This week’s “Moan” about my struggle to tolerate the intolerant has certainly brought out some terrific examples of how a dialogue of thoughts and ideas and sharing of the same, without adding insults or expressing personal animosity is supposed to work. I do love good dialogue – even if two minds cannot quite meet – it’s all quite marvelous – this process of exchanging views and remaining friends – even if it’s one-dimension on a Facebook wall or blog discussion thread – if only our elected-officials could do this eh?
What I am seeing and hearing and reading, sadly, are more and more examples of an employer’s private faith-based “policies” superseding an employee’s private faith-based “practices” — there’s an old saying about “your right to swing your fist ends just beyond the tip of my nose” — and I think it’s very nearly morally reprehensible that in a free-society anyone believes that it is somehow okay to tell employees that if they do not share the faith of the employer they should pack up their things and seek employment elsewhere.
Frankly, it’s none of an employer’s business what faith the businesses employees practice or fail to practice. That’s as ridiculous an argument as “corporations are people” – utterly ridiculous. Business principles or business morality ought to include business respecting the private personal beliefs and rights of its employees. A business is an IT not a he nor a she. An IT. And as an IT, IT cannot, must not swing its faith-based policy fist without regard for the noses of ITS employees.
A person can have “personal faith-based beliefs” – an LLC for example cannot. An LLC can have over-arching business “principles” but an LLC cannot “practice” religious beliefs. A business cannot pray… it cannot worship… and so on. A business which under the direction of its human owner develops a business model which discriminates one employee from another based on the perceived differences in the human owner’s religious belief and those of the employee’s can only be doing so out of religious superstitions.
I don’t mind, since I understand where employers (from religious colleges to wedding cake makers) are “coming from from” that they (employers) might come to believe that “to work for me and mine you will simply have to abide by the faith-based religious principles by which I operate my business or college.” — but at the same time, I just wish such folks would simply say, this:
“Look it’s discrimination… I get that… but I am following my perception of religious reality… and to do otherwise would be against my deeply-held, faith-based beliefs. I am sorry but I must do this whether or not we share the same beliefs. If you are going to work for me and my company or college or even in anyway do business with me or I with you, this is just the way it’s going to have to be.”
But I cannot imagine we will ever hear that from any such employers.
Instead, from my viewpoint, they will likely continue to hide behind this veil of “religious freedom” and in a rather strange twist, claim themselves to be the victims of discrimination.
One man’s freedom is as it turns out, can at least in a modern sense, become another man’s shackles.
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Mister Journalism: "Reading, Sharing, Discussing, Learning" 