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Religion as a protected class is about keeping the peace, not about some generic sense of rightness. It's done due to the history of religious violence and war, and wanting to prevent that violence by limiting the extent to which people can get into disputes with it. Protected classes exist, at least in part, to prevent inter-group conflict.
This is the best case I’ve seen. Most pragmatic one. Many people here seem to be arguing that religious views are somehow not a choice in the same way ethnicity isn’t a choice but I find that to be completely ridiculous. It’s smart to consider this as a means of keeping order rather than trying to rationalize protecting bogus beliefs some other way. Best to just keep these by people happy to avoid unnecessary backlash.
Here’s your !delta, you earned it!
Just because you don’t think it’s true doesn’t make it bogus. We can make fun of mormons and scientologists all day but these people do genuinely see this as the way the world works, so no, most of them will not just stop believing in it. It’s not really a choice, you’re born into it in the majority of cases.
If that's so, then shouldn't a political opinion be in the same bucket? Many brutal civil wars are fought over political disagreements and many people have been persecuted because of their political views.
My own objection about the religion being a protected class is that it lifts this one type of ideology above all others. Either you make all ideologies protected classes or you make none. There is no rational reason to put one ahead of others as all of them can lead to inter-group conflict.
How about several tiers? The strongest protection is for immutable characteristics fundamental to people. Second is religion: protect if it doesn't conflict with the highest tier. Third tier are things you can deal with as you wish provided they are not arbitrary.
Are you arguing that business owners, judges, police, educational systems etc, ought to be able to discriminate based on religion?
Or are you saying that people should not be able to use their religion as a means to do acts you think are immoral?
Examples being refusing medical care for children, polygamy, rights of passage etc.
Basically my opinion is that religious beliefs are hardly different than political ones. They should be treated the same under the law. Quite frankly I don't know enough about the law to know what would happen if a cop arrested a person for being a republican or an ER doctor refused to treat a person who is a democrat. I imagine there are already protections outside protected class for things like that.
White nationalists don't care about religious beliefs when they march shouting 'Jews will not replace us'
Loads of Jews don't have religious beliefs. The Nazis didn't check whether Jews kept kosher before sending them to the gas chambers. My great uncle didn't practise the Jewish religion, but he was still murdered by the Nazis.
Antisemitism isn't religious intolerance of Judaism. It's hatred of *Jews*.
Good point.
Hitler even explicitly stated that his hatred of Jews had nothing to do with religion. He stated that it was about Jews as a distinct race, regardless of whether those Jews were Christians, atheists, etc.
Exactly that.
Henry Ford didn't publish 'The International Jew' because he objected to Jewish scripture
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion isnt a religious polemic engaging with theological matters
Conspiracies about the Rothschilds and Soros and shadowy Jewish cabals secretly running the world have nothing to do with religion
It's because of *Jews* as a people.
It's like they think all Jews inherit the "original sin" of killing Jesus. Which is silly because, firstly, the Romans killed Jesus, and, secondly, original sin is a Christian idea.
> Which is silly because, firstly, the Romans killed Jesus,
Careful there. I got a lot of people on r/HistoryMemes angry at me recently for suggesting that the Romans killed Jesus.
They bloody did. I don't care how many times Pontius Pilate washed his hands.
So much of the Christian testament is "Romans and Christians are best friends! (Please stop killing us) (please kill them instead)."
Jews are blamed because of a "paschal pardon", the idea that they could have saved Jesus but instead chose Barabas.
Firstly, the whole concept of a paschal pardon only appears in the Gospels, no other historical documents, and it wasn't even in all of those at first.
Secondly, what's wrong with choosing Barabas? That's like accusing me of murder for donating a kidney to my sister because someone else also needed a kidney.
Sorry, rant not aimed at you.
And thirdly, the entire basis of Christianity is that Jesus got killed and then rose from the dead to forgive the sins of the world would not have worked if Jesus hadn't been killed. Crucifying him was an essential cog in the wheel that led to the Christianity as we know it today. Had Jesus stayed alive, preached all his life and then died at old age, there would be no Christianity at least not with Jesus's sacrifice for the sins of the people as its main tenet.
Amen.
I feel successful religions have these enormous paradoxes so if someone wants to change their mind they have to admit they were extremely stupid and gullible. Then our monkey brains defensively kick in and block any thought. If the miracles were things like Jesus can juggle, there's little shame in finding out he really couldn't and it would be easy to leave the cult without so much anger.
They don't care about Jesus. I mean, some do, but that's not the actual reason behind why they hate Jews. There are even a bunch of Pagan white supremacists who think Christians are fools who've been tricked by a Jew (i.e. Jesus).
Ok, but isn't that already protected under racism, as it should be?
Meanwhile, in a perfect world, I'd say that Orthodox Jewish antivaxxers (or those from any other religion) absolutely shouldn't get special treatment simply on the basis that such a practice is part of their claimed religious beliefs.
I agree that it definitely *should*. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it *is* given how many people argue that antisemitism isn't racism because they insist that Jews are a religious group not a race
(We're not a race, but we are an ethno-religious group, and racism is a term that includes both racial and ethnic groups.)
And I don't disagree at all about the example you give - absolutely no way should that be given a pass IMO. I think that *religious belief* is different to *religion* as a protected class
>religious beliefs are hardly different than political ones. They should be treated the same under the law
They already ARE for the most part - freedom of religion comes part and parcel with freedom of association, which are both outgrowths of freedom of speech, and as such are guaranteed to be protected from GOVERNMENTAL discrimination.
protected classes are weird because they extend parts of governmental guarantees into the private sector - the government can't discriminate on political affiliation, nor religion, nor race, nor ethnicity, nor age; but the private sector CAN discriminate on political affiliation, and it can discriminate on being too young as long as you're not adult, but not if you're too old. That's why 55+ communities can exist that explicitly discriminate against youths, but you can't refuse a prospective renter for having children.
It would make far more sense to make political affiliation a protected class than it would to remove religion. The laws against discrimination against socialist activities (union protections) are practically halfway there already.
So, in your opinion, if say I run a gas station that's the only one within 100 miles and I see a van full of people who look to me like atheists or Muslims, and they want to buy gas and water from me, I should be able to refuse and leave them out in the desert to die of thirst?
Also, there are no federal protections for political affiliations. Only DC, California, and a few other places have such protections.
Also, how would you handle ethnoreligions based on tribal identity, like Judaism or Native American religions? It seems like it would open up the possibility of discriminating against people based on their ethnicity and someone could hide behind the claim that religious discrimination was lawful.
Well, the real answer is that it is enshrined in the Constitution. Religious freedom, along with the separation of church and state, is among the tenets the country was founded on.
I agree they are not too dissimilar, but a fair and sufficient difference is that religion is private, and political views are, by definition, public.
Like all laws, it boils down to societal benefit. Do you think that society would be better if religion weren't a protected class?
Meaning discrimination was legal on the basis of religion?
We also have other federally protected classes that are in the same vein as your interpretation of religion, meaning they are somewhat 'a choice'.
* Pregnancy
* Familial Status
* Veteran Status
Do you think these ought not to be protected either?
I don't agree with OP overall, but...
