The Workplace Religious Freedom Act
April 14, 2007
It’s 2:30am and you have just called a taxi to pick you up at the bar. After all, you have just closed the place with your friends on a Friday night and you want to do the responsible thing, get a sober driver to get you home. The cab arrives and you and your friends pile in. Two seconds later, you are forced out of the cab onto the very same curb you entered it from. Were you and your friends being belligerent? No. You were simply drunk. However, the driver of the cab is Muslim and it is against his religion to drink therefor he refuses to give you a ride due to the fact that you broke his moral code.
A woman has just been raped. As she lies there in a heap, sobbing to herself and wondering how she will make it through this horrid ordeal, a thought passes through her mind. “What if I get pregnant?” A valid concern. Knowing that she doesn’t think that she could carry the child and raise it without being reminded on a daily basis that she was brutalized, she decides to consult her physician. The options are laid out before her. She decides, reluctantly, to do what she feels is the right thing. She takes the prescription that her doctor gave her to the pharmacist only to be turned away without getting it filled. Why? It was a prescription for the Morning After pill. The pharmacist is a Christian with pro-life views.
Sound a little far fetched? Think again. These are the type of stories you will begin hearing soon should the WRFA (S. 893) become law. Where does the line get drawn? A cashier won’t ring up your pork chops because she’s Jewish?
At what point do you become tired of giving up your freedom? When is it permissible to write discrimination into the Constitution? Why are people so blind to what is happening?
The bill also seriously jeopardizes the wellbeing of American citizens. The broad language of the bill compromises health and safety by allowing healthcare workers to refuse to provide information and services related to family planning and HIV/AIDS treatment. Under the bill, police officers could also refuse to protect buildings if they had a moral objection to the tenant’s activities–putting people like abortion clinic workers at risk.
This is not the America that I was raised in. But it will be; unless more of us do something about it. Call your Senators. Get involved in your local politics. The religious-right is and if you don’t, their voice will be the only ones heard.
Comments
4 Responses to “The Workplace Religious Freedom Act”
Got something to say?
-
Atheist Blogroll
Someone on DIGG thought that this was, “alarmist, paranoid crap!” To that I will respond with a snippet from MN.
Full text found here: http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=2827800&page=1
I must be sheltered due to my background in Retail, Military, and Real Estate - If I refused to serve my customer/superior/client due to religious reasons, I could be fired/jailed/fined. I never even considered that the public could lawfully discriminate against people because of their religion.
This proposal is complete bs. It would give all businesses the right to refuse services to anyone who didn’t follow their exact religious creed. It will be divisive: 70% of the population is Christian, what happens when a significant portion of them insist on using only Christian-only facilities and companies?
Suddenly, businesses that cater to non-christians can’t find suppliers, lose the majority of their customers…
Did we kill the Jim Crowe “Separate but Equal” laws 50 years ago?
If this is passed, I’m going to convert to a religion called Excuseism. Excuseists believe in one god who sometimes issues orders which are heard only by the person receiving them and must be obeyed. I suspect I’ll receive many orders to play Ping Pong in the office break room all day.
When you take a job, you take on the possibility that you will be called upon to cater to people you do not agree with. So deal with it.
If you refuse to transport drunks because it is against your religion, you’ll lose a lot of money. Can you afford to be picky?
Birth control is fairly big business, and is worth a great deal to a pharmacy on a day-to-day basis I assume. Can you afford to strike out your big product?
When you are a constable, you take on the duty to defend all citizens no matter what. If you can’t accept that responsibility, you have no business on the force.
Is it really so hard?