re following your religion. If you tell me you won’t perform your job for me, by refusing me a marriage license or a drink, you’re demanding that I follow your religion, too, and you can fuck right off.
eric
@Mandalay: the same is true for dearest Rahm in my book
Jordan Rules
@Allan: <blockquoteIs it “fair” to other employees that they have to cover duties a coworker won’t perform, or that they get a more preferable work schedule for not working on the Sabbath? These are not valid reasons for denying the request.
Why not?
eric
@eric: the pretext issue will make the company’s lawyer very circumspect given the bigotry in the complaint and why a compromise likely will be arranged.
Amir Khalid
@El Caganer:
Charee Stanley wasn’t trying to stop non-Muslim passengers from drinking. She considers herself unable to serve them alcohol.
SRW1
@Amir Khalid:
I understood that. I mentioned the job interview situation as a point at which the question of a candidate for a job having an issue with one of his normal duties would certainly prompt the question for the employer of whether that would be enough of an issue to not offer that candidate the job.
ETA: And if that were the case, I think Mrs Stanley has a weak basis for the assumption that she has to be accomodated.
Betty Cracker
@Mandalay: I agree she’s been an ineffective DNC chair and should not have that job. But how is she pretending to be something other than what she is? She’s a garden variety Democrat on most issues. I disagree with her on others but have no reason to believe she’s insincere about her stated belief in them. I’m certainly as willing to grant her good faith as I am cretins like Cruz, Santorum, Huckabee, et al. YMMV.
Another Holocene Human
@swanksalot: Weird, some states have 18 yo bartenders.
I know a number of people who put themselves through school that way. Some of them drink underage, some don’t.
Ruckus
@eric:
If you read the link that @MattF: gave us, she seems like a pretty good lefty democrat. If you look at her DNC work, not so much with the good stuff, as you said. And I don’t think the two, a good lefty democrat and head of the DNC are necessarily incomparable. Maybe she’s reached her peak Peter Principle level.
Belafon
@swanksalot: I’m pretty sure that’s so they don’t ring it up for themselves or their buddies.
raven
@swanksalot: When I lived there the customer could reach over and push the sale key.
gelfling545
@Betty Cracker: I’m sure something like one attendant serving all the alcoholic beverages & this woman serving the non-alchololic beverages should be quite easy to arrange. If her idea was to serve none of the beverages, then that’s not going to…er fly.
Ruckus
@swanksalot:
I believe that several states are like that, I’ve seen it in other states as well as IL.
eric
@Ruckus: she is a vanilla democrat. And it is not her core democratic values I challenge as they play out as a representative. In fact, the criticized statements in the entry certainly dont offend me. But what is lacking is ANY positive action taken as head of the DNC.
mclaren
Looking forward to the Aztec nicu nurse who says her religion requires her to sacrifice infants to her god tlaloc.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@bbleh:
(Emphasis added.)
I think that’s the key. If (as posited later) the whole crew is averse to serving alcohol, then it’s the management’s responsibility to schedule a crew that can serve the needs (or expected wants) of the passengers.
If it’s not possible to accommodate the hand-off of serving alcohol or not, then she needs to have a different job in the organization.
This really is a management issue, not this woman’s religious practices issue. It’s their job to accommodate her within the constraints of their public accommodations responsibilities.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Splitting Image:
Agree. Not comparable. I would be happy to accommodate Ms. Davis if someone else could just as easily issue the licenses.
Amir Khalid
@SRW1:
Bear in mind that her employer suggested that accommodation in the first place, and it seemed to work okay until another flight attendant complained.
Ruckus
@eric:
Oh we agree. I replied to a DNC email once not to expect any money from me until they at least attempt to do a better job and that I see the head of the DNC to be if not the only problem, a very big one.
Another Holocene Human
@Frankensteinbeck: Roman workweeks were ten days, not sure what the on/off schedule was. The 7 day thing is an astrological calendar.
Really interesting story there, somebody ought to write a book. Also, I think the 7 day calendar has roots in India but it could have been you know further west and earlier in time like Babylon or something. It seems clear to me that China to the East and the Romans to the West borrowed from the Indian system.
The barbarians outside the walls of the Roman territory got confused and thought the Romans had named the days after gods rather than planets. So they substituted the names of their own gods.
benw
Why can’t Davis and Stanley just do what reasonable people have been doing since forever?
Judge the people you don’t approve of silently while treating them as rudely as you feel like you can get away with and not get sacked?
Works for me! And I’m off to vacuum out the cars. I’m strongly considering conversion to a belief system whose firm religious convictions involve sitting on my ass in front of the US Open instead of doing Sunday chores
Baud
@benw:
Welcome to Baudism!
Amir Khalid
@mclaren:
That is an absurd and offensive comparison.
oldgold
Making accommodations to the Bronze Age is seldom reasonable.
SRW1
@Amir Khalid:
I did bear that in mind. But I also recall situations from my own managing of employees where issues came up that required accomodations. When that happens, the manager sometimes has to make a judgement of whether a possible solution will or won’t work. Often times that involves a judgement about the willingness of other employees to cooperate. And those kinds of judgement calls can be misses.
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
But why Friday? Calendar disagreement on when the seventh day is? Or is it pegged to something other than the ‘God rested on the seventh day’ Judeo-Christian Sabbath?
Another Holocene Human
@mclaren:
Aren’t most aztecas Roman Catholics? Isn’t that all about sacrificing pregnant mothers to Great God Papal Infallibility?
WaterGirl
@Baud: You’re a religion (Baudism!) and a 2016 candidate (Baud! 2016) No wonder you deserve a rest!
P.S. If your religion involves Sunday chores, that’s just wrong. Sunday should be the FREE square on the bingo card. Other days are for chores.
greennotGreen
For many years I worked in a basic biomedical research lab that did little mouse work, and that was handled by one post-doc. Eventually, that changed, and my boss asked me to take over an appreciable amount of the experiments. I have never been willing to work with animals for research, even if I support the work being done. (How many of us would become vegetarians if we had to work in the slaughterhouses? I volunteer for tofu production.) Anyway, I reminded my boss of that and offered to transfer to another lab. I did NOT say, I want to keep my job but not do the work you want me to do. In this case, I had not changed my beliefs; the job had changed. Nevertheless, I recognized that I was not willing to do the (new) job and offered to resign.
Why is this such a hard decision for other people?
Another Holocene Human
@benw:
Fuck yeah, where do I sign up? I have some frigging paperwork to do but there’s a book sitting on my couch begging to be read instead.
Elizabelle
Haven’t read the thread, but I think Miss Stanley should find a job in customer service or reservations or corporate or anything that does not put her in contact with alcohol.