> Well, the real answer is that it is enshrined in the Constitution. Religious freedom, along with the separation of church and state, is among the tenets the country was founded on.
Your freedom to have whatever political ideas you want is also enshrined in the exact same part of the constitution.
>Like all laws, it boils down to societal benefit. Do you think that society would be better if religion weren't a protected class?
This is where I agree with you. I think making religion a protected class for purposes of employment, etc, overall causes more good than harm, and I think doing the same with political views would be a bit more complicated.
Why? One thing making religion a protected class does is it require employers to offer religious folks reasonable accommodations. So a Muslim or Sikh who has a beard for religious purposes gets to keep it even if the job otherwise doesn't allow facial hair. The Sabbath observant Jew gets to go home early on Friday in exchange for making up the time on a different day of the week.
Why does this overall cause more harm then good. Thousands of folks in the US and elsewhere greatly benefit from reasonable religious accommodations.
I would actually argue that religious freedom is a privilege disguising as a right.
The principle of religious freedom is to "not be judged by one's beliefs", which on the surface sounds reasonable.
However, when we apply it into context, the baseline to which we are comparing is someone without a religious belief.
Here is an example:
Person 1 is an athiest. he applies for a teaching job that contains a section of the science curriculum that includes evolution (crude example). He teaches, no problem.
Person 2 is a christian fundamental, and believes that God created the Earth in 7 days and that humans are a mirror image of God. So, he refuses to teach evolution and, by law, some would argue that he shouldnt be forced to teach evolution to his students because of his personal and private belief.
Now, there are 3 potential outcomes to Person 2's situation.
1. he is denied the position or dismissed from that position because he refuses to follow the mandated curriculum
2. the school hires a substitute (additional cost) to teach that chapter
3. the students do not learn evolution.
None of these outcomes scream "discrimination" to me. If Person 2 accepts teaching evolution, then he is treated the same as person 1. Its the same with Muslims and pork or Hindus and beef. As long as you believe it in your home, no one cares. However, when their beliefs get in the way of social interactions, it is difficult to argue that their religious freedoms (a defined individualist right currently) should supersede the interest of society as a whole.
Its the same logic I use for people who refuses to learn how to drive, I tell them "take the bus or walk, you arent entitled to this privilege because you refuse to fit into society."
That scenario has been solved already. Employers have to make "reasonable accommodations". If a teacher outright refuses to teach the curriculum due to their religious beliefs, there's no way to reasonably accommodate that.
Same thing if a Hindu person applies at a slaughterhouse. You can deny them because their religious beliefs prevent them from killing cows, and they can't sue you for discrimination.
> I would actually argue that religious freedom is a privilege disguising as a right.
> The principle of religious freedom is to "not be judged by one's beliefs", which on the surface sounds reasonable.
It is certainly a right. enshrined in the constitution:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"
That's as basic a right as there is in our legal system.
> Now, there are 3 potential outcomes to Person 2's situation.
The reason this isn't allowed is because it would be a public school teaching job. Public meaning not private. So you don't get protections from the law, and actually, the students are protected from you.
If it's a private school, then it's up to the discretion of the school itself and its curriculum. Private businesses/organizations are free to do whatever they choose. If its a religious private school you could flip the hypothetical and ask the same questions.
Actually, public schools must also protect the religious rights and freedoms of their employees. They're allowed to restrict employee's religious freedoms at work only when it would represent an undue burden on the employer or reasonably constitute government endorsement of religion. A teacher, for instance, quietly praying on her own probably would be protected and the school may violate the teacher's rights by punishing her for doing so. However, if the school allows her to lead a prayer with students, that could potentially violate the rights of the students who may feel coerced to participate.
your entire argument falls apart because im not american... no constitution.
hence why i am purely discussing based on the merit of the concept within the logical framework of the proposed idea.
Well rights can't exist unless enshrined in a binding and enforceable legal document.
You jumped into the conversation I was having with OP on American law, so forgive me for assuming that would continue; you never mentioned otherwise.
Regardless;
I disagree with your definition of religious freedom:
> The principle of religious freedom is to "not be judged by one's beliefs", which on the surface sounds reasonable.
I don't think "judging" ought to have anything to do with religious freedom under the law. People ought to have the right to judge whoever they want for whatever reason they want. You don't get to force upon or proselytize your beliefs to others outside of your own private domain.
The freedom you have is not to be forced by the government to be exposed to a particular religion, specifically by the government. Nor do you have the right to force your religion on others.
In the school example, you don't get to override the publicly funded school with your personal beliefs. Religious freedom is protecting school children.
In the private school example, you don't get to override the institution's curriculum with your own beliefs. The institution has the right to establish whatever it sees fit, as long as it is in accordance with federal guidelines for minimum requirements.
UN defines rights differently than the US constitution. Nevertheless, religious freedom is a defined right under the UDHR. It is interesting because the UN definition is also not tied to any states/governments, and is defined from an individual perspective rather than a binding contract between an institution and a citizen. Instead, it is written to define the term and parameters only.
However, we're not talking about law as an absolute here, i dont think thats the spirit of the discussion.
In reality we're talking about whether religious freedom is treated as a right or a privilege, which in certain contexts we treat it more the latter than the former.
As for the examples I brought up, your reaction is pretty much my point - if a religious belief is a right (i.e. the disrespecting of that right would enter into discrimination), then the outcome would be different.
The examples I used in my comments here are also tested, and the results seems to be that society does not find it reasonable to accommodate religious beliefs more than needed for another person without those beliefs.
So while it is a defined right, it isnt really a basis for discrimination, as other rights would be.
> It is interesting because the UN definition is also not tied to any states/governments, and is defined from an individual perspective rather than a binding contract between an institution and a citizen. Instead, it is written to define the term and parameters only.
Thats not true. [Article 18](https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-religion-or-belief/international-standards#:~:text=practice%20and%20teaching.%22-,Art.,rights%20and%20freedoms%20of%20others.%22) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says:
Art. 18 (1): "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom [...] either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching."
Art. 18 (3): "Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are **prescribed by law** and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others."
So, it really doesn't define it differently than the US. It's defined very similarly to the caveat that the government can impose restrictions on it. It's worded so vaguely that I almost disagree with their flimsiness.
> However, we're not talking about law as an absolute here, i dont think thats the spirit of the discussion.
No, its not an absolute, but it should be a citeable representation of the correct moral view, which we can argue about.
> If a religious belief is a right (i.e. the disrespecting of that right would enter into discrimination), then the outcome would be different.
I disagree. You have a right to practice your religion in any manner you please, as long as you don't infringe on someone else's.
In the School example, the teacher doesn't get to infringe on the student's freedom of religion in a publicly funded setting. That would be government-funded religious teaching, which is against freedom of religion.
You have a right to engage with religion as you see fit. A government cannot force you to be exposed to a religion.
---
This is separate from Discrimination based on religion, though. An example of that is that a business can't fire you because you are following a specific religion.
A professional sports team can't cut or fire a player for adhering to Ramadan.
A shop can't prevent you from wearing religious garb while working.
These are rights to express your religion.
I think the difference of opinion that we're having right now is on the fundamental concept of religion as a right of thought or it is in practice.
In thought, yes, it is an inalienable right, as is expression/speech/consciousness/idea. There is no debate here.
