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

[DomnNC]

Ok, I'll toss this out there before I go to pick up my nephew.

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???

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???

That IS against my moral compass so according to you all I shouldn't have the right to say NO I'll NOT be part of your witch hunts! Sorry, you're going to lose out on this one because I will refuse to be part of it and will decline accepting a client because of such bullshit.

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.

[Soon]

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.

Snipped the part I will address.

DomnNC,

I already answered why I left it open and Ender explained it as well.

Again, I left it open because I want to know if it is OK for businesses deny ANYONE service (grounded in their religious and moral beliefs) because of that group's immutable characteristic or intrinsic belief system (religion)--not behaviour.

If you are going to deny the queers, you might as well take back all other groups of people who are already federally protected.

What is the difference b/w refusing someone b/c they are queer and refusing someone because they are a woman (etc.)--as long as that person has deep religious or moral objections to a certain class of people, they are entitled to refuse service?

[Spork]

Originally Posted by DomnNC

Ok, I'll toss this out there before I go to pick up my nephew.

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???

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???

That IS against my moral compass so according to you all I shouldn't have the right to say NO I'll NOT be part of your witch hunts! Sorry, you're going to lose out on this one because I will refuse to be part of it and will decline accepting a client because of such bullshit.

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.

I have to agree with you on this, because I also understood it was not only about LGBT being accepted or not in business. I thought it was merely an example.

But the question having "based on moral/religious objections" on it made me think that, well, I'm not particularly religious but I have my own set of morals. And mine make me cringe if I were to work for a bigot.

I understand that this flower lady did something illegal in her country/state/town. But it's not always illegal elsewhere, so I think some are tackling the issue from that viewpoint.

If it's perfectly okay for someone to deny us service because we're gay, don't we have the same right?

I'm not saying, and I think others aren't saying, that we'll all start declining to work for certain groups. But we have a choice, a right.

One last thing, I thought "businesses" meant something privately owned by a person or group of people, for the sole purpose of selling services/products and profiting. I gave my opinion on that particular type of organization. Organizations with social obligations (pharmacies) or state-owned (hospitals) are an entirely different thing, from what I've learned. Those are usually subject to different laws, and have an obligation to serve the public regardless of gender, race, ideology, etc.

[Soon]

To YouForgotTheSpoon,

Yes, I am referring to private businesses being allowed to refuse service due to strongly held religious or moral convinctions--whether it is the local flowershop, car dealership, market, or Taco Bell.

[DomnNC]

Let's make one thing clear, no, I do not advocate a person being denied a service based solely on the fact that they are LGBT and whatever other letters you want to toss behind that.

I understand the flower shop broke the law in their country and should pay the consequences. We only have marginal protection here in the states. Some states have passed laws against discrimination based on gender indentification and sexual orientation, some municipalities have done the same thing within states that do not have state laws. Is that right or fair to the rest of us? No, I should say not but sometimes you have to be careful what you ask for, as in my example above, I could be forced to do that against my own community if I don't have a right to say no, I'll not create computer systems for bigots that will cost my community dearly.

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

[The_Lady_Snow]

Stripper bars have the right to not allow unescorted females into their place of business (unless escorted by a male).

Biker bars can refuse to let you in if you're flagging colors.

Male gay bars will and have and can refuse women patrons.

Once upon a Snow I refused to handle a Coors account.

Bath houses are MEN ONLY.

Because business can cater to whom ever they want they do, is it smart?

I'm not sure I've learned in America this government tells people what to do to an extent.

HSIN the story you postedas far as I'm concerned is gonna cover the gaycouple since for y'all it's against the law.

That's all I have to share about this particular topic.

[DomnNC]

Excellent point Snow.

You also have female only gyms in the states, so aren't they discriminating against men by refusing entry as well. There's a whole boat load of businesses like what you specified and the female only gyms. There are male only gyms as well I believe. The list goes on and on.

[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.

[Soon]

DomnNC,

I had to to take a break. I also had to keep reading it to make sure I understood it.

My issues with your example is that you are discussing an action--you know will be performed after a service--if you know what their behaviour/actions will be with the service you gave them, you have a right to deny them service. You are not refusing the job based on a CHARACTERISTIC.

Dom, you are not talking about denial of service based on a characterstic of the service seeker; you would be denying service based on the service that is being requested.


Protected classes are there to protect people from being ARBITRARILY treated differently, and being treated worse, based solely on certain characteristics.

Regarding the gendered gym example: In this case, the sex segregated gyms are not saying we hate men or we hate women--it is not a judgement--like discrimination. Discrimination, in my opinion, says, "I judge you to be of lesser value than someone else b/c of this particular characteristic or that you belong to a group that I find socially undesirable; therefore I have the right to refuse you service."


What about the days where women weren't even allowed their own chequing account or mortgages were only given to white men? These banks used to have moral objections to women holding a chequing account and minority groups owning a mortgage. Anti-discrimination laws were put in place to protect these situations from happening. Today, they can deny a a person based on a poor credit history--this is a legitimate business interest (and a behaviour)--it is not about denying someone a service due to a characteristic or the fact that they belong to a certain group.

As far as questions not being answered are concerned: Several of us have asked those who believe that businesses have the right to refuse service based on religious or moral objections, if they are then ready then ready to give up the notion of protected classes ALL TOGETHER?

Those people who do live in areas where many groups are protected--are you willing to give that up?

I know I am pretty happy with Canada very close to passing protections based on gender identity.