No, it really doesn’t. He could be Saint fucking Theodore; he’s breaking the law, and harming other people. I won’t tolerate that.
Sometimes, laws are only effective against stupid people. In this case, he was stupid enough to make his lawbreaking obvious and undeniable. Damn fool blunder.
The fact that there are sleazy ways to break the law without getting caught is no excuse. I could probably start a fire in a nearby building or forest, without getting caught. Do you really want to take that to mean that laws against arson should not be enforced?
I wrote “if the case has merit” because Shannon does not know if hte case has merit. She only knows what the plaintiff’s lawyer has told her, which is that s/he represents a person suing Samuel for discrimination. She doesn’t know if that person is just a disgruntled ex-employee looking to start some shit, or or a malcontent trying to get a quick buck, or a person who was discriminated against in the most literal sense but not really harmed (like her) or a person who was discriminated against and actually .
I’ e been sued in my capacity as a manager. I declined to give a second interview to a literate, inteliigent, but profoundly Deaf person for a phone sales job. We couldn’t make an accommodation for this person, as the job required talking on the phone by definition,and using Relay services as an intermediary was not going to work/ (I used to be a Relay operator, traffic manager, and supervisor, so I know whereof I speak.) We offered to let the Deaf person interview for a job not requiring dozend of phone calls per day by definition, but the peson opted to sue instead, even though the person was no more able to do the job than I, legally blind, can go back to selling cars.
My point is that whether the case has merit is not something the hypo says because it’s not something Shannon knows. “Probably guilty” in the thread title means that Shannon knows that Samuel engaged in such behavior at least once before.
My plan on what to do if I were in Shannon’s place – tell the lawyer very politely to get bent, then go home and shred the letter – is not, I think, an act of conspiracy, because I also would not have spoken to Samuel about it. If he were to call, I wold immedately say that I would not testify unless subpoenaed and add that I am not saying another goddamn word about it to him.
On the notion that people who aren’t breaking laws have nothing to fear from disloyalty: that’s sweet. Were both your grandmothers from Hobbiton, or just one? 
Finally, if Shannon declines to testify, she is not hurting the (unknown to her) plaintiff. She is declining to help that person, which is not the same thing. And she is also declining to harm Samuel, to whom she owes, by my count. six huge favors, the biggest of which is probably unrepayable unless the two of them happen to be in the basement of a burning building together and Samuel is trapped under a pile of rubble and she has a convenient 2 by 4 to lever him free with
Agreed. It’s rather like I don’t admire loyalty to your state when that means fighting for the right to preserve slavery. Though that’s a more extreme case, of course. But it’s still not helping to cease discriminatory hiring when she has the power to do so. The bigot helped her, so she’s not supposed to stop him from discriminating against others? That doesn’t work for me.
But he does discriminate based on religion, and she knows that. That needs to stop.
You can’t possibly think that I, of all Dopers, call about following the law for its own sake.
We don’t know that Samuel is actually harming other persons, because we don’t know the merits of the lawsuit; we only know what Shannon knows. So let’s focus on Shannon. Samuel at minimum rescued her from a vicious assault, and possibly from rape and/or murder; he paid the medical bills arising from the assault; he saved her from being homeless; he gave her a job when there was every reasonto believe she was unrelia unreliable; he declined to take advantage of her sexually when she made what was surely an ill-thought pass at him born of hero-worship and transference; he trained her so that she could get a better job and then helped her get said job. Do you think she was on balance harmed by his refusal to hire her?
Because I don’t. In fact I think that, even if she were a born-again Bible-thumping seraphim-fellating, glossolalist, he should have declined to hire her, because she was better off getting pushed out of the nest. That’s not to say that Samuel is right to discriminate against non-Pentecostals: just that Shannon herself has not been harmed on balance by him. If you disagree. kindly explain why.
I’m saying that SHE doesn’t need to be the one to stop it. I can think of several unethical activities being done by persons I know that I feel no need to intercede in. And in fact Shannon only knows that Samuel gave religious bias as a reason to discriminate against her; she doesn’t know of other instances directly.
I didn’t say anything about you and your views. I would certainly appear to disagree with you, but, hey, this is an opinion forum.
No. But society is harmed by his refusal to hire non-Christians, and that (in my values) is not to be condoned. We all have to stand up against crime when we see it. Making exceptions for “nice guys” – even life-savers – just isn’t on.
(Hey, she can marry him, then she can’t be made to testify. Otherwise, her duty is clear.)
This is what happens when I skip the smiley.
In the first place, as ELENDIL’S HEIR pointed out, Samuel doesn’t simply refuse to hire non-Xtians. He said he won’t hire (for a sales job) anyone who’s nont saved, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Ghost. That is a specfically Pentecostal phrasing, so he probably won’t hire anyone not of that branch of Protestanism. (Which makes it worse, not better.) Of course, he’s clearly willing to hire non-Christians for non-sales jobs as he hired Shannon for just such a position.