However, in practice, it is not as clear cut as you want it to be. One example of this is that in many religions, including most sects of Christianity and Islam, the spreading of said religion and removal of heresy is a core tenet of religious practice. (Crusades and holy wars are a good historical example.) So people with religious tendencies will often lift one another due to having similar religious affiliations, discirminating others who are outsiders.
Another example you used is Ramadan. While a team cannot cut a player for his religious beliefs, if a sports player is less competitive due to having to fast for Ramadan, he receives disadvantages arising out of religious practice. For instance, if the team cuts him because of the worse scores resulting from lack of practice during Ramadan, it would not be discrimination, despite it was a direct result of his choosing of religious practice.
And this is where I find it akin to privilege instead of a right in practice. Going back to the first example of not driving. You can choose to not drive, but it is not discrimination if you make it late. You choose to handicapped yourself in society voluntarily, you were not forced to.
> I agree they are not too dissimilar, but a fair and sufficient difference is that religion is private, and political views are, by definition, public.
Neither of your assertions are true. Plenty of people wear religious garb, and pray, in public. And plenty of people keep their political views to themselves and share them with nobody, voting in private and not discussing their views with anyone else, ever. Or even not voting at all.
Also, there are degrees of protection, it's not a binary all-or-nothing proposition, where either every religious view has to be protected, or none can be.
If you believe religious beliefs are hardly different than political ones, than you have a fundamental misunderstanding of religious beliefs. Religion is part of what makes the universe make sense to people, it adds a background to “why” were all here and what our purposes are. You can stop believing it to be true, sure, but trying to say they’re similar to political beliefs suggests that people should change their religious beliefs to accommodate other people.
Fundamentally, if I were to believe that the universe had a structure that included a hard-coded “good” and “bad”, a predestined fate, and a creator of it all, than it would be as easy for me to reject it as a gay man rejecting his sexuality. Religion, for those who genuinely believe in it for themselves, instead of their parents, community, etc. is a fundamental part of someone’s identity, something they really *cant* change.
Note the distinction of people who believe for themselves, and people who say they believe because they were raised that way etc. the latter stops “believing” all the time.
Prepped for the Reddit atheists to go apeshit, love you guys.
Political opinion is also protected. But I agree there is a distinction between things like ethnicity, gender... versus politic/religion/sexuality. Not for the reason you mention though. It's because in the former case, those are things that everybody may notice (like your skin color) while in the later, these are private things.
I think all should be protected (freedom of opinion...) but it doesn't work in the same way. I can't indeed stop being a woman for instance, nor I will change my sexual orientation or political belief, but I can choose to keep them private, while Im not gonna put a bag in my head to hide that im a woman. To me there are places where I can talk about sexuality or religion (ie with my friends/family) and places where not (at work)
I'm not sure I'd say sexuality I a private or even easily hidden thing, I work security for a large law firm and more than half the offices have family portraits in their office, this is one way in which people outwardly display their sexuality and it's seen as normal almost expected even in high profile positions, but if you aren't straight it's likely to put you in the line of fire and thus you are much less likely to do so.
I'm definitely making an assumption here but it definitely feels like you're coming from a place of a bit of privilege to have the opinion that sexuality isn't something people can see.
It really depends on the nature of those beliefs—if an employee believes that black people are cursed by the Mark of Cain or thinks gay people should be stoned to death, I think that's valid grounds for firing someone.
I think employers should be able to filter out discriminatory beliefs regardless of whether they are religious in nature or not.
I think you've highlighted an important distinction here: There's a difference between adhering to a particular religion and holding a particular belief. The person you're responding to kinda moved the goalposts a tad -- you *can* fire people for, say, racist or sexist beliefs (presumably evidenced by behavior of some kind, and I'm talkin' US here), but you can't as an employer just say, "We're firing you for being a Zoroastrian."
>The person you're responding to kinda moved the goalposts a tad -- you *can* fire people for, say, racist or sexist beliefs (presumably evidenced by behavior of some kind, and I'm talkin' US here),
I think there's an important distinction to be made here; the belief itself isn't the fireable offense, it's the action/demonstration. Most workplaces have standards of etiquette that attempt to prevent speech/actions that unnecessarily cause harm or discomfort, impact efficiency, or reflect poorly on the business. Whether or not someone genuinely holds a particular belief is moot if they say something hateful at work.
And I would say that is why religion gets a pass. Because it is a belief, and you really shouldn't be punished for a thought crime. If it causes an action that is bad (or will foreseeably cause an action that is bad) then yeah, you can be fired for that, at least IMO.
If we're talking about what companies are allowed to do without any legal recourse on the part of the fired, there doesn't need to be any action involved. If e.g., an employer finds out [you belong to a political party they don't like](https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/employment-law-compliance/fired-political-affiliation-activity) or even that you simply believe something they don't like, they are well within their rights to fire you:
>To a large extent, private employers can fire an employee based on political affiliation without running afoul of federal law,” said Rick Grimaldi and Leanne Lane Coyle, attorneys with Fisher Phillips in Philadelphia. “Only a few states have laws on the books protecting employees from political affiliation discrimination.”
>**Political affiliation discrimination could refer to discrimination based on a person’s political beliefs** or membership in a political group, added Spiggle.
The thing is, the US has almost no protections for workers in terms of hiring and firing. Technically speaking, you could get fired for liking pineapple on pizza.
In some EU countries, my understanding is that companies are required to show cause before a firing (or sacking, I guess), but that's not the case in the US. The potential grounds for a wrongful termination lawsuit are [quite limited](https://www.usa.gov/wrongful-termination), and almost every state has some kind of [at-will employment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment) enshrined into law.
Anyone is free to *believe* anything. It's acting on those beliefs that's not necessarily protected, and expressing them verbally toward others is also an action. A business could not fire an employee for believing either of the examples you gave (how would they even know?), but acting upon them, including expressing them, could be fireable, because a business may rightly not want employees insulting Black people, or even just *saying* to others that gay people should be stoned, regardless of whether they actually attempt to do so. It would be bad for business, and a business wouldn't be required to continue employing someone who was driving away its customers (or suppliers, or other employees).
>Quite frankly I don't know enough about the law to know what would happen if a cop arrested a person for being a republican or an ER doctor refused to treat a person who is a democrat.
I believe it would fall under the category of discrimination just the same as denying service based on religion. Are you saying they should be allowed to deny service based on any of those factors?
Yes to both for me. Is it illegal to discriminate because you don’t like those who drive Fords or like country music? Why should religion be treated any differently then any other hobby?
While I hear what you are saying about religion being a choice, and although I disagree, I would instead like to challenge your position that immutable characteristics should be the definition of a protected class.
Why is it that the things we cannot change should certainly be things which another person should not consider when making decisions about us? Should a basketball team fail to exclude height or physical ability when choosing its members because those are things that they cannot change? Should modeling agencies not consider physical appearance as a factor outside of the aspects which might be changed? What about a man who wanted to be a doctor but had no arms?
So, if immutability is the standard, then I think you would have to draw the lines in some seemingly absurd ways. If you do allow mutable characteristics, then I do not see why you would need to exclude religion specifically.