She could work with the airline, but not in an alcohol-serving capacity.
Given her aversion to alcohol, would be nice if she had piloting skills, no?
feebog
@Allan:
A former LR person who worked for a very large federal agency for many years here. I represented the agency before the EEOC many times. The issue of a person who want s a particular day off because of religious beliefs is one I dealt with several times. We resisted because our agency was a 24/7 operation and assignments were based on seniority. The question was does your religious belief trump a negotiated Union contract ensuring seniority in terms of days off.
Regarding the flight attendant, it seems to me that a reasonable accommodation could be made, assuming there are enough other flight attendants. On short flights with only three attendants it may not be possible. On longer flights with 10-12 attendants it probably would not be an undue burden, and thus be a “reasonable accommodation”.
Amir Khalid
@Frankensteinbeck:
My recollection on this is a bit hazy, but I think at least part of the intent was to distinguish our gathering-at-the-house-of-worship day from the Jews’ and the Christians’.
Bargal20
Supermarkets here usually accommodate Muslim staff by not assigning them to checkout or restocking duties in the liquor section. But that’s a lot different to giving a flight attendant a pass on what is probably their major duty on a flight.
WaterGirl
@feebog: If being a flight attendant is in any way like waitressing, I’d say just asking other attendants to get alcoholic drinks would easily put a wrench in the whole deal and would make things complicated indeed.
Seriously, imagine a waitress who didn’t believe in serving coffee and expected other waitresses to take care of all the coffee drinkers. Ridiculous.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Jeb! has trademarked the exclamation point. So now it’s Baud^∞ 2016.
Mike J
@greennotGreen:
Not very many. People produced meat at home for millennia. Butchering an animal isn’t that big a deal if you’ve grown up seeing it. When I was a kid, during the fall every basketball hoop on my street (and I grew up in Memphis, lots of baketball hoops) would have a deer suspended from it at some point. Best way to dress one.
cmorenc
@Renie:
My religion requires me to regularly smoke pot all day long. Also too for legitimate medical reasons.
Reasonably accommodate my sincerely held religious beliefs, bitches.
Betty Cracker
@gelfling545: I don’t know. From what I’ve seen as a passenger, it looks like the FAs split up into teams, two to a cart, and work opposite sides of the aisle. Maybe it would be simple enough for one person to handle all soft drinks and the other to hand out booze, but they’d have to coordinate it across aisles, and then there’s the fact that (in coach, at least) there’s a charge for booze and not for soft drinks, etc.
trollhattan
@WaterGirl:
Naked mopping being specifically excepted.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
Hadn’t you heard? The exclamation point quit. Jeb’s campaign was just too unexciting.
WaterGirl
@Baud: That is definitely not as snappy. You’re gonna lose votes.
Sunday chores and no exclamation point? I’m outta here.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: Absolutely!
Nylund
While I think the answer is “get a new job if your religion prevents you from doing a fundamental aspect of your job,” the two aren’t directly comparable.
1. People could still get alcohol, just not from her. That wasn’t the case for marriage licenses in Rowan County.
2. The flight attendant was suspended. Kim Davis had to defy enough federal court orders for a federal judge to find her in contempt in order to get license issuing to resume. Even then, she’s not “suspended” and can’t be fired.
RaflW
@Mandalay:
The issue we had at MSP airport was that cabbies didn’t want to transport passengers who had bottles of duty free liquor, which I presume were unopened. This seems an extreme position, since the booze remains sealed and is the private business of the booze-owner, not the cabbies. I believe the cab drivers lost.
That said, I think the MSP rule response of no refusal is also too extreme. If someone is significantly intoxicated, it could be a safety issue for the cabbie.
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
That’s a common religious reasoning! A lot of Leviticus is based on it. Thank you!
Another Holocene Human
@feebog: I’m sympathetic to this. If you run 7 days a week, maybe 60% of the employers are at least half-assedly religious, yet all of them must run through the weekend gig when they start out. Then some asshole signs on, asked at interview “can you work nights and weekends”, says yes, and then gets a lawyer and tries to get himself a weekends off piece of work that everybody else has to go 2-3 years to get (or more).
It’s like choosing what you’re going to accommodate based on the chutzpah of the claims made, based on the degree of supposed religious sincerity which is measured by willingness to be an asshole. I reject that. Is the quiet person who balances multiple concerns (gotta pay rent, gotta pay my dues, gotta be patient) somehow less religiously sincere than the entitled git who has ACLJ on speed dial?
This country is majority Christian, majority believing, and has a huge cohort, millions of people, who go to church at least some of the time, ie more than just on Easter and Christmas. Yet only a tiny minority of Christians run this game that they can’t work on Sunday. Most believing, church attending Christians are willing to work on a Sunday. I’m not saying that they like it or they’re not holding out until they can get in a position where they don’t need to. But they’re willing to do it.
I don’t understand why the butthole who tries to argue to EEOC or a judge that his sincere religious conviction prevents him from waiting his turn is supposed to somehow be credible when millions of Christians suck it up every week.
Elizabelle
Also, wouldn’t you expect there are Mormon flight attendants, pilots and airline staff who know their passengers enjoy coffee, tea, and alcohol, and that not having it on board — if expected — is a no go from customer service?
The observant Mormons may be serving it, ordering it, loading it, flying around with it as cargo or beverage.
NobodySpecial
Had a older coworker from Bethlehem (not the Pennsylvania one) at a gas station I worked at. Another one of the staff (this one an Americanized kid whose folks were from Lebanon) grousing that he should get paid more for selling alcohol, because ‘it was haram.’
Said coworker ripped him up one side and down another ‘You are stupid. It’s all haram. You thought maybe it wasn’t haram when you took the job? Shut up.’
Sums up my feelings on the whole matter quite well.
greennotGreen
@Bargal20: In my state where underage checkout clerks are common, when beer comes through (because only beer, not wine or spirits, can be sold in grocery stores – don’t ask,) the clerk calls for another employee to slide the beer across the scanner. Once, when the too-young-to-slide-beer woman was waiting patiently while the mature adult scanned my beer, the minor clerk remarked, “That’s really good beer.”
I’m so glad our system prevents subjecting young people to the evils of scanning alcohol.
WaterGirl
@Mike J: City girl, here. I KNOW I would be vegetarian if I had to be around that. It was bad enough when I worked at the grocery store and the big sides of beef would be hanging there in the backroom – after delivery and while they were waiting to move them into the coolers for butchering.
It was easier for me to take the rats in the backroom than it was to see that. With the rats, you just made sure you banged the doors really loudly and you never had to see them!
