First of all, you’ve misunderstood me. I am not saying that the “person who devoted more time in study of his profession should have more leeway on expressing his religious beliefs at work”. I am merely stating that I will respect that person’s beliefs more. It’s not a profound philosophical point of view, it’s a statement that shows the value I put on education.
Secondly, your hypothetical clerk at Target who is a religious scholar is worthy of mucho respect–except that when he refuses to ring up a package of bacon, I suspect him of a publicity stunt, not profound belief. He’s a victem of the world we live in, where quirks that once were known only to the people who saw things happen live are now on YouTube.
Training is only important from the perspective that it is easier to replace a minimum wage, minimumly trained employee than it is a highly educated and experienced employee. It has little to do with whether someone should get respect, and little to do with whether someone should get leeway.
Were I a pharmacist, that’s probably the route I’d take. Or even more likely, I’d go ahead and dispense the morning-after-pill, on the grounds that there’s not that much difference between me dispensing it and me requiring the person wanting it to get someone else to dispense it, except for the convenience factor. But, I’m not a pharmacist.
Laudable opinion, but I haven’t noticed anyone in this thread doing that.
Turek’s point (at least as I understood it) is that if we’re going to allow religious beliefs to influence workplace prohibitions, where do we draw the line? What constitutes a “religious belief” making it worthy of special consideration? What makes a particular “divine revelation” credible, as opposed to just being someone’s own manufactured expedient?
According to your criteria, it apparently has to be a) written down somewhere, and b) really old. Does Mormonism qualify? Would it be fine for LDS cashiers to refuse to ring up alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea, for example?
The downside of going that route, I guess, is that it requires you to admit that your refusal to sell pork or the morning-after pill won’t stop anyone from getting it. That’s kind of a bringdown if - hypothetically - your real intention was to moralize and make a point rather than just following your own beliefs.
In the UK a significant protion of our small shops are owned and run by Muslims, many also sell booze coca-cola cigarettes and anything else.
I have never ever heard of a person having difficulty purchasing such products in these outlets.
It is true that you will not find these items in Halal shops, or Kosher for that matter, but you have a choice, go there or not, but it seems that these idiots are very selective, they just think Americans are stupid enough to put up with it.
If a shop states it caters for a particular segment of the market, fine, but if it is purporting to serve the community, than the community is what is should serve, not God.
I can assure you that if that was tried in the UK, the shop or pharmacy would be out of business very quickly indeed, they simply would have no custom.
In the case of a pharmacy that refused to dispense prescription treatments, I would not be at all surprised if evey local GP withdrew their trade from there.
It would probably lose its licence to practice too.
It is irrelevant whether or not my religion prohibiting the handling of Cheetos passes some arbitrary litmus test you’ve imposed to determine “legitimacy.”
I am not trying to set any criteria or to argue against anything except stupidity. Every time Scripture comes up, someone says something stupid like; “Oh well I will just write down : ‘Red suspenders are better than green suspenders. People who wear green suspenders should get hit in the face with a trout. PS, this is the Word Of God,’ on a piece of paper and start The Church Of Red Suspenders and start hitting people with green suspenders with trouts in the face and claim protection under the laws that protect freedom of religion.”
It’s not a good argument, it doesn’t prove anything, and it’s not constructive at all.
Your Mormonism analogy doesn’t apply, unless Mormons are forbidden from selling or benefiting financially from caffeine, tobacco and alcohol. These Muslims are interpreting a passage in the Q’uran as saying that they may not sell pork items. I don’t know if it’s actually written in there or not, because I haven’t read the Q’uran. But I can accept that some Muslims truly and sincerely believe that Allah does not want them to sell pork items and have an Imam somewhere to back them up, and I don’t think that should just be dismissed, when it’s clearly relevant to the discussion.