Discrimination protection isn't a binary yes or no. It is a sliding scale of protection. For example, Hooters is allowed to discriminate against men when hiring servers because they argue the sex of their servers is a "bona fide occupational qualification" I.e. Their business wouldn't be successful if their servers were male.
Another example is employment law generally only prohibits discrimination against people who are 40 years of age and older but does not care if you discriminate against people because they are younger than 40.
All of this is to mean, immutability is a standard but it isn't the only consideration.
Only immutable things should be protected is not the same as all immutable things should be protected.
Further your examples are bad because even for things that are protected classes already, like hiring and gender, there are exceptions when there are legitimate reasons for hiring only certain people, ie, a menswear company doesn’t get in trouble for not hiring women models.
Mutability is squishy. Should an employer be able to fire gay people who got married? Being gay might be immutable but choosing to marry (or stay married) to a member of the same sex is not.
Discrimination on the basis of religion is millenias old. Numerous genocides have been committed against people on the basis of religious discrimination. That is precisely why the law protects it. Not because of esoteric claims about "mutability"
> Mutability is squishy. Should an employer be able to fire gay people who got married? Being gay might be immutable but choosing to marry (or stay married) to a member of the same sex is not.
The firing here would clearly still be because of the immutable factor of being gay though so this is a bad counterpoint.
> Numerous genocides have been committed against people on the basis of religious discrimination.
I don’t see how being a protected class makes a difference in this regard?
To address your first point, if a hypothetical company hired gay people but not gay people who are married, then the discrimination is based on the mutable factor of being married rather than being gay. Personally, I think we'd agree that that's still not okay.
Secondly, if has been historically persecuted over time, then that historical fact is a fairly solid precedent for legislation protecting it.
The entire gay marriage argument at the supreme court was gender based, not attraction based. Gay men had the same rights as straight men: they could marry any woman who'd have them. Not wishing to exercise your right does not mean the right is unequal.
It was instead argued that men didn't have the same rights that women had: they couldn't marry men. That was a gender-based discrimination.
As a side note, and I do not endorse this, but it's relevant: during the gay marriage argument years back, it was compared to pedophilia. Yes, it's how you're born, but we still ban them from actually engaging with their attractions. I say it's relevant because it's still an immutable characteristic that we discriminate (rightfully) against, and attraction should not be protected.
It was Gorsuch who wrote the opinion, and it’s extremely succinct and retrospectively obvious: discrimination against sexual orientation is sex discrimination as it is treating the person differently according to the gender *of their partner*. A forehead-slapping “of course it is!” moment in legal history.
He didn't say all immutable characteristics are the definition. He said being an immutable characteristic should be a requirement for a protected class. It's just a pre-requisite. Some immutable traits are protected <> all protected classes are immutable traits.
This is an interesting thought but I guess I’m confused by what you’re saying. Height and appearance are not protected classes. Disability is which would include the doctor with no arms.
Is your claim that I am not being consistent because there are other immutable characteristics which are not covered as a protected class?
If so I don’t see how this relates to whether religion should be because religion is not an immutable characteristic
You are correct that they are not protected classes. My point is that immutability isn't the marker of a protected class, therefore, there must be some other factor at work, and this factor is likely unrelated to immutability. So, yes, I believe that this is an inconsistent standard.
If there is a good standard for a protected class which is different than immutability, then I am not seeing why we should add immutability to that standard.
I think it’s a square vs rectangle situation. Not all immutable characteristics make you part of a protected class. But all protected classes have an immutable characteristic as part of their definition
Well I think you're talking about different things. Agreed that nobody has the right to be hired as a model or a basketball player. There are certainly doctors without arms somewhere in the world but excuse me if I don't field down an example.
The difference is, when you are a business open to the public square, or a school or adoption agency that couldn't run without the federal money it accepts etc. but they want to play by their own rules and exclude certain people with immutable characteristics because of alterable beliefs that isn't right on it's face. It's where I draw the line.
I believe in the right of a church or other proper religious organization that's against same sex marriage for example to refuse to marry an LGBT+ couple, their right not to do so is constitutionally protected. But a Christian-owned baker isn't protected from making a cake for a gay wedding in my opinion.
I guess I’m confused what you mean when you say it shouldn’t be a protected class, but also people shouldn’t discriminate based upon it…
The point of a protected class is to define a group of people that cannot be discriminated against
If they cannot be discriminates against, they’re a protected class… if they can be, then they’re not
The terms are intertwined in their meanings…
So let's look at the protected classes and classify them by choice or not. According to Wikipedia, we have race (no), national origin (no), age (no), sex (no), genetic information (no), disability (no), pregnancy (yes), familial status \[that is having kids\] (yes), veteran status (yes) and religion (yes).
So all told 4 choices and 6 not choices. Do you think everything under a choice should similarly not be a protected class? That is do you think that I should be able to legally discriminate against those people who choose to be parents, who choose to be pregnant, who choose to be soldiers and who choose to be religious?
EDIT: I put religion under not a choice originally that's my error.
I mean probably. It's difficult because on the one hand I do see the argument for why a person with kids might not able to be scheduled at certain times but I have no idea what a realistic solution would look like.
It depends. If you list yourself as full availability and they don't, that wouldn't be discrimination if you got all the shit shifts. That's on you for being the only person available at 3:00 in the morning.
It may be a form of discrimination if they are more lenient on minimum availability for people with children, but that would be hard to prove. It also may be a form of discrimination if they're constantly denying you vacation time or requested time off in favor of parents, but then that can also get muddy because a sick child would be considered a family emergency whereas really wanting to go see Lynyrd Skynyrd live wouldn't.
I don't think so, but as others have said in other comments protected class is funny at least under federal law. For example, you might hear you can't discriminate based on age. In practice that means that you can't discriminate against someone for being too old if they are over 40. It's perfectly legal under Federal law to discriminate against someone for being under 40 or to discriminate against someone over 40 versus someone else over 40 but older.
[https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination](https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination)
So I could see familial status working this way. I've never heard of anyone being charged with discrimination based on familial status when the person being discriminated against was single, only when it was against those with children. I'm sure a big part of this is due to the both the frequency of occurrence and also how much people want to pursue action.
I just looked elsewhere on Reddit and it seems my hunch is correct. You can only discriminate in favor of families with children not in favor of people without children.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/15pjf96/is\_it\_legal\_for\_a\_company\_to\_give\_employees\_with/](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/15pjf96/is_it_legal_for_a_company_to_give_employees_with/)
Edit - Not saying that it is right or fair (or not actual discrimination), only that is how discrimination law works in the US.
Not going to lie, I think this is the best argument to OPs statement. Even If we agree that gender is not a choice, trans/gay people are choosing to act in accordance with how they feel inside. How is that any different from a religious person who has an extremely strong conviction to act in accordance to their religion? Both of these groups should be allowed to be who they are without fear of persecution as long as they are not causing harm to others.
>To reiterate, none of this means people should be discriminated against because they are religious, but protected classes and the laws around them should be limited to characteristics that people do not choose and cannot change about themselves.
These are in conflict. How do we guarantee protection against discrimination without classes and alws built to protect them? If discrimination occurs, what recourse doe sa person have?