Gvg
Actually I don’t see how the airline can accommodate the attendant unless she maybe is always the one in the back getting things ready and never interacts with the passengers. Airplanes are tight on space. Those carts fit the aisle exactly and the stewardess work their way down the aisles serving everyone everything in order.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
But you were my only supporter. :-(
@Amir Khalid:
I’ll have to cybersquat on the exclamation point.
RaflW
I would say as to this flight attendant that they would be better off being offered a job as a gate agent or other off-aircraft job. ExpressJet flies 50-seat aircraft that only have one flight attendant. I don’t think every 21+ passenger has a g*d-given right to booze, but it is a typical expectation of paying passengers on US major airlines that the service will be offered. FAs who do not wish to fulfill this duty should not, in my opinion, be guaranteed a job as an FA.
I don’t believe that our conception of freedom of religion should mean consequence-free practice of religion. There are jobs you can do while being a devout Muslim/Christian/Rastafarian/UU/Jew/etc. Not every job will fit your code of ethics. Too bad.
satby
Everyone is forgetting that the primary duty of flight attendants are to keep the cabin secure and in case of an accident get you evacuated from the plane. Serving drinks and food is a distant third on the list of duties. They really aren’t sky waitresses, there’s normally at least 2-3, and until the one party complained it had been sorted out who would serve what for the most part. But to consider serving drinks one of her primary duties is incorrect.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
I always assumed it was to keep the weekends open for NCAA and NFL football.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Okay, for you, I’m back!
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Awesome. Iowa here we come.
And you misread my earlier comment. Baudism supports watching TV over Sunday chores.
Villago Delenda Est
If one of the duties she’s expected to perform conflicts with her religion, she has a choice: abandon her job for the sake of her religion, or not get chuffed when she’s asked to do something in the normal course of her duties that might conflict with her religion.
This is really, really simple. “Accommodation” of religious beliefs can only go so far in any workplace, public or private, regardless of what flavor religion it is that we’re talking about.
cmorenc
@Elizabelle:
The observant Mormons go over the state line to Wendover, NV to get loaded on booze.
Howard Beale IV
She’s probably operating on flights where’s she’s the only flight attendant, so she’d screwed.
eldorado
at the other end of this spectrum is the recent abercrombie & fitch lawsuit which the supreme court decided (correctly imho) that not considering a muslim women for employment because of her headscarf was discriminatory. the flight attendant case is really a 50/50 deal. it’s probably reasonable to accommodate but you can make a pretty good argument against it.
in general people should act like adults, but that’ doesn’t scale.
satby
@Baud: excuuuse me, but you have 2 registered supporters!
I keep taking breaks because it’s freaking hot upstairs. Otherwise I would be watching tv instead of cleaning too.
Baud
@satby:
Yay. I’m more popular than O’Malley!
satby
@Baud: shut, don’t tell askew.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
And I always thought there was a lot of individualism and variation in Muslim practice, so that one Imam would tell you not to even handle a sealed bottle of wine, and another would tell you not to get drunk.
Amir, as a subject matter expert (kind of, I know you don’t claim to be an Imam) here, is my understanding completely off? It sounds like even some airlines flying from seriously Muslim nations serve alcohol to passengers asking for it under some circumstances from Shrodinger’s Cat’s story about flying above. Surely those flight attendants are mostly Muslim!?
I know that in Turkey various beverages manufactured in Turkey contain alcohol, for example, just from reading about traveling in that nation.
So is this person just picking a more rigorous Imam suddenly? Could she make a legitimate decision to personally handle alcohol while never allowing it to touch her lips? I have no idea how fixed this requirement is across all Islamic adherents, but it seems possible from my reading.
On large longer flights, the beverage cart has two attendants moving it down the aisle. But the very small airliners on short hops only have one attendant, and often if conditions are the least bit off there is not beverage service, which isn’t a big deal on a 78 minute flight, as opposed to a 5 hour flight across most of a continent.
satby
@satby: my Kindle hates my profanity.
Ruckus
@greennotGreen:
Selfish bastards?
If you consider yourself a special snowflake rather than a part of all of them on the ground then yes you are going to think that everything you do, or don’t do is not only OK but perfectly fine and normal. As is obvious, many humans consider themselves to be special, not part of the unwashed masses. T rump springs to mind, a lot of sports personalities, mittens. The list is not endless but it is long. The thing that allows them to put themselves on that pedestal can be lots of reasons, money, fame, etc. The thing that keeps some of us from doing that is plain recognition that out of 6+ billion people there will be some with enhanced specific talents and many, many without those and that in the end of the day that pedestal is all bullshit, it doesn’t reflect on what kind of person you really are or, once that unique snowflake hits the ground, it becomes a much, much smaller part of the whole, eventually melts and disappears.
Baud
@satby:
Ha. I thought “shut” worked there.
Elizabelle
I don’t see this Muslim flight attendant prevailing on job duties, but maybe the compromise will be the airline finding another job within for her.
Brutal to have just plain suspended her, without pay, and a warning she could be fired in 12 months.
Betty Cracker
@satby: Serving food / booze is definitely a less important aspect of an FA’s job, but I bet they spend a lot more time slinging beer than securing the cabin and evacuating passengers in an emergency.
Elizabelle
@cmorenc: No doubt.
Some might call them Jack Mormons.
Speaking of which, Mormonism is the only religion I can think of with “Jack” as a descriptive.
I’d be a Jack Catholic if I was not a former Catholic (who loves Pope Francis and will never consider John Paul II a saint; nice try, Vatican).
Jack Muslims.
Are there Jack Baptists?
nihil obstet
The interesting thing about the broohaha over religious “freedom” and employment is the extent to which it reveals the compulsory nature of employment. There’s a reason it’s called wage slavery. There are a lot of rights I’d rather have at work than the examples of religious freedom we’re seeing now, but all the discussion isn’t about genuine power for employees — it’s about the employer and customers graciously granting an exemption to the employee. The point seems to be to limit the discussion and to protect the employer;s power.
RaflW
@Splitting Image:
ExpressJet flies regional jets seating 37 to 76 passengers. There would be one or two Flight Attendants (FAs) per flight, with only one FA on all 37-50 seat jets. Accommodating her is not easy, as this means never scheduling her on small jets unless they are such short flights that service is limited (many airlines do only water or water & soda for short hops).
If she flies a 76-seater, that means 2 FAs total. One works the First Class cabin and one works coach. So the no-booze FA has to page the other FA each time an alcohol service is requested, plus in coach the alcohol-serving FA probably has to ring up the credit card sale, so it’s more time consuming than just handing a mini-bottle to a passenger.