But I will ask again: does the form Samuel’s discrimination takes matter, either from a legal or ethical perspective? I mentioned upthread one thing he might be doing. Rather than place ads on Monster or Jobs or TheLadder or whatnot, Samuel may send notices to Pentecostal superchurches and local churches in his denomination, thus sharply restricting who sees the ad. If that’s the extent of the way he discriminates–he doesn’t ask questions about candidates’ religion during his part of the interview process–is it still objectionable to you? If so, why?
I could easily be wrong, but I don’t that. Marital communications are privileged, but that means Spouse A may not testify about something Spouse B told them while they were married. Shannon & Samuel were not married when the communication was made, so the conversation was uttered.
Oops! Sorry.
If he’s making an effort not to hire non-believers, then that’s breaking the law. He might find some clever way to disguise it, but that’s a problem with reality itself. Again, I could start a nasty brush fire that would destroy several homes, and never get caught. Does this make arson “legal?” No: it only makes it hard to prove.
Ah, well: that’s probably a good thing, otherwise whirlwind marriages would be an obstacle to lots of testimony.
I personally don’t think the government should be getting into the business of forcing people to hire people. If there was an atheist who didn’t want to hire religious people because he thought they were all delusional I think he should have that right. The market will force him to pay a penalty for his actions thus penalizing his behavior far better than forcing him to hire Christians will.
I don’t believe that’s true. Interviewers are forbidden to ask certain questions of job applicants, but that’s a different thing than restricting where you post notice of openings. Samuel may not ask an applicant where she attends church or whether she does at all, but he’s not required to advertise in the daily paper.
ETA: I might be wrong there. At my company, where we adverstise is a corporate decision. For my area we don’t use the daily paper much on account of newspapers being pointles for anything but the crossword.
Well, again, that comes down to an issue of proof, not of the law itself being invalid.
If the guy is foolish enough to say to someone, “I only advertise in church newspapers, because I don’t want to hire a non-believer,” then he’s toast. He’s confessed to an improper practice.
If he maintains plausible deniability – “I only advertise in church newspapers, because they’re local, and I’d prefer applicants from this neighborhood” – then he’d likely be safe. He’s also lying, but that’s harder for the EEOC to prove.
(This is why there are “sting” applications, where two otherwise identical people apply for employment, and when it becomes obvious that the Jewish guy never gets hired, only the Christian guy, there may be sufficient evidence for prosecution.)
I’m really conflicted on this one. I do value personal loyalty.
Having been that close to losing it all through emotional disorders and drinking and having so called close friends desert me, then I would appreciate any that would have stood by me.
I hate discrimination as well, and personally have had experience having lived as a minority in Asia for many years.
It’s fairly easy to simply answer one way or another, but in reality, it could cause some sleepless nights.
You’ve got it backwards. There isn’t any law forbidding interviewers from asking particular questions, though people often think there is, but it’s perfectly legal to ask whatever you want in a job interview. There are, however, laws against discriminating against people for being in a protected class, and in practice asking questions about someone’s membership in a protected class in an interview is strong evidence that you are going to use that information to decide who gets the job, so it’s universally considered a bad idea even though the questioning is not technically illegal.
Personally I find the whole attitude of “he did something nice, so now I’m obligated to help him cover up a long-running crime of the sort I highly object to” just weird. And this whole thread weakens any claims of him ‘doing good’, because he doesn’t seem to be helping people out of the goodness of his heart, but instead because he expects them to become co-conspiritors in his illegal hiring practices.
People also don’t find out about job opening only when you post about them. They also notice that you have a business, and apply in person. I have quite a number of people come in to my establishment asking for an application, even when I have no employment ads out at all. I do have some question as to how legal it would be to only put employment ads in religious newsletters. I have no idea, but I would be surprised if there wasn’t some protection against that way of trying to break the law without getting caught.
So, whether or not he is advertising in public newspaper or in church newsletters, he is still going to be getting some applicants who just walked in. If he is turning them away because they do not subscribe to his religious beliefs, he is not only breaking the law, but acting immorally.
There is also the question on how exactly does he test their faith. If I lived in a country where such discrimination was legal, I would probably go join a church and pay lip service in order to function in society, but I would hate everyone who puts me in a position to do that. He may very well have sales people who are not christian at all in their hearts, but are happy to attend a couple hours of meaningless religious service a week to get or keep their job. He almost certainly has some people working for him that not only do not subscribe to his beliefs, but hold him in contempt, not only for his belief, but in that they so easily circumnavigated his proscription.
Now, I don’t know the exact percentages (and a quick google does not give me really useful information), but pentacostal christian is also a largely white denomination. This means that there is a very good chance that he is also discriminating on race, even if that is not what he is trying to discriminate about. Probably sexual orientation as well, but that may not be a protected class where he is.