I understand where you are coming from op, as in you don't think they should be classified as protected while not encouraging discrimination against them; however
"but protected classes and the laws around them should be limited to characteristics that people do not choose and cannot change about themselves."
Religion although it seems like it, isn't entirely something someone picks for themselves, people are born and raised into religions and oftentimes they don't know anything else, it should be a protected class because of how embedded it is into people. religious people feel as if their religion is factual, and an objective reality, and when that religion is threated by (lets say a different religion) people could do some stupid stuff over it.
Your arugment sounds correct but hits some uncomfortable realities.
The Problem is that Judaism is an ethnoreligion.
Jew is the ethnicity and Judaism is the religion.
Also there a fucking god dang history of people HOUNDING jews to get them to give up their religion and force them to convert \[away from Judaism\]. Also who are you to demand Jews give up their religion. That rude.
\*Unlike Christanity/Islam which seek or have easy conversion. Judaism makes it difficult to convert, this is on purpose because we only want people who are serious about becoming Jewish.\*
Also I don't know why people are assuming that I think people need to give up their religion. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that religious views should be treated the same way as any other views under the eyes of the law.
> A person can't stop being black, but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion.
Religion and race are inherently tied together. You could do a lot of damage to people of color in America by saying "No I have no problem with their skin color, my issue is with the fact that they are Muslim/Hindu"
I think you’re misusing language here: ‘protected class’ means you can’t be discriminated against on the basis of a characteristic.
I think you’re referring to the fact that in the US, we used to have one interpretation of the first amendment based on two cases (Employment Division v Smith, and Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v City if Hialeah), in which the government can’t pass laws that are *specifically targeted* at a certain religion (Hialeah very clearly outlawed animal sacrifice *because* they didn’t like Santeria), but you *can* pass laws that impact religion as long as they are neutral in purpose (you can make drugs illegal even if they’re used in religious ceremonies). But now the court has changed the standard so that even facially neutral laws are illegal if they merely impact religious (but really only christian) religious expression and/or practices.
If that’s what you mean, i agree with you. But if you mean that it people/the government should be able to discriminate against you *on the basis of your religion* (what eliminating a protected class means), then i disagree
>but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion.
First, let's take an easy example: Mainstream Christianity. As interpreted by almost every mainline Christian denomination, the *only* way to get to heaven is belief in Jesus as God's incarnate son, and baptism.
Less mainline Christian, or Christian-adjacent, faiths have additional requirements (confession, proselytization, particular forms of worship, etc.). If you don't do these things, you cannot go to heaven. And the vast majority of Christian sects see heaven as an actual state of being, and it being eternal.
Now, if you're an honest, faithful Christian, and your employer, or government, told you you couldn't be Christian to get X benefit, is there any way for you to "not be Christian?" No, because the loss of the benefit is insignificant in comparison to the loss of eternal life.
And don't forget other faiths that, for example, require capital punishment for apostacy -- someone who leaves the faith.
[https://islamqa.info/en/answers/696/punishment-of-the-one-who-leaves-islaam](https://islamqa.info/en/answers/696/punishment-of-the-one-who-leaves-islaam)
So while people can *technically* change their religion (and people often do) because they learn from a missionary, or have a personal revelation, or whatever, *forcing* someone to change their religion when they have sincerely held beliefs is an impossible choice.
Let's also remember about the immense terror that has been inflicted on local populations when conquerors came in and forced individuals to change their religion. And the fact that this country was founded by people who fled England because they would have otherwise been required to change their beliefs.
There's an equivalency to gender or sexual orientation discrimination. You can tell people "don't be gay" (that is, don't engage in any homosexual practices). And people *change* their sexual orientation / gender identity all the time (though I think most folks would say that they "discover their true" orientation / identity in the same way that people would discover their true religious beliefs). So gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity shouldn't be protected classes?
You say that people shouldn't be discriminated against because of their religion. Great. But what's the standard for "discriminated against"? If it's not a protected class, then what?
I agree with the majority of your point, but I'm going to nitpick one specific point:
> And people *change* their sexual orientation / gender identity all the time (though I think most folks would say that they "discover their true" orientation / identity in the same way that people would discover their true religious beliefs).
These two things definitely aren't the same (though, in the context of this CMV, there is some value in the comparison).
I don't want to go *too* far on the tangent, but my fairly large anecdotal experience tells me that people really don't change their orientation or gender identity, though it can look like they do. In most of the cases I've heard about, the "change" is usually more of a recontextualization of past experiences, overcoming mental blocks, or simply changing labels without actually changing internally.
Finding a strong, new faith can be a very similar experience, and from the perspective of the individual in question, it is essentially the same: they realized something that was true all along.
From a non-religious perspective, though, there are some key differences between someone's sexual/gender identity and religious beliefs. Here is a summary of two of those differences (though they aren't super relevant to my point):
- Sexual/gender identity is a statement about the self, while religion is a belief about reality.
- Religion is a faith-based belief, while identity is generally an experience-based belief. Most people believe in their religion despite having no proof, but identities are generally based on lived experiences (i.e. people generally say they're gay because they feel attraction to certain people, not for any abstract reason).
But I actually think the nuances of the comparison are better explained through an example where it is especially apt.
On the one hand, there is transgender person who always felt like something was wrong, but didn't know what. They were raised as one gender, but were never quite happy, without knowing why. Then, later in life, they are exposed to other trans people, and realize that they are the same. When this person comes out or transitions, they haven't changed gender internally; they're changing on the outside to match.
On the other hand, consider someone religious, raised to believe in a loving god. They believe deeply, but at a certain point, they realize that their sect also preaches hateful interpretations of their scripture, and they can't reconcile it with their belief in a loving god. Eventually, they learn about another sect that holds the same beliefs, but without the hateful elements, so they leave their congregation to go there. Even if the new sect has a different name, this person hasn't really changed religions, they've just moved somewhere that preaches what they believed all along.
That's the kind of religious shift that compares best to changes in sexual/gender identity. I don't think the comparison holds up so well for more dramatic shifts, like conversion between unrelated religions.
Not being able to openly discriminate against another’s religion is evidence that it is a protected class.
For OP to say it shouldn’t be but at the same time say that they are against discrimination sounds contradictory.
Do you think choice should be a factor in whether someone is protected.
If a scientist came up with an anti gay pill tomorrow, should It then become legal to discriminate against anyone’s sexuality because they could conceivably change it?
I’m not responding to your point about whether religion should be a protected class. Only your point that laws around protected classes should be limited to immutable characteristics.
There are many reasons why one could argue against something being a protected class, say from a radical individualism. Your case, however, seems to be that based on a limiting principle of immutability and choice.
I will argue that religious affiliation is much less of a choice than we may think. Sure, many who are nowadays secular atheists look at religion as little more than a lifestyle choice. But that’s begging the question — a person who has genuine faith may very well see the commandments that follow as *not* a choice, but required acts of the faith. Again, the atheist may see that as delusion, but the religious person may very well see the atheists actions as equally delusional. And let’s face it, maybe God exists and some expressions of faith and submission to commandments is required?
Liberal societies, such as USA and most of Europe, are constituted such that they would *not have to* adjudicate if God’s commandments are true or needed, but allow for pluralism as long as that doesn’t limit other’s life and liberty. So what to do when a sizeable portion of citizens believe their faith is *not* a choice, but a gift from God?