If she flew mainline, it might actually be easier. A typical single aisle crew is 3 or 4 FAs, so she could work the other side of a shared cart, and it wouldn’t be a big deal to ask the nearby FA to fill the drink request.
eta: I don’t work in the biz but follow it closely.
cokane
There’s an underlying assumption to this post — and I’m not picking on you, this is deep in our culture — that faith-based objections should be respected above and beyond others.
I mean, should employers make accommodations for their employees’ political beliefs? Ideological beliefs? And yet beliefs with an even weaker basis need to be given some leeway, even from you, who seems a staunch secularist. We need to stop treating religion like it’s anything more than make believe bullshit.
hamletta
I worked at eeevil Comcast, but they were always accommodating. I worked second shift, 12-9, in the direct sales call center (not customers). Since all hands were on deck in the afternoon, I would go to noon services on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, as I could just come in late and be there in the evening when there were only 2 or 3 of us.
But I was always allowed to leave early for Maundy Thursday service at 7:00. I didn’t even ask to go to Wednesday evening services during Lent and Advent.
This was in Nashville, where Wednesday night is church night for the Baptists and Church of Christ, so there was no negotiation possible.
Amir Khalid
@J R in WV:
See my comment at #70. My own country’s airline serves alcohol on its flights, although I’ve never tried to ask for it. I know that about Turkey too, as well as Muslims in certain central Asian countries, but I’m pretty sure the really devout ones don’t imbibe at all. Malaysia itself has seen a lot of growth in public piety among Muslims since the late 1970s; but it was pretty loose about enforcing prohibitions against Muslims drinking alcohol (in public, anyway) until about the late 1990s.
Gex
I’m going to start calling these people like Kim Davis, the OR judge who won’t do marriages, and the TN judge who won’t grant divorces sleeper agents. They have no fealty to the rule of law or the democratic principles behind it.
Faith, family, country. They say it in that order for a reason. And if they aren’t troubled by the homeless/dead queer youth their faith creates, they have no problem destroying this country for their faith.
(Conserve your hashtags, I know it is “not all”. The they I refer to are the Christian Right, not all Christians)
RSA
@eldorado:
I was reminded of that case, too. What counts as a fundamental part of a job might require judgment, but a flight attendant serving drinks seems reasonable; a dress code that forbids a head scarf, even in a clothing store, doesn’t really.
Elizabelle
@Baud:
Baud in 2016.
#snarkmatters
hamletta
I tended bar at a semi-fancy restaurant with a hoppin’ bar, and we had an Orthodox Jewish backwaiter/barback who couldn’t work Friday nights.
Management loved him, because Friday nights were so busy the backwaiters were all champing at the bit to work.
Howard Beale IV
@Amir Khalid: It’s amazing the changes that take place when you hear the phrase: “We are now entering/leaving …… Airspace” takes place aboard aircraft.
What’s even more amazing is that no one has had the guts/balls/cajones to post the change of such behavior to Youtube.
Ruckus
@nihil obstet:
Is it so much that employment is compulsory or is it that society has figured out a way for people to provide for themselves and families other than raising their own food and making their own clothes and homes? Especially seeing as how not everyone has the land nor the talents to do that. There are just too many of us to all live that way. So we find other uses for the talents we have and pay each other to do the things we do so that we can eat and survive.
Now if you are saying that it is employers who have all the power in the equation that is pretty much spot on today but that is not compulsory. They are the ones signing the check though and in a society where money is king that tells you all. You get to play by their rules and hopefully the government will play it’s role and control the employers who are out of bounds and the bounds will be reasonable enough to be workable for the vast majority.
satby
@Betty Cracker: I don’t disagree that they spend more time doing that than evacuating people (luckily) but serving drinks isn’t the primary duty people seem to assume it it.
I think the “don’t be a dick” rule applies to all situations, but as someone said above, that doesn’t scale. In this case the dick was the person who made a complaint as full of bigotry as it was of actual policy issues; it really wasn’t the FA who asked for an accommodation and had gotten one until the complainer showed up. If you have a job you like and don’t want to leave it, it’s worth asking for a waiver on one part of it instead of just leaving the job. If it had been that impossible to grant her request they wouldn’t have previously. She probably will ultimately leave, but this all came to light because of a bigot not liking her Koran and her headscarf.
My students will be here on 9/11; they are Muslims and wear hijabs. I’m worried about how people will treat these young girls on the planes.
A guy
They both should be fired and I think marriage is one man, one woman.
Cacti
@Amir Khalid:
There’s also been an issue of Muslim cab drivers refusing to accept blind passengers with service dogs.
Splitting Image
@RaflW:
Thanks for the info. It sounds like this woman might be SOL, unless her company wants to offer her a different position. If she were on a different airline, she might be able to work out another solution.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m glad I didn’t have a mouthful of liquid when I read that.
Cacti
@cmorenc:
Prior to the internet age, Salt Lake City area Mormons would make a dash up to Idaho to buy their nudie magazines.
Allan
@cokane: I agree with you in spirit. I don’t argue for the religious accommodation because of any personal beliefs, I’m just discussing the situation in light of current law and employment practices here in the US. So I think it depends on what approach one brings to the conversation.
Betty Cracker
@cokane: Interesting point. I guess one way to address equal treatment in a consciously plural society would be to deny religious accommodation to everyone. Still, I’d be concerned that people would use that as cover to discriminate only against minority religions, and I wouldn’t want that even though I do personally think all religion is bollocks.
JimV
If a job requires you to do things prohibited by your religion, you shouldn’t take that job. Quakers shouldn’t join the Marines, and Christians in general should not take jobs as executioners. Or you could change your religion, if you like the job better. (A lot of people redefine their religions to suit their preferences. I know a Christian who doesn’t believe in Hell.)
SRW1
@A guy:
You goddamn heathen! The bible says it’s however many women a man pleases!
Allan
Here’s a useful overview on religious accommodation in the US prepared by the Anti-Defamation League.
Note: PDF click for PDF
Ruckus
@SRW1:
One has to please more than one woman? At the same time? That’s a religion that could kill me.
Cacti
@Bruce Webb:
You are correct.
“Reasonable accommodation” applies to employees with disabilities under the ADA and the 2008 ADA amendments. In the case of employee religious beliefs, the analysis is whether the requested religious accommodation causes more than a minimal burden to the normal operation of business.
mtiffany
Well then in that case, I’m joining the Church of Frequent Naps And Public Masturbation.
Prescott Cactus
Reasonable accommodation is great for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). No pun intended I assure you, but this is the camel getting his nose under the tent.
I want to be an “X” but I can’t fulfill job duties “a”, “b” & “c” because of my religion, then find another profession. No practicing Rastafarians working in nuclear plants. Praise Dog !
