Do Businesses Have the Right to Refuse Service Based on Moral/Religious Objections?

[EnderD_503]

Personally, there was something that was bugging me about your examples that I couldn't quite pinpoint. So went off to try to be productive on my day off but...couldn't keep my mind off the examples, because I like to be able to back up my stances as best I can. I knew there had to be a reason this wasn't sitting right beyond the obvious, and I think maybe now I've pinpointed what didn't sit right with me.

So here goes:

Originally Posted by DomnNC

What if one of my business clients wanted me to do the same thing, since in NC we have no protection due to sexual orientation or gender identification, and they want expressedly state these employees will be fired? Do I retain them as a client and program their system as they wish knowing full well that my peers are going to be terminated???

If I’m understanding this example correctly, you’re meaning to say that a company hires you to write a system that would allow them to keep tabs on LGBT employees for the purpose of terminating them if they exceed a certain number?

At this point, you have a few problems arising.

First of all, you have an issue that’s something of a "does the egg come before the chicken, or the chicken before the egg" type thing when it comes to human rights. Minority rights need to be protected on all fronts: as employees, employers, business owners and consumers. That much goes without saying if you want to build a society that protects all its citizens from discrimination.

However, if you live in a society that has not put anti-discrimination laws into place, then the main concern, in my opinion, should be to fight to get those laws put into place. Under those laws it would be illegal for a company to hunt down its LGBT employees and fire them, and so you would not need to worry about whether or not to deny them your services or not because the very act they seek to commit would be an infringement upon the basic rights of the LGBT population.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but your concern seems to be something like: What do I do if I live in a place that has no LGBT anti-discrimination laws? I want to have the right to deny my services to people looking to fire employees specifically for being LGBT/ to people who can legally exploit or discriminate against LGBT folks.

I don't think that this conundrum should results in an "eye for an eye" kind of reaction.

My response would be that you shouldn’t worry about any kind of contradiction between your wish to deny your private business's services to people actively discriminating against LGBT folks and your wish not to be denied services from other private businesses on the basis of being LGBT. When it comes down to it no such contradictions exist because if the proper laws protecting LGBT folks from discrimination were in place then they would have no right to fire a gay man solely because he is gay to begin with, and so they wouldn’t be asking you to write this programmed to begin with. They would not be able to legally fire a gay man for being gay any more than they would have the right to fire a black man solely for being black.

The issue then comes down to: lobbying for LGBT anti-discrimination laws, which would effectively solve your problem.

The issue does not comes down to: demanding that private businesses have the right to refuse their services on the basis of their religious/moral inclinations. Demanding that this right exists only legally perpetuates discrimination.

Originally Posted by DomnNC

I'm a systems analyst/programmer. I design and write business computer systems for my clients. Let's say one of my clients refer someone to me. It's a big ole church, they want me to design a system that among things tracks the number of GLBT people attending their church, reason being, they are getting complaints from some members of their congregation about said members. They tell me to put a threshold on it, if it meets that threshold then they want a list of all GLBT members who attend their church because they are going to tell them they are no longer welcome there to worship. Should I (as a member of the GLBT community) accept them as a client knowing full well they are basically going on a witch hunt in MY community???

This example is trickier for me personally, because I’ve got some religion issues…in that I don’t have a particularly positive view of religion (and organised religion in particular). But at the same time I do recognise that religious people should have the right to practice their religion without being discriminated against, to wear the symbols/dress code of their religion without being discriminated against and to generally practice according to their holy book so long as it does not collide with basic human rights.

However, the Judeo-Christian bible claims that stoning adulterers is ok, for example. Obviously, western law has made stoning anyone for any reason decidedly illegal. And so I strongly believe that religious individuals should be unable to put into practice certain aspects of the bible that collide with basic human rights, and for the sake of modernising certain aspects of the religion that…aren't particularly modern.

Which, then, makes me think that, ok priests shouldn’t have to marry gay couples if they don’t want to, but should they really have the right to bar LGBT folks from even attending a service or stepping foot into a church? I, personally, don’t think so. The reason for this is that I think their beliefs and their expression of those beliefs, whether based in religion or not, are hateful and harmful to a progressive society that takes into consideration basic human rights.

I’ve read that a church has a right to ban a congregation member from its premises if that member has had an abortion while a member of that church. I don’t know how much of that is true, and from what I’ve read it seems to be something that goes on a case by case basis.

If that is true, then I suppose a church would also have the right to bar queer folks from its premises on the basis that they, as people, don’t fit into religious doctrine. But if that’s the case, I also wonder if they’re allowed to ban other faiths, certain unwanted ethnicities, the disabled and so on from their premises. For example, I know that in some countries and in some monasteries they are legally allowed to prohibit female-bodied people from entering monasteries open to male-bodied tourists. In fact when I was ten years old I was prohibited from entering such a monastery. Should that be legal in a progressive, socially conscious nation?

And if we come down on the side of a resounding "no," then we needn’t worry ourselves about refusing service or not because if we lived in nations where discrimination and proper hate speech laws were in place, then the dilemma would not exist in the first place.

So the issue then becomes one of fighting for equal rights, access to services and resources, and employment, housing, educational opportunities.

It does not become an issue of creating laws that further protect those who would discriminate on the basis of an inherent (not chosen) characteristic like sexual orientation or race.

Originally Posted by DomnNC

If you wanted the discussion/question to be solely about the GLBT community then you should have stated as such instead of leaving the question wide open in my opinion.

HSIN has said a few times now that she didn't want it to be solely about LGBT community, but about refusing to service a customer of a private business on the basis of religious morals/beliefs.

I still don't understand how whether it's about LGBT rights or not changes things, since ultimately the topic is about whether or not a private business owner has the right to refuse service to someone based on their being part of a protected or minority group. Because even if it were about race, ethnicity, nationality, skin colour, sex, gender identity/expression, disability/ability, religion or so on, the answer would, at least for me, be exactly the same. I would not deny any person my services as a private business honour unless it was due to some behavioural/conduct issue (f.ex. spouting racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic etc. comments in the store, creating an unsafe or uncomfortable environment for employees and other customers and so on). That is the kind of business relationship anti-discrimination laws promote.

So I wouldn't refuse my services to someone who I knew, by reputation, to be a homophobe or racist or any other such thing. I would deny them service if they began to spout racist/homophic etc. shit in my establishment and began disrespecting me, my employees, the customers or if they generally disrupted the business' environment.

Originally Posted by DomnNC

Interestingly enough tho, no one has answered my questions, you can't have it both ways.

Part of the reason I didn’t answer immediately was because I found the examples problematic and couldn't quite figure out why until now. Now I'm fairly certain that it is because the issue, to me, in either example was not about whether or not you and every other private business owner has the right to deny service. The issue is related to the lack of adequate anti-discrimination laws that would stop these situations from arising.

Anyways, hopefully my little ramble has made some sense.