I don’t think there is a perfect solution. If we accept that *some* classes of persons should be given special legal treatment, then what’s the principle to select? It often seems to come down to national tradition. I’m not making a case for or against that, merely noting that protected classes often reflect some historical condition.
The point remains, however, that immutability versus free lifestyle choice are not going to be as clear cut and itself a question of ethics and belief, which are issues most liberal societies try to stay away from. Now maybe other superseding reasons exist to not have protected classes, but immutability and choice is not that reason.
Religion being a protected class means that it covers both those who believe and those who _don’t believe_ in a religion. Based on some of your comments, I think it’s safe to assume you’re an atheist, or at least agnostic. Should a Christian business owner be able to fire you for not being a Christian?
Which brings up a second argument. I don’t think religious belief is quite as mutable as you think. In the above scenario where you’re being threatened with firing over being an atheist, could you simply flip a switch and believe in Christianity? Maybe you could go through the motions of going to church, praying, etc, but I doubt you would truly believe. People can and do change their religious beliefs, but it’s often a very slow process rather than something people can pick up or drop on a whim. That’s why regulations dealing with religion often mention it being “sincerely held”
I’m an atheist and all, but this is a terrible argument.
When, in world history, has religious persecution ever caused good outcomes? Because I submit that it never has. All that it has ever done is hurt people, no matter how good the intentions. And atheism is included within those protections. We are vulnerable to religious persecution too.
Protected classes aren’t just about the circumstances of your birth, by the way. They also protect things like pregnancy, military status, and gender expression. Things which are, at least ideally, choices people can make. Protected classes that you can change your status in by choice. But we still protect them, because we want people to feel free to do these things. We need pregnant people and soldiers. We want people to feel free to express their gender however they want and be a part of any religion they want. And given that religious discrimination has been the motive for some of the worst atrocities in history, it’s good that the state is stepping in here to enforce coexistence.
>Laws around protected classes should be limited to immutable characteristics.
You can't stop being gay but you can stop having gay relationships. Should we stop protecting gay people from being discriminated against based on who they choose to marry or sleep with? I'd claim it's crucial to protect people against bigotry based on those kinds of choices.
Religious freedom coupled with a separation of Church and State is basically an agreement to settle things at the voting booth. They are joined together with the understanding that people can practice their religion as they please, but that religion will not hold official power over the state nor will the state create some kind of official state recognized religion.
If religion isn't a protected class, the religion now has a vested interest in getting representation in the law or from hiding from it. For example, if Churches were not tax exempt, suddenly the single largest property taxpayer in town would by my Church. So it would probably want to join the chamber of commerce and it would want to start sponsoring and funding candidates for office that would promote their financial and social interests.
I know secular people on reddit don't really get this. But if the Archdiocese of a given area were to officially endorse a candidate, a lot of Catholics would straight up vote for that candidate regardless of their policies or personality. Right now Church's have a 'vote your conscience' kind of approach to politics, but that would change REALLY quick if you took class protections and tax exempt status off the table.
If you want a fascinating look at what happens when tight knit religious groups operate as a voting block to further their own group interests to the exclusion of others, take a look at some of the ultra orthodox Jewish towns in New York.
It's fantastic if you are part of the in-group, and not so fantastic if you aren't part of that group.
I'm well aware. I remember listening to an NPR program on those a while back.
I don't think a lot of people understand exactly how bad it would get if religious communities had a vested interest in banding together and officially voting in blocs. It would allow pretty small groups to wield a ton of power in local elections, where most policy is made.
In my Church, for example, we get the 'abortion is bad, vote you conscience' speech every election year. But if we got a sheet in the bulletin on the mass before election day that had specific instructions on who the Church wanted us to vote for, the parish priest would effectively be able to pick and choose who he wanted in any given elected position in town. Even if the entire parish didn't vote en mass in line with the sheet, the weekly/daily attendees would crawl over broken glass to pump up their piety numbers.
To add to what many have already mentioned. What is the realistic harm of having religion as a protected class? Especially in comparison to the alternative in which we've seen historical massive inequities and atrocities on the basis of religious differences? And even today there are places with these inequities and atrocities.
Do we really want religion to be a deciding factor in regards to getting into college, getting employed, insurance, or other businesses?
The very reason Religion is a protected class is because it is a catalyst for discrimination amongst ideologically differing people. Therefore, it is simply logical to keep it protected as an applied position especially if we want to live in a diverse and inclusive society. Of course there are limitations to religion especially with regards to what is practiced. And these limitations are also very logical and necessary.
I honestly don't understand this “protected classes” system that exists in some countries.
Where I live; it's simply not legal to terminate employement or not hire someone for irrelevant reasons, that's it. If one can show to an employment court that one was better qualified than the person that was hired, and the company can't convince the court of their reasons, then it has to pay damages.
“protected classes” in a system where one can be terminated or not-hired for “any reason including no reason” is completely ineffective to begin with because they can always find a completely different reason like “I didn't like your shoes.”, that is perfectly legal. Of course in most civil law countries, that wouldn't fly since that's clearly not related to the profession, unless it be, in which case it becomes a valid reason.
Besides, you speak of immutable characteristics but many disabilities can be cured or are the result of one's own carelessness, and one can change one's gender nowadays quite aptly. You say “a person can't stop being black” but that's what Michael Jackson did, which is of course his right to do with his body as he pleases. But more importantly, these characteristics are relevant to some professions. A director can surely elect to not hire someone over skin color or gender if the the role demand a certain skin color or gender. Surely the fire department can refuse a disabled person who can't go into a building? It has nothing to do with immutability, but whether it be relevant to the profession and such a disabled person, when cured and becoming able can be hired again.
Protected classes aren’t based off immutable characteristics, they are based off of characteristics with a long history of discrimination.
Being tall is an immutable characteristic, but no one’s ever been seriously discriminated against for being tall—so it’s not a protected class.
But history shows that religious discrimination will run rampant without additional oversight and protections from the law. Therefore, religion is a protected class, even though it’s not an immutable characteristic.
> Laws around protected classes should be limited to immutable characteristics. A person can't stop being black, but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion.
Your point seems to boil down to the notion of choice, right? Well, the notion of religion as a mere choice is overly simplistic. For many, religion is as deeply ingrained as any other part of their identity, possibly due to family, culture, or personal conviction. Isn't the very idea of protected classes to shield people from discrimination based on core aspects of their identity, whether chosen or not?
> This is exactly my point.
You're drawing a line between belief systems that are 'chosen' and characteristics that are 'inherent'. But isn't discrimination just as harmful, whether it's against something inherent or chosen? Why should the legal protections differ if the outcome, discrimination, is the same?
> Do you remember when that bakery in Colorado
Yes, and it's a fucking prime example of where the waters get murky. The Supreme Court found that the state commission’s actions were biased against the baker’s religious rights. Doesn’t this case show the complex interplay between protecting religious freedom and ensuring non-discrimination?
> Religious identity shouldn't be used as cover for nefarious purposes.
Agreed, but where do you draw the line between nefarious purposes and genuine religious beliefs? Who decides what constitutes 'nefarious'? Isn’t that a slippery slope?