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
This is the approach in France, and it has precisely that problem.
benw
@Baud:
Do you have a chant?
Congrats, your religious teachings have already been misinterpreted by your adherents!
WaterGirl
@Baud: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I was actually in a restaurant reading this on my iPhone and blurted out a loud HA!
Thankfully, when I looked around I discovered I was alone in that dining room. Whew!
Prescott Cactus
@JimV:
So never been to Texas, aye. . . .
RaflW
@SRW1: Hmmm. I don’t think it’s about the man pleasing the women…
(Yeah, I know, grammar humor)
Mandalay
@Gex:
I never forgot something Yahoo’s CEO, Marissa Mayer, said a few years ago just after she landed the top job at Yahoo:
No doubt she was being honest, but as a Yahoo shareholder I would feel a bit queasy about the new head of the company feeling the need to say that. And how would we feel if our spouse/parent/child gratuitously and publicly stated that we meant less to them than God? Even if it was true (though I find the comparison inherently meaningless), why create a pointless pissing contest over it?
El Caganer
@Amir Khalid: @Amir Khalid: Well, yes. And Kim Davis cannot provide marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
El Caganer
@A guy: If marriage is one man, one woman, what is alcohol?
Keith G
No accommodation for the woman, unless by accommodation one means a non-flight assignment.
Once away from the gate, a plane is an enclosed environment where every flight crew member has to be willing and able to preform all tasks that make up their job description – all tasks means all tasks.
Circumstances in flight often face unforeseen events and an in-flight service crew needs the flexibility to adjust what they are doing as needed.
If a flight crew member is unwilling to do all the jobs they are trained to do when the need arises, they have no place in that flight crew.
Elizabelle
@Mandalay: For Ms. Mayer, it seems to be God, Yahoo and Family.
I speak of her planning to take the most miniscule maternity leave possible once she births twin girls.
Which is her choice. But would love if she’d be a poster mom for better balancing family and work.
Maybe God is mammon, but not stated. Ah well. Mayer is young, rich, and can afford to employ a corps of fulltime baby nurses to care for Baby Girls Mayer.
SRW1
@Ruckus:
@RaflW:
Not at the same time. I mean, ist not like Sunshine and her sisters. But a bit of stamina is required.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: ExpressJet could and should have attempted to handle this administratively.
scav
Just to add a spin to the discussion, people seem to be able to make accommodations for underage people not being able to checkout alcohol in grocery stores (when it’s allowed) and there’s that usual little wait where somebody with a code officially comes over and handles the swipe. While I’ve heard grumbles about the wait (of course) I don’t think there’s a movement to bar all under-age people from taking jobs as cashiers because they can’t accommodate all of the requirements of the job.
Another Holocene Human
@Betty Cracker:
Exactly. The customs of the dominant culture are accommodated in all kinds of overt and subtle ways.
Federal judges have even enshrined some of this into law.
So considering minority cultures and religions in a thoughtful way is actually very important.
These extremist positions–by small minorities or highly dominant majority groups–don’t help the debate.
WaterGirl
@Keith G: I completely agree with you. I don’t get to say that very often, but I’m glad I get to say it today.
smintheus
@SiubhanDuinne: Her stunt of blocking a vote on a proposed DNC resolution supporting the Iran deal may have been the final straw. She had zero business doing that. She should have been dumped for incompetence a long time ago, and may have heard some sounds now to that effect.
Another Holocene Human
@scav: They aren’t being accommodated. Some butthole legislators passed a law (trust me, that’s not the law everywhere) because TEENAGERS! CAN’T BE TRUSTED! and the employer wishes to keep employing the kids because lowpay and keep selling the beers because highmargin. So they traipse the manager over. If the law went away tomorrow the employer wouldn’t shed one tear. They are doing this dance because the lege leadership was dancing around the House floor grabbing their crotches shouting “Suck on this! Suck on thiiiiiissss!”
Has nothing at all to do with a discussion of employers accommodating employees.
smintheus
I don’t see, practically, how this employee can do the job while asking others to step in and serve alcohol. If you’re pushing a drinks cart down an aisle, what do you do, back up to let someone else get to the passenger who wants alcohol?
Obviously the airline’s first priority should be to fire the bigot immediately. Then try to find a more suitable job for the women with the funny writing.
WaterGirl
@smintheus: @SiubhanDuinne: I suspect there was a come to Jesus meeting that we don’t know about. I hope she got her behind seriously kicked over that big FU to the president on the Iran deal.
RSA
@benw:
Strong evidence Baudism is a real religion, then.
Brachiator
The flight attendant thing should be a non issue. She should do the job, quit or be fired. The only interesting part of this is that it highlights the stupid hypocrisy of those blubbering over Kim Davis, and the absurd insinuation that deep religious convictions only applies to Xtians.
For fun, imagine someone saying that their religion prevented them from serving a woman or man who was not that person’s spouse.
Also, I don’t even think it necessary or even reasonable that an employer find someone else who might be willing to serve alcohol, in the case of the flight attendant. Sometimes there is a relatively short window for food service and you want to get people accommodated as efficiently as possible. And as long as the request is part of the services offered, why should a passenger or customer have to endure a delay while a search goes on for someone willing to do the job?
Another Holocene Human
While it’s important to keep in mind that flight attendants are not “sky waitresses” (a term that makes my gorge rise), in fact, they are very similar to rail conductors in passenger rail, the airline is not in the business of hiring redundant personnel. An American flight attendant performs critical safety duties (as required by federal regulations) and also provides what little hospitality the airline provides.
Similarly, rail conductors also lift tickets. No, that’s not their “primary” duty, but see how long Amtrak will allow you to get away with not even trying to do that. It’s as much part of the job as closing the doors and clearing the engineer to pull off. Conductors also have to provide customer service and deal with seating arrangements, customer disputes, unruly customers, and so on. A conductor can get disciplined or fired for atrocious customer service even if she is following FRA rules to the letter.
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
I agree, mainly because I received e-mail from her, personally addressed to ME!, wherein she told me she was “pissed off.” And if she’s pissed off, then it’s obvious she’s doing a great job at something.
Of course, I have no idea what she was pissed about, because I think she’s an incompetent moron as DNC chair (or whatever the hell she is).
The above is an overly-long way (hey, if it weren’t overly long, it wouldn’t be me!) of saying: I expect my enemies – which Gohmert et al. are – to work against my interests, because that’s what they’re supposed to do. I still think they’re evil mofos, and should be tried for treason, but that’s neither here nor there.
