Restaurant discounts with church flyers

In My Humble Opinion
61

A better example than the NAACP might be an organisation that excludes from membership on racial grounds, like the Ku Klux Klan or the “Illinois Nazis”. You’d have a very good case that offering a discount to members of such a group was effectively racial discrimination.

However, in most cases, anyone can attend a church service, so I don’t see offering a discount to people who provide evidence of church-going to be religious discrimination. If I, as an atheist, want the discount, I just have to suffer through the prayers and sermon like the Christians do.

62

Just FYI, my statement: “If you don’t attend a church which hands out bulletins”, was meant to be inclusive of both:
a) those whose attend churches which don’t hand out bulletins
b) those who don’t attend church

I figured that you were likely in the latter camp, anyway. :slight_smile:

63

Thr practice is very common here in Memphis, and it doesn’t much bother me. It’s just an acknowledgement that this ia a town of churchgoers; the restaurant is trying to help its bottom line.

The only sense in which I might be bothered is because hereabouts the biggest denomination is the Church of God in Christ, and many persons from that denomination are notoriously bad tippers. When COGIC was still having its annual [del]convocation[/del] convention in Memphis, many local businesses would go out of their way to solicit conventioneers’ custom. Said conventioneers were infamous for being both demanding and cheap. When they moved their convention out of the city a few years back, the city fathers were upset, but the average waiter or waitress was, at best, neutral, and often actively happy to be rid of them.

64

The NAACP does not discriminate on racial grounds. It’s an organization aimed to uplift black people, not to downgrade white people, and anyone is welcome. It is ludicrous, insulting, and borderline racist to compare them to the KKK, if only because the number of people the NAACP has lynched is…let me check…zero.

65

So there’s no additional burden upon non-NAACP members to enjoy the benefit of the discount by forcing them to enrol in said organization? Filling out a membership application, paying the membership fee, and waiting for the credentials to arrive is no burden, whereas walking into a church building is a significant burden? :rolleyes: Methinks the only religious oppression going on is in thy mind.

66

There are churches that put ads like that in their weekly bulletin? I’ve never heard of such a thing.

67

I can think of two churches hereabouts that do that.

68

Gather ye, people, and hear me talk of the topic of “indirect discrimination”.

In an EXTREMELY simplified story, because I don’t know much.

But the reason we have “protected classes” is that if I discriminate against people based on some stupid prejudice that only I have, it doesn’t make much difference. But we have had a history of essentially <i>everyone</i> in a country discriminating against women, or black people, or foreign people, or people-not-of-religion-X, and <i>then</i> those people find themselves unable to do many basic human things at all. So, very wisely, many countries made discrimination on those grounds illegal, and things got somewhat better.

However, many countries (I assume the USA, but don’t know for sure) also don’t allow indirect discrimination in many situations. That is, I can’t put up a sign saying “no women”, but I also can’t put up a sign saying “no people of either gender with long hair” because woman are more likely to have long hair. And if that WERE allowed then everyone who WANTED to discriminate against a protected class would just put up a sign saying “no foreign-sounding names” rather than “no foreigners” and get away with it.

This has the problem that sometimes someone wants to discriminate for a good reason. Say, the job often involves lifting heavy things, and they want a strong person. But it’s not clear if it REALLY needs someone who can lift heavy things or actually the employer is exaggerating, so a court has to decide.

Often this happens completely by accident, an employer (or other) genuinely didn’t realise a potential problem. And sometimes a court says “that’s silly, it clearly wasn’t discrimination” and sometimes “sorry, that’s clearly discrimination even if you didn’t mean it, you have to stop”.

The point I’m making is that this is NOT COMPLETELY OBVIOUS and you can’t figure it out solely by thinking hard – you have to know the history a little. So people trying to decide whether this issue is a problem can’t do it purely by expressing opinions, it depends if it fits into a history of discrimination or not.

Does it?

I don’t know. It probably breaks the letter of the law, as Christians are much, much more likely to have a church bulletin than non-Christians (even though many Christians don’t, and some Christians do, and all can).

But also, it’s probably not intended to do so; it’s probably intended to support religiously active people, rather than Christians generally, and probably to bring in custom.

The test would be, if there were a synagogue nearby, and someone did bring in a synagogue newsletter, would the response be “out! out! out!” or “oh, huh, I didn’t think of that, ok, that’s fine”? If the first, that’s bad, and morally and probably legally discrimination against a protected class. If the second, then probably not (although maybe they should alter their advertising to make it clear).

Pretty much like the court case linked above.

If there isn’t a synagogue nearby, there probably isn’t much problem, even if there are non-religious people nearby. So for once, I recommend “live and let live”, until a committed non-Christian genuinely wants a cheap lunch, at which point we should decide.

