What do you guys think about gay people who are sacked from their religious places of work? For instance I know of one guy who was sacked from his position at a Seventh Day Adventist church school because of his sexuality.
Now I sympathise with him, and find this kind of discrimination disgusting on a personal level. But really what did he expect? It’s a Seventh Day Adventist school! Should we, as members of the LGBT community, really be signing up to support and work for religious and bigoted organizations? Would it be morally right for me to apply for the current open position of PA to the BNP member of the London Assembly? Personally I think it would not be morally right.
Now of course everyone is free to apply for whatever job they wish, but what really goads me is when a LGBT person applies to work for one of these despicable organizations and then is surprised when they act with intolerance and disgust.
So what do you guys think? Should every organization have to employ people regardless of whether or not the prospective employees agree with their basic founding principles? Should any moral, progressive person be working for and sustaining these organizations which discriminate against allsorts of people (women and LGBT people are just the tip of the iceberg)?
So people who are of a different ethnic group to their prospective employer, who happens to despise members of the ethnic group to which the prospective employee belongs, should simply give up and stand on their beliefs and let their families starve? Or should the prospective employee attempt to enforce the law and/or attempt to have such discriminatory practices outlawed? Or should black people in the US south in the early 60s simply have accepted being barred from decent schools, to cater for the racist whims of bigots?
ReplyDeleteI do not believe religious organisations should be exempt from anti-discrimination laws, as they are currently in the case of gays. If people only ever worked for people with whose views they entirely agreed, 100 per cent and without exception, then there would be few companies for any employee to work for.
Whether it would be 'morally right' for you to work for a BNP person is not the issue, in my view. Should that person be permitted to exclude you from the possibility of employment solely because he disapproves of your sexuality is, to me, the more important issue. I do not believe religious organisations or political parties should be permitted to shield their discriminatory practices behind legal barricades.
In short, my views differ radically from yours.
I find your analogy helpful, my views are still in flux, hence why I was asking for your views.
ReplyDeleteStill... I find forcing them to not discriminate just feels wrong. I feel like it's kind of letting them off the hook morally. "Sure you can still believe it's wrong, but don't discriminate ok?". It feels wrong to me.
Either we should exempt them (something I'm not exactly keen on as I think their opinions should be challenged) or they should be banned from employing people unless they change the very founding principles which are in conflict with accepting principles (something my libertarian side cries out against but my heart cries out for). Telling them it's fine to believe gay people should have less rights than others and then saying but it's not fine to put that belief in to action in this instance is a compromise I'm not so comfortable with.
But as I said, it's something I'm more than willing to accept I'm still trying to fix my views on. It's a tough issue.
Times have changed. A top Adventist leader has now endorsed gay love:
ReplyDeletehttp://spectrummagazine.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/adventist-gc-official-gives-green-light-to-gay-love/
Chuck