But with DWS, I often think of Brando and Steiger in the back of the cab. It was her job to watch out for the Party, and although I expect she didn’t sit around all day with her thumb up her ass, it’s not clear that doing so would have made things worse. I happen to think that if the work of “friends” has the same practical result as the work of enemies, then maybe they’re not really my friends.
And, yes, I realize it’s not all her fault, etc. (Steve Israel certainly joined the “fun”), but I haven’t seen a ton of evidence that she’s had an epiphany, and the Dems are on track to re-take the House.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
But what a way to go?
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Didn’t say I wouldn’t or haven’t participated and enjoyed it. Just the regular, required effort would kill me.
But yes, as a method of suicide it would be a very nice way to go. Might even be able to make it last a few yrs first.
D58826
@Amir Khalid: That was a big issue in the Minneapolis airport. The cabbies didnot want the booze in the cab period. It didn’t matter if it was in the unopened bottles. I guess the passengers should have put it in an closed suitcase then the cabbie would have been none the wiser.. iNot sure how it was resolved
SFAW
@Ruckus:
Call your doctor if it lasts more than six hours.
Oh, that’s not what you meant by “it”?
Ruckus
@SFAW:
She is Jewish and like a few others may have mistaken her heritage and religion as a reason to do, not what’s best for the country she lives in and state she works for and the oath she took but what a few hard right conservatives think is right. And of course that makes her not close to being a good democrat.
But.
She also has to go with what she sees is right. We elect particular leaders for many reasons, some downright stupid. But we expect them to make decisions that 300+ million people could not be expected to make in a true democracy. That they might get some of them wrong really should be expected. (Hillary’s vote on Iraq would be one of those. She got info that we didn’t get. That it was mfg info wasn’t expected, even if it should have been) To get all or most of them wrong shouldn’t be. DWS seems to get more wrong than right. Especially as DNC chair.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
I thought it was 4 hrs.
But no, that’s not what I meant.
rikyrah
if she can’t do the job, she needs to get a new one.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
Sorry – my dislike of her has nothing to do with the Iran deal. That’s her decision, I’m assuming it was based on conscience, not calculation. Maybe I’m being naive. I’m even willing to cut Chuckles Schumer a little slack (although not very much).
My issue is with the way she “ran” the 2012/2014 election “strategy.”
Apologies for not being more clear
SFAW
@Ruckus:
4 hours for one partner, 6 for two or more?
If that had been what you meant. Which it wasn’t.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Wonder how long we can keep this going?
SFAW
@Ruckus:
From what you were saying earlier, sounds like you get asked that a lot.
Me, not so much.
nihil obstet
@Ruckus: I believe we agree, except that you seem uncomfortable with the word “compulsory”, which demystifies our submission to power.
FlipYrWhig
I thought Muslims didn’t believe in consuming alcohol themselves. She seems to think it’s important to stop other people from consuming alcohol. Is that a novel interpretation of the tenet? I suppose that Muslim store owners might want to avoid buying and selling alcohol, but she’s not a store owner, she’s an employee. I guess I don’t get why she thinks she can’t even touch the stuff on its way from the person who sells it to the person who buys it.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
OK.
I was sort of riffing on your comment rather than actually answering, so partially my fault as well. But yes I agree that most of my problem with DWS is her work as DNC chair.
I was also being a little snide about loyalties and democrats because my rep took a very long time to decide and sent me a detailed form reply when I asked if she did or didn’t support the Iran deal. Made it sound as if she had to finish her doctoral dissertation rather than make what should have been a rather easy decision. DiFi made this decision long ago and seemingly with ease, I hadn’t expected a Chinese American woman democrat from a large and very liberal area to take such a long time at this issue. And yes I know this is a big deal but the decision to support shouldn’t be. What may work is, and which has, for this type of deal, a lot of checkpoints for the subject country, is usually far superior to what has stopped working, which is sanctions. It is easily time to move on but conservatives never see moving on as a solution to any problem. War, they see that. But anything more complex than kill everything and let god sort it out, they don’t get at all. And if they are the supreme being there can only be one of them so whose god does the sorting? Theirs, yours, mine? Or should we care, everyone is dead? Seems like somewhat of a waste to me.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@SFAW:
Meh.
Her job is to represent her district in the US House of Representatives. Unless it’s just a figurehead position (in which case blaming her for problems isn’t fair), it probably makes more sense for the Chair of the DNC to be someone that isn’t trying to split their time between two jobs. I don’t know why the DNC has the structure it does, but if she’s not getting the job done, probably more changes are needed than simply putting another elected official in the Chair.
All that said, she shouldn’t even contemplate arguing against the administration’s headline policies if she’s in that position.
Cheers,
Scott.
burnspbesq
@Mandalay:
If Debbie Wasserman Schultz disgusts you more than Dick Cheney, your priorities are seriously in need of realignment. There is a difference between being stupid and being a war criminal.
SFAW
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy – which was pooh-poohed leading up to the 2006 and 2008 elections, I believe – seemed to have been effective. Yes, it wasn’t all Howard himself, but he set things in motion.
The DNC Chair is what you make of it. DWS has done approximately zero with it, maybe less than zero. Someone should find a non-Blue-Dog to take over for her.
Ruckus
@nihil obstet:
We probably do actually agree, except that word, compulsory. It is not compulsory that I work. There are quite a few people living in the park a block from my apt who don’t work and they are still breathing and sleeping. Their life seems to suck as far as I’m concerned. But no one is forcing them to work. Many think that we should but we don’t. We just went through 2 wars without compulsory service. And even when we had the draft 40 yrs ago and more it wasn’t compulsory for many. In the first lottery in Dec 1969 my number was 15 but my two best friends had numbers high enough that they would not be called. That’s selective not compulsory. You may live in an area where there are few employees, say a company mining town in WV. If you don’t own land that you can raise your own food you work for the company, because that’s all there is if you want to eat. Except that you can move, no one is stopping you. Except that without property you have to work to have money to pay for the move, unless you put all your possessions in a bundle, hang the bundle from a stick and walk away. That’s what a lot of people in the world do, they just walk away.
Shorter, work is not compulsory, it just isn’t. Working for one particular employer is not compulsory. Not in this country. But is societies way of making use of any particular person’s talents (or lack of same) to trade said talent for money. That it may be a shit job or shit money is not the same as it being compulsory. That you may feel trapped in that shit job for shit money does not make it compulsory. That you may not like that societies answer to everyone not being able to be a farmer/rancher does not make it compulsory.
cokane
@Betty Cracker: Right, it’s not an easy question. I think there should be religious rights, but they should imo always be subordinate to other rights when a conflict arises. Unfortunately, I think our culture in the US (this isn’t as true in Western Europe I am guessing) often privileges religion in these cases, or especially privileges Christianity.