In my opinion, cashiers and pharmacists may have to handle your products but they should not be actually thinking about the product and what it means to them. The privacy of the customer should be the main priority since that is whom they are serving. In essence cashiers should be viewing all items as if they’re in plain brown paper packaging and the contents are a mystery. They should not be commenting on* the item or making judgements or assumptions about the item or the customer. They should be automatons.
The same goes for pharmacists, they should only be paying attention to the point that the name and strength of the drug on the Rx match the name and strength of the drug they label with the provide instructions and give to the customer. Yes, they should question if they know the drug will harm the customer and feel there is a mistake on the Rx but they should not make assumptions that the drug is going to harm some non-existent being or project their personal beliefs on others.
*I hate it when cashiers have to comment on my purchases, like “Oh, is this any good?” (No, it’s crap that’s why I buy it all the time!). I know they’re just trying to make small talk but I don’t want to discuss my purchases.
In the U.S. the legal principle is that an employer must accommodate an employee’s religious belief, unless it creates an undue burden on the employer. This applies for religious beliefs I personally hold, those I don’t hold but am sympathetic to, and beliefs I disagree with. A huge part of what the U.S. is about is respecting the diversity of religious beliefs.
So the cashier who doesn’t want to ring up pork due to a sincerely held religious belief is legally required to be accommodated by the employer, as long as it is not an undue burden on the employer. Since the customer service manager stops by checkouts to handle all kinds of other transactions, and customers frequently scan and bag their own products at the U-Scan, an employer would be hard-pressed to say this is an undue burden.
Side note - From a pragmatic staffing perspective, the grocery stores around me seem to benefit from having some Muslim employees. These employees work a lot of Sundays and around Christmas when it is traditionally hard to staff.
The cab driver situation is a bit different. As previously noted, many cab drivers are self-employed, not employees of a company. With respect to non-service dogs and alcohol, as far as I can tell the self-employed cab driver has the right to decide what he wants to transport. Do we want the government to pass a law that if you drive a cab you need to transport absolutely anything the passenger brings along? With respect to the service dogs, though, I expect the public accommodation provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act would apply. Thus, the cab drivers will need to find a way to transport the service dogs in accordance with the law. Hopefully there can be some sort of theological understanding worked out that these dogs are special.
In general, the pharmacists situation is the same as the cashiers. The problem arises when there are not multiple pharmacists available to fill the prescription. There, I feel our laws regarding access to medical care may be somewhat lacking. The way I’d like to see this work is that pharmacists can refuse to fill the prescription if it is not an undue hardship on the employer OR THE PATIENT. That is the part that seems to be missing.
It’s not saying something stupid, it’s making fun of something you hold dear. It may be insulting, but is it any less insulting than the belief that a large portion of humanity is doomed to suffer in eternity because they don’t believe in the same old book that you do?
I disagree. The supply of cabs is limited and they must have government permits, therefore I feel that the govt has a compelling interest in making sure that cabbies serve all fares that pose no threat. I also expect that cabs are considered a “public accommodation” and therefore can not discriminate.
I think that is a good idea, but having a cab refuse to pick me up because I have a bottle of wine with me is clearly an undue hardship on me.
So the hypothetical Target MBA (I happened to run into a Muslim Target MBA at the airport last year, his MBA was from MIT - I’d forgotten you could get an MBA from MIT) who decides Target won’t carry pork products or that his division won’t track their sales is OK because he has as much education as the pharmacist?
The hypothetical Muslim Target MBA who decides Target won’t CARRY pork products gets a free pass from me under the “Why does Target have to carry food?” clause (or maybe the “Just because Target sells food doesn’t mean Target has to sell all kinds of food” clause), not because of relative educational levels.
But that’s a whole separate issue from the issue of whether the clerk (or pharmacist) should ring up a product he or she finds objectionable but the management has decided will be available.
So it would be a little odd–that’s a good argument for not hiring a Muslim MBA (who objects to selling pork) for any role in which he will be making the decision whether Target will be carrying pork products. It has nothing to do with the question of whether objecting to sales of pork products is worthy of respect.