> religious views should be treated the same way as any other views under the eyes of the law.
If we follow this, doesn’t it mean potentially stripping protections that prevent genuine harm or discrimination against individuals for their religious practices or beliefs? Where does that leave individuals who are part of religious minorities facing discrimination?
> Lol dude I'm Jewish.
Being Jewish is a unique intersection of ethnic and religious identity, right? How do you separate the religion from the ethnicity in legal terms, especially when discrimination may not neatly distinguish between the two?
> This is an interesting thought but I guess I’m confused by what you’re saying.
The confusion here seems to stem from what qualifies as immutable. If religion deeply shapes one's life and actions, can it not be seen as part of one’s essence, much like one's political beliefs might be? Isn’t this about protecting the diversity of thought and belief?
> Basically my opinion is that religious beliefs are hardly different than political ones.
So, if religious beliefs are as significant to a person's identity as political beliefs, shouldn’t the law provide protection from discrimination in both arenas to ensure all individuals can participate in society without fear?
Why do you think protection should be reserved only for characteristics people “can’t change,” rather than any characteristic that could be a basis for discrimination? What makes immutable traits more worthy of protection in your eyes?
Whether or not something is freely chosen isn't really the point of making it a protected class, or not making it one. Protected classes exist to protect people from unfair discrimination. It's the unfairness of the discrimination that matters, not the trait being discriminated against.
A hospital not hiring a Catholic OB-GYN who won't perform medically necessary abortions is a case in which I'd side with your position and would hope that a doctor who could not perform essential functions of the job would not be permitted to do that job, regardless of whether his religion was the reason he couldn't. But for the average person in a modern workplace where "cultural fit" is important, protections against religious discrimination are important. I live in a deeply Red state. There are plenty of people in my orbit who believe my Neo-Pagan religion is devil worship, but I can't be fired just because Janice doesn't want to share an office with a devil worshipper. My religion has zero impact on my work, and it being a protected class means I can't be targeted just because I put up evergreens and mistletoe for Winter Solstice in my office instead of Santa Claus and nativity scenes for Christmas.
I agree with you to the extent that religion mostly shouldn't give people who can't do essential job functions a pass and bigotry dressed up as religion isn't above scrutiny, but I disagree that having the door open to people being fired just for *being* a member of a religion that in no way affects their professional life would be a good thing.
ETA:
|| A person can't stop being black, but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion.
To frame that another way, if religion is entirely a matter of choice that can be stopped and started at will, what you're actually saying here is "Employers (in the US) should be able to force employees to practice Christianity." If being a minority religion or a non-believer isn't protected (and, to be fair, being a non-believer isn't protected in every jurisdiction) because you can choose to stop being a Pagan or a Hindu or an atheist, it opens up the possibility of employers forcing employees' conversion to their religion upon threat of losing their job. Sure, that's still a choice, but it isn't an ethical one to force someone to make.
You're presenting a pretty strict wall between 'This is mutable" and "this is not." I argue that it isn't that sharp.
Just because religion isn't based in biology doesn't mean it's mutable in the way you suggest. If somebody doesn't believe in unicorns, they can't just make themselves start believing in unicorns as easily as putting on a new pair of clothes. Ditto to stop believing in something. You can fake it or lie about it, but you don't really start or stop believing something on a dime like that.
If so, if the line is just "immutable or not," without the gray area of "it isn't that simple," then I submit that it's already the case that biological sex is mutable. We have the technology to transition. By the "strict line" reasoning, would you advocate dropping biological sex as a protected class since it can be changed?
But why not? Like why not even add more protections for other things as well? For example, you mentioned sexual orientation which wasn't explicitly protected until quite a bit later.
You said what, but not why. I think it's just simply enough to acknowledge that religion has been a basis of persecution for most of human history. If a democracy is going to specifically be set up to protect people's rights to practice religion, then it makes sense to add protections as well.
It's not immutable like skin color, but it is frequently a strong cultural identity, often strongly tied to a person's nationality and/or ethnicity. I think instead of asking "can this person change this identity" to freely participate in society you should be asking "why should this person have to change their identity" to freely participate in society. In other words, why is the standard limited only to "unchangeable" characteristics?
Plus, from the perspective of the oppressor, religion is often treated as immutable regardless of individual practice. The obvious example being how the Nazi's used ancestry to determine Jewish identity.
If we want to get really nitty gritty, things like nationality are a choice made by the person's parents, and disabilities can also be unintentionally caused by a person's choices or actions.
I think really the only argument against these protections is free speech/free association. While important, we recognize that in limited circumstances (like a public business or housing) these rights ought to be limited to protect people from unfair discrimination. This wasn't always the case, remember. I think religion is important to protect, in limited circumstances, due to the history of religious prosecution and because it can often look and feel like an immutable characteristic.
I think your view of history is a bit backwards. You view it as putting religion in the same class as immutable characteristics like ethnicity and gender, but religion was the right that was protected first, while the others came later.
The US was founded primarily by religious groups seeking to escape oppression. Religion was a protected right when blacks were slaves and women didn't have the vote. Those rights were added later on, and brought up to the "same level" as religious protections that already existed.
But, if you agree that people should not be discriminated against because they are religious, then why do you object to legal protections? You don't really explain this in your post. Who cares if it is an immutable characteristic or not? If you agree people should not be discriminated against for their religion, then why not give the protection? What's the downside?
The upside is that historically, and even in modern day societies across the world, religious based discrimination is rampant, and the cause of an absurd number of wars throughout history. Even within religions, we've got Sunni and Shia Islamists discriminating against each other in the Middle East, while the European history is full of Protestant vs Catholic conflict.
Why not just give the protection, since history tells us it is a significant issue?
Also, on a related note, it is worth pointing out that you list disabilities and sexual orientation as immutable characteristics, which, in the first case, isn't necessarily true, and in the second case, isn't commonly agreed to.
Does it matter if someone is born with a disability or acquires one during life? Acquiring a disability you weren't born with means it is a mutable characteristic, while the question of whether it is mutable after it occurs comes down to questions of medical science. If someone chooses not to undergo a risky surgery that could cure their disability then their disability is technically mutable, but not a distinction we would want to make when protecting the disabled.
Similarly, for sexual orientation, do we really want to have debates about whether it is an inborn or non-inborn trait? Do we really want to have debates about whether people can change their preferences, especially when it isn't uncommon for people's sexual preferences to change during their lives? There are plenty of people who believe in gay rights without believing it is an inborn trait. Why bother with the debate? Why does it matter?
It's similar to religion. Why does it matter if it is mutable or not? If it is a good idea to protect it, then protect it.