Condoning such discrimination also makes it fester. Right now, it’s just sales people, soon it may be the whole staff. After a while, it may be that he only sells to (or gives deals to) people who share his faith. When the other businesses hear of his practices and the fact that no one is willing to put a stop to it, they may find room to start discrimination as well.
There are two questions raised in this hypothetical. The first is whether or not discrimination based on religion is really that big a deal. And the second is whether or not personal loyalty trumps the social obligation to prevent friends from causing harm to others. The second question becomes predicated upon the first. I would not turn a friend in for speeding, but I would if that speeding resulted in an accident to which he fled the scene. In my view, religious discrimination IS that big a deal. It may not seem such a big thing to us atheists that consider all of the religions to be one flavor or other of feel good delusions, but it does matter to some people. Wars have been fought over religion. Genocide has resulted from religion. I am not trying to make a slippery slope argument here (in that once a car dealership gets to discriminate, next we know all the people who believe in “X” [or don’t believe in “X”] are rounded up), but there are people who do take their beliefs very seriously. I respect that, as long as they don’t impose their beliefs on others, which is what he is doing.
Bottom line, owning a business in this country is privilege, not a right. It is a privilege that anyone with the means and ability to put 200 hours into a week can do, as long as they follow some rules that were put into place because without those rules, quite a bit of social harm was being done. If he cannot operate within those rules, then he should not be operating a business.
I would feel the same way, if instead of discriminating, the only thing that this wonderful man did against the rules was that he instructs his service center to just pour the used motor oil in the storm drain, rather than paying to have it recycled properly. Or if he rolled back the odometers on used cars. He is causing harm to society by his action, and aiding him in covering up those actions is not the right thing to do.
I can understand the personal loyalty thing to the extent that she didn’t sue him for discrimination, but taking it to the point of allowing him to continue with his illegal and unethical behavior makes her complicit.
You are, to use a technical term, making shit up. The OP says that Shannon was approached by the plaintiff’s lawyer that day at work and is having a crisis of conscience about it that night. She hasn’t communicated with Samuel in any way Therefore Samuel has not attempted to make her a co-conspiratror in his illegal practices. We do not in fact know (because Shannon does not know) that he is even denying the plaintiff’s claims. Some discriminators don’t, because they feel their discrimination is morally justified. Samuel may be one of those Christians like…I can’t recall her name…like that county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to gays and lesbians in the way of the Supreme Court’s decision last year.
If you feel I am wrong, you should be able to point to text in the OP that says that Shannon has communicated with Samuel (or he with her) about the lawsuit. I don’t believe you can, because I wrote the OP and I neither stated nor implied any such thing And though I’ve said that in her place I would tell the lawyer to bite me, I’ve also said that I would not talk to Samnuel about this lawsuit in any. He was honest enough to tell Shannon hte reason he wasn’t hiring her as a salesperson when he could have easily lied; he may well be so honest (as Bricker suggests) to respond truthfully when asked about it in a deposition. My refusal to testify would have nothing to do with his choice in the matter. It would be because he saved my life and brought me out of a very dark place, and I wouldn’t want to assist his downfall.
The point of talking to him is to convince him he’s doing something wrong and that he should change what he’s doing. My loyalty wouldn’t let me threaten him with exposure of the letter, I’d try to convince him on a personal level. I think I would destroy the letter though, the plaintiff doesn’t know it exists, they’re just fishing for evidence, and I don’t want to be giving them any. But I would still want to convince Samuel to do what I consider the right thing, and what surprises me that he doesn’t consider to be the right thing.
You are, to use a technical term, acting like I said shit that I didn’t say. I didn’t make the claim that Samuel attempted to make her a co-conspiritor.
First point to the text that I posted that indicates that I think Shannon has communicated with Samuel (or he with her) about the lawsuit. I don’t know why you’re responding in such a hostile fashion to someone who doesn’t agree with you when that’s generally the point of weird hypotheticals like these.
This is exactly what I was referring to; you think that his help to you in the past obligates you to help him cover up his illegal and disgusting hiring practices now. Refusing to give honest testimony that would assist in his ‘downfall’ for morally wrong and illegal hiring practices is helping him to cover up the crime. Unless you think that he wants you to testify against him, you’re doing what you think he wants regardless of whether or not he communicated it to you. And if you actually think testifying is what he wants you to do, then your claim that you’re doing this out of personal loyalty is false, since you’re doing the opposite of what you think he would want you to do.
Skald, I would never judge someone too harshly for not testifying in a situation like this. But the mental gymnastics you’re going through to not only be okay with this but to also be beaming with pride as if this type of loyalty is something to be admired, I find a bit unsettling.
Does Sam’s religious policy really wipe out the good he did for this girl? I sure as hell don’t think so. I’d burn that letter.
Welcome back Skald!
No I wouldn’t testify in this situation. Personal loyalty means a lot to me. I would testify if it were a criminal trial, at least if it involved a serious crime (murder, assault, sexual crime, large scale robbery), but not over a civil suit.