69

I don’t think these promotions are intended to support religious people at all. They’re meant to drum up business. Consider the baseball ticket story mentioned above: the ballpark was willing to provide bulletins to anyone who didn’t have one.

It’s just a sale, people. The restaurant, ball park, or whatever is believe that, if they promise a 15% discount or whatever to persons in a given class, enough addtional persons in that class will patronize the institution to more than compensate for the loss in revenue per order.

70

Not offended, curious. :slight_smile: I didn’t ask for the discount, and I tipped the very nice waitress well, thankyouverymuch. Don’t know where anyone is getting “offended” from. Unless, of course, that is the only argument you have. :slight_smile: We all know being offended is bad, bad, bad.

Would it be ok if a restaurant required someone to attend a meeting of the local Atheist Society to get a discount? Just wondering. Believers would be welcome, of course, and should be just as happy to be there as I would be to go to church.

I do get that possession of church flyer is not the same as being a believer, but in my humble opinion, it is against the spirit, if not the letter, of the law, as in the case Bearflag70 presented.

71

It was very common in the bulletins of Catholic churches when I was growing up. As I’m not a practicing Catholic any more, I can’t say if it’s still the case. In the Lutheran churches I’ve attended as an adult, it’s a pretty uncommon practice.

72

Let me hash this out and see where we end up.

NAACP is a nonprofit. Its mission is to ensure equality and eliminate race based discrimination. Despite the name of the organization, you don’t have to be a certain race to join, nor does the NAACP promote people of a certain race over another. I don’t see NAACP as discriminating based upon race and, in that sense, it is no different than any other secular nonprofit (e.g., environmental, disease, educational causes, etc.). I guess anyone can join by essentially sending in a few bucks and filling out a form.

Some nonprofits are secular and some are religious. They fall under different statutes.

Comparing apples to apples, I can see where the law would frown upon a place of public accommodation giving discounts exclusively to members of religious nonprofits and not offering like discounts to members of secular nonprofits. If they gave a discount to members of any nonprofit, secular or religious, then I guess that would be ok.

So what if the restaurant gave a discount for presenting an agenda or or bulletin, bearing a date stamp, from any nonprofit meeting, whether religious or secular? No problem there.

In this case, the restaurant is offering a discount to bulletin bearers, but only honoring the discount if the bulletin is from a meeting of a religious nonprofit. I don’t like that.

73

I think it would be odd, but I don’t think it would be illegal. I also don’t think it would be illegal for them to say “get 20% off for attending Sunday mass at First Lutheran on 2nd St this Sunday” Again, odd, but you don’t have to be Lutheran to attend the mass. It’s not really different then giving someone a discount for going to a baseball game or seeing a movie.

But I should point out that you’re twisting the OP, your asking if it would be ok if the restaurant required you to attend a meeting. I thought we agreed that attending mass wasn’t required to get the discount.

74

This is almost exactly what the person in the linked article wrote. And I have to say, if you have this big of a problem with running into a church, grabbing a bulletin and running out, I think you’re going out of your way to get offended. In that case, vote with your money and eat breakfast somewhere else. But I’m getting my pancakes for 20% off.

75

I’ve gotten this discount from restaurants in Memphis simply by saying, “Hey, can I have the church bulletin discount?”

The restaurants are not offering the discount to support churches. It’s silly to think people are going to go to church to save $3 at IHop. They offer the discount because it’s free advertising. All they have to do is announce that they’re willing to do it; the churches then, in printing their bulletins, bear the cost of publishing the coupons. Word of mouth encourages people to take advantage of it, and all you need to do if you lack a bulletin is ask for one at the restaurant.

76

Again with the “offended” thing. I don’t get it. I’m trying analyze a problem rationally, apply the law to the facts, and arrive at a sound conclusion. Nobody is offended here … at least I’m not.

77

I’ll rephrase. I feel like you’re going out of your way not to like it.

If you’re trying to apply the law to the facts. Go back to what you said earlier. You claimed that walking into a church, grabbing a bulletin and walking out would make you a thief and trespasser. Is that true? The church is open to the pubic and the bulletins are free.

78

I think we agree that if the restaurant gives people the discount anyway, even without presenting a church bulletin, then there’s no problem because there’s no actual price discrimination.

Let’s assume the restaurant gives the discount to a person if and only if that customer walks into the restaurant bearing a church bulletin.

79

And since any one of any (or no) religion can walk into a church and grab a bulletin just as easy as they can stop at a gas station and buy a newspaper full of coupons…what’s the problem?

80

I may be going out of my way not to like it. I admit that. However, that doesn’t resolve the legal argument.

On the second point, I guess it depends on each church and whether it frowns on IHOP bulletin mooching.