These debates/conflicts always arise because the harder questions of liberty are usually conflicting ideas of freedom. Best to side on the basis of the non-make believe in those cases.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@SFAW: You support my thesis:
Dean was head of Democracy for American when he ran for DNC chair. He resigned that position when he became DNC chair, and he wasn’t trying to split his time between DNC chair and elected office (or anything else).
Tim Kaine succeeded Dean. He overlapped in Governor and DNC chair for
atwo+ years (2009-2011). Though Kaine was and is a good guy, it’s hard to argue that he was a great DNC chair.FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I agree with you that the DNC needs a leader that is not split between two jobs. It’s a big country and it’s a big job, best not left to someone trying to do two jobs. I think it is used as a sweetener for someone in the party, either to purchase or reward their loyalty. And that sucks. Either way I’d bet the job doesn’t get done well.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Occasionally.
Very occasionally.
And not in a very long time.
Oh well life moves on.
SFAW
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
It’s a straw man: I said DWS did nothing re: improving Dem presence in Congress, you said, in effect “well, it’s a figurehead position, but if it isn’t, she shouldn’t split her time/attention, or shouldn’t be expected to.”
It’s immaterial whether anyone should be asked to be a Rep and Chair the DNC simultaneously. The fact remains that she was, and she (apparently) screwed the pooch on the (arguably more important) job of DNC Chair. Your “thesis” may be the excuse she uses when talking to her friends, but that’s all it would be – an excuse.
I assume she is reasonably intelligent. With that assumption: she should look at the bang-up job she did, and find – or have someone find – her replacement.
Just to make the point a little more: I was on the Board of Directors of a local non-profit. I was on the Board because of the “line” position I held, not because I was an outside “expert.” I took that line position at a time when they REALLY needed someone to get them through some turbulence. Although I earned a lot of good will for the job I did early on, some time later I realized that I was no longer doing the job as well as I had, nor as well as the org needed and deserved. I went to the co-Chairs, and asked them to find my replacement. And THAT is why she should get out.
Does DWS have less of a clue than I? I would hope not, but her performance is not speaking well of her.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: The 50 State Strategy elected… Blue Dogs. Like Heath Shuler. It wasn’t a strategy for getting liberals elected more places, it was a strategy for getting Democrats elected more places, specifically including places where the local Dems are far more conservative than Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Everyone who lionizes the Dean DNC has to keep that in mind.
SFAW
@FlipYrWhig:
It was more than just Blue Dogs, and without it, Obamacare (among other things) might never have made it through. (Ben Nevis not withstanding.)
DissidentFish
Islam does not have one set of rules that is universally recognized — like Protestants and Jews, whether any particular thing is forbidden (haram, sinful) is down to your spiritual leader’s interpretation. There’s consensus on some things — drinking alcohol, adultery — but nobody can say “Islam forbids serving alcohol.” Just “My understanding of Islam as informed by my reading of the Koran and my spiritual leader’s interpretation says it’s forbidden to serve alcohol.”
Plenty of Muslims serve alcohol every day. Plenty drink it too. If it’s too much for this lady, she ought to look for another job, really.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@SFAW: I’m reluctant to beat up on her, or say that she’s done a bad job, because, frankly, I don’t know what the DNC does when it comes to trying to elect more Democrats.
My picture of the DNC is that its job is to make the Democratic Brand compelling. Not to elect candidates, not to lobby for passage of specific policy proposals. If you look at the Favorable/Unfavorable for the Democratic Party, she’s doing that part of the job pretty well. (If you think she personally has anything to do with what the DNC does every day, anyway.)
You pointed to Dean and got some pushback from Flip.
Can you point to anyone else who did a good job as DNC chair, and any specific accomplishments? I don’t think Tim Kaine did anything to show that he was a great Chair. Here are some more names:
Strauss Curtis White Manatt Kirk Brown Wilhelm DeLee Dodd/Fowler Romer/Grossman Rendell/Andrew McAuliffe
Were any of them good or great Chairs?
Donna Brazile was interim chair until DWS officially took the position. Was she any good?
Maybe she’s bad in that position, I dunno. There are some (one-sided) criticisms of her at Wikipedia (e.g. “she’s on the Sunday TV shows too often”). It’s too easy to point at one particular person and stick all / most / much of the blame on them for results not turning out as we hope and expect. I’m reluctant to do so in this case, not least because it’s still too easy for women to get beaten up and held to different standards than men.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
scav
@Another Holocene Human: Well, the source of the unequal distribution of tasks is a different entirely arbitrary source, but the end result is that some members of the team are doing more than others. The fact that some unequal distribution of tasks are accepted without much comment in the grocery instance and the handing out of drinks (usually done by teams on the plans I’ve been on) are currently getting immediate rants is interesting — in this case, I found the comparison between the two instances rather interesting from an abstract perspective, as the task-readujustment seemed pretty equivalent.
ETA: and just to be really unnecessarily clear, the above levels of task-juggling are entirely different from a woman who thinks she is channelling both god and the constitution shutting down an entire office and imposing her edicts and regulations upon all those working under her.
SFAW
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Howard Dean, for one. And I pushed back on Flip.
It’s au courant in some circles to say Dean didn’t do anything, or not enough non-Blue-Dogs were elected or whatever. To me, it’s the difference between a Senator (for example) who WILL NEVER EVER vote with Obama, and someone who will vote against Obama MORE THAN WE WOULD LIKE.
I would love to have 60-plus Elizabeth Warrens in the Senate, but it ain’t going to happen anytime soon, so I can live with the occasional Manchin (or Heath Shuler) if it means their presence gets us to 60-plus on most issues.
Keith G
Robert S. Strauss. I am not impartial, as Strauss is the only person who has served as a DNC chair whom I have met.
But as the saying goes, “We will not see his like again.”
He helped the DNC regain enough financial strength and focus so it could be a help in the campaign that elected Carter. He was was one of those ol’ timey politicians who had no problem working with and for administrations of the opposition party if asked to serve a greater cause. When he appeared on TV to support Democratic initiatives, he had a “right hand of god” legitimacy mixed with a noted Texas twang.
Coincidentally the last time I saw him in public, was in the mid 1990’s when my boyfriend and I happened to be seated at a table in a Houston restaurant next to two other men – Strauss and James Baker. I tried to listen in, but the room was a bit too noisy.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Keith G: Interesting. Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Keith G
@SFAW:
Agreed. It’s almost as if some folks feel that no legitimate progress had been hammered out before Jan 20, 2008.
SFAW
@Keith G:
2009? Or are you talking about W’s State of the Onion in ’08?
SFAW
@SFAW:
But not Joe Fucking Lieberman, that whiny, dishonest fuck.
Brother Dingaling
@WaterGirl: You get it, these other people don’t. I fly for work now, but I spent years in the service industry. They have the cabin split into sections like a restaurant, each attendant gets a section and serves all the drinks. Most people (say 3/4) get coffee, water, tea or soda, some get nothing, the rest get alcohol. They charge for the drinks at the time of order if it’s alcoholic. When they have all their orders they go back and prep the drinks a couple rows at a time, arrange them on trays in order and come pass them out, then go refill, repeat until section is served then go back to the beginning of the section and collect trash and ask if anyone wants a refill. I read the story and instantly saw what a clusterfuck this could turn into. I bet she would quickly be everyone’s favorite co-worker.
Chris
@Howard Beale IV:
Personally, I wouldn’t do it simply because I wouldn’t want to cause any trouble for the people I’d be filming. Even if such trouble is limited to the jerkass cousin at the family reunion saying “hey, there’s a video on YouTube that went viral showing you taking your headscarf off as soon as you left Saudi airspace. So are you always a whore when you’re outside of the country?”
ThatDeborahGirl
@The Gray Adder:
There are already pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for the pill. There is this ditzy lady called Karen Brauer who has a group called “Pharmacists for Life.” They encourage pharmacists to lie to women and say that their prescription is out of stock – when in truth they simply do not want to fill the prescription.
The stores and store managers allow them to lie to keep the peace instead of having the pharmacist tell the truth and confront an irate customer. And the pharmacies do not have to keep two pharmacists staffed, even if they are aware that a pharmacists will refuse to fill certain prescriptions. deblite.blogspot.com/2006/01/denied_13.html
Because It’s ok to lie if it’s for your religious beliefs. Wrap your mind around that one if you will.
JohnMcC
@bbleh: Very interesting article in a WaPo blog that cites this exact case and explains expectations of what ‘accomodations’ are customarily expected in Religion-vs-Job Expectations cases:
washingtonpost.com/news/volohk-conspiracy/wp/2015/09/04/when-does-your-religion-legally-excuse-you-f…
Edit: Sorry, the link doesn’t seem to actually ‘link’. You know what to do….
nihil obstet
@Ruckus:
You make the argument for complete employer power. Nobody has to work, so if the employee doesn’t like what the boss tells her to do, she can just quit. No need to have any accommodation or concern for this purely voluntary contractual arrangement.
It just strikes me in this whole post and comment section that people implicitly accept that the employee must work, but limit themselves to coming down on a relatively trivial issue affecting relatively few people, without addressing the larger issue of the whole concept of how we demand surrender of freedom for access to livelihood.
mclaren
@WaterGirl:
I’m a religion too (mclarenism) and a candidate as well (mclaren for Dark Overlord 2016). My religion involves the worship of lint. Also, licking doorknobs is a sacrament.
mclaren
@Amir Khalid:
On the contrary, it’s an extremely mild and perfectly accurate comparison. If you’re offended by the statement of correct logic and facts, that’s your problem.
But history shows that muslims (like Catholics until the Reformation) have made a habit of being outrageously offended by people who refuse to allow said muslims to let their religion tell other people how to live their lives.
Guess what?
You have every right to believe in Islam. You do not have the right to use your religion of Islam to tell other people how to live their lives.
The more blunt and straightforward response to a Muslim who has that attitude, in fact, is “Fuck off, asshole.” If you don’t like the separation of church and state, move to Saudi Arabia. Otherwise, shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down.
People who think their religion gives them the right to regulate other folks’ lives are douchebags almost as insufferable as the pre-Reformation Christians who loved to run around holding the Grand Inquisition and burning people alive because those people disagreed with some cockamamey Bible verse. Fuck that asshattery.
brantl
This IS just like Kim Davis. If you don’t want to do the entire job, as described in the job description, get another job.
Sondraa
I was looking for the answer to Huckster’s question and sort of thought of this one as it. Then I read most of it and found more ammunition for our side if that’s going to be Hucky’s shtick. Hope it’s not too long. p.s. Stephenopolous should have know the answer to this one!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
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The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by Southern states, which were forced to ratify it in order for them to regain representation in Congress. The Fourteenth Amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark decisions such as Roe v. Wade(1973) regarding abortion, Bush v. Gore (2000) regarding the 2000 presidential election, and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) regarding same-sex marriage. The amendment limits the actions of all state and local officials, including those acting on behalf of such an official.
The amendment’s first section includes several clauses: the Citizenship Clause, Privileges or Immunities Clause, Due Process Clause, and Equal Protection Clause. The Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship, overruling the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which had held that Americans descended from African slaves could not be citizens of the United States. The Privileges or Immunities Clause has been interpreted in such a way that it does very little.
The Due Process Clause prohibits state and local government officials from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without legislative authorization. This clause has also been used by the federal judiciary to make most of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states, as well as to recognize substantive and procedural requirements that state laws must satisfy. My note: this is it Hucky – read it and shut up.
The Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction. This clause was the basis for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision that precipitated the dismantling of racial segregation, and for many other decisions rejecting irrational or unnecessary discrimination against people belonging to various groups.
The second, third, and fourth sections of the amendment are seldom litigated. However, the second section’s reference to “rebellion and other crime” has been invoked as a constitutional ground for felony disenfranchisement. The fifth section gives Congress the power to enforce the amendment’s provisions by “appropriate legislation”. However, under City of Boerne v. Flores (1997), Congress’s enforcement power may not be used to contradict a Supreme Court interpretation of the amendment.
Contents [hide]
1 Text
2 Adoption
2.1 Proposal by Congress
2.2 Ratification by the states
3 Citizenship and civil rights
3.1 Background
3.2 Citizenship Clause
3.2.1 Native Americans
3.2.2 Children born to citizens of other countries
3.2.3 Loss of citizenship
3.3 Privileges or Immunities Clause
3.4 Due Process Clause
3.4.1 Substantive due process
3.4.2 Procedural due process
3.4.3 Incorporation
3.5 Equal Protection Clause
3.6 State actor doctrine
4 Apportionment of representation in House of Representatives
5 Participants in rebellion
6 Validity of public debt
7 Power of enforcement
8 Selected Supreme Court cases
8.1 Citizenship
8.2 Privileges or immunities
8.3 Incorporation
8.4 Substantive due process
8.5 Equal protection
8.6 Felon disenfranchisement
8.7 Power of enforcement
9 See also
10 References
10.1 Notes
10.2 Citations
10.3 Bibliography
11 Further reading
12 External links
Text
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.[1]