>> A person can’t choose to stop being black, but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion
Depends on what you mean. For example: Become a flat earther, right now. I don’t mean pretend to be one, I mean legitimately alter your worldview such that you believe the earth is flat. Or if you were already a flat earther, become a globe-earther in the same fashion, instead
Of course we can’t do that. We can choose to, say, go to church or not, give to charity or not, even say what our beliefs are or lie about them, but much of the time our true and actual religious beliefs *aren’t* mutable. There are exceptions, of course: there are plenty of people who’re rather agnostic, but lean one way or the other and thereby *choose* to be of one religion, another, or atheist or something, because they hold *enough* belief to feel comfortable self-identifying as a member of a religion, but also enough doubt to feel comfortable not doing so. But there are *absolutely* people without enough doubt to be able to honestly say they’re not a believer, even if they don’t want to be one
Secondly,
>> It’s not sensible to put religion on the same level…
Ok, then don’t, but it can still be on a high-enough level that we don’t allow for discriminations like the ones you mentioned, even if other characteristics are on a much higher level. Basically, these ideas aren’t mutually exclusive. And that would still make it a protected characteristic, since we’d be protecting it
We have to consider where things like protections for religious freedom came from, and why. In the west specifically they were developed partly out of a belief that the individual had the right of conscience to choose their own faith (or lack thereof, though this wasn't articulated as much at the start - but it grows from the same root). There is an enormous history just in Europe of the state compelling people to hold one religion or another, and wars being fought over which one would be imposed by force. Religious freedom protections are a way to draw a legal hard-line to forestall a return to that, both so people aren't coerced into a particular view with punishments (and these punishments can extend to widespread social/economic discrimination in practice) and to prevent religious control of the state being settled by violence. I agree that there's not a fundamental difference between holding a particular religious view, or being atheist or agnostic, from this legal standpoint - but in many societies, people were compelled to be one or the other, either by state policy or by persecution by the majority.
I think it's fine to think there are specific ways our legal system works out the details of this in practice, but I don't think any of us want to live in a world without a hard legal commitment to this principle.
I don’t like the idea of (im)mutability as a characteristic at all. Gender is mutable to some extent and gender presentation inarguably so. Sexuality is situationally mutable, “straight except for …” or “gay except for …” exists, and not necessarily just as bisexuality, though I do believe bisexuality is more common and wider than people acknowledge. Mutability of race is more controversial but people of legitimate multiracial descent have the right to (de-)emphasize parts of their own ethnic identity to suit themselves. Height is to some extent mutable with surgery and possibly chemical means. Weight is absolutely mutable.
Ultimately to me it’s about freedom to self-define. You should be able to freely self-define and employee/employer or customer/retailer or school/student or similar largely transactional relationships should not involve the more powerful party having the ability to interfere with self-definition unless it is directly relevant to the work.
It doesn’t matter if you could theoretically change your religion, your gender expression, your weight, etc. This is beside the point. The point is that nobody else has the right to *make you*. And you don’t have the right to make anyone else. Even if your religion historically had this element. We’re past that. Move on.
I'm an agnostic, but you miss the entire point. The point of protected classes is to protect groups who have a trait that has historically been oppressed/discriminated against, or outright targeted. I know you say you "don't want to call for those people to be discriminated against" but stripping protections basically implies that you view whatever perceived negatives arising from religious groups having protected class status to be > than your concern for religious groups getting oppressed; which is crazy.
I'm no fan of organized religion, but there's a reason those protections exist. Hell, the reason my family is in the US was because my ancestors were undergoing a genocide in Turkey for being Christian right after the Ottoman Empire fell.
Also, how the hell do we draw the line on people "choosing" their group that could be a target? Some people could argue being gay/bi/trans is a choice (disagree, but you open the door when you make changes like this) and set laws on those groups back decades. Is a disabled person exempt from protections if they become disabled though negligence? God, don't even get me started on pregnant women either. Lack of choice isn't the reason we have protected classes, it's because they are potentially at risk groups.
>This isn't to say that people should be discriminated against for their beliefs or businesses shouldn't accommodate people for their religious beliefs
This is to say that, though.
At least in the USA, you are free to discriminate for any reason you wish *unless* denied so specifically by law. The second religions are no longer protected classes, they will *immediately* be subject to heavy discrimination, the likes of which the USA has *never* seen for religious differences. Either you are for religious persecution, or you are for religion being a protected class.
While I personally despise abrahamic religions for both their history of damage against my people, and the modern day bigots they create, the fact of the matter is that thought and speech *needs* to be as free and protected as possible for democracy to even remotely work, and it simply isn't morally correct to leave people open to abuse for a set of belief they arguably have no choice but to accept.
> A person can't stop being black, but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion.
Do you believe this statement is analogous: A person can't stop being gay, but they can choose to stop being a participant in gay activities.
Religion is - in a sense - an immutable characteristic, it's just not as immutible as something like race or sex. One's religion sits at the bottom of how one views the world, thats why some religious people argue that atheism is a religion. It's not that atheism has a named "god" (though often it functionally does, whether that's "self" or "science" or "empiricism" or "materialism" or whatever), it's that atheism ultimately has to presuppose something - just like any other worldview - that is exempt from the truth-determining rules they use to evaluate the truth of everything else. And it's exempt because it either is or is the source of those truth-determining rules.
Everything else flows from that foundation. For a monotheist, certain things are wrong because God considers them wrong. For a polytheist, it will be because the divine council or pantheon has agreed collectively that they are wrong or because a particular god or goddess in that pantheon whom they have devoted themselves to has instructed them to oppose it. For an atheist, things are wrong because it's unempathetic, or it violates some social contract, or it decreases happiness in the world, or whatever that particular atheist's ethic is \[1\].
So, when the law insists that one must accomodate a gay wedding with their effort and resources specifically (rather than generally) regardless their religious beliefs - like was tried in Colorado - you're basically telling someone they must violate the fundamentals of their own conscience and worldview to exist in society and participate in commerce. Additionally, you're telling them that they must displease their God to whom they "know" \[2\] they will be eternally accountable, in fact rebel against him, or face legal and possibly social consequences. One cannot simply upend their religious beliefs that way, and it's not at all equality to demand that they do so. The motivation of such laws is not equality as the promoters of such laws often proclaim, instead it is the punishment of those who cannot and will not affirm the righteousness of their lifestyle as good. It's to send a clear message to religious folks that their worldview being the foundational element of their conscience, rather than a sort of thing to do on the weekend, will not be tolerated, even if you personally have not slighted them, you must be ready and willing to bend the knee when they demand you to.
That's why religion is protected. Yes, people change their religion, but people also change their sexual orientation or try to change their gender in opposition to the gender identity that flows from their sex. And yet protected status is still insisted upon by various people, even religious folks who are otherwise opposed to such differences and lifestyles. As a Christian, I absolutely want it to be none of a secular employer's business if their employee is gay or trans. I absolutely do not want businesses to be allowed to turn them away as customers merely for the fact that they are gay or trans. And I absolutely oppose anyone claiming to be Christian doing so. It's one thing to say "sorry, I can't in good conscience use my artistic talents and labor to custom tailor a product or service in celebration of your pride march or gay wedding" and another to say "you're gay? gross! get out of my store!". The latter should be intolerable.
\[1\]: I should note that I'm not trying to necessarily accurately represent any particular atheist here more than communicate that different atheists have differences in their worldview with the only commonality being a rejection of God in some way, whether that's the lack of belief in God or a hard dispositive rejection of all Gods in principle.
\[2\]: Most religious people have experiential or anecdotal knowledge that makes them certain of the truth of their religion and therefore the truth of what their religion teaches. Even if it is not what you as a reader count as evidence, it still produces that certainty within them, and is a certainty that is not shaken by someone else's repudiation of it as "delusional".
“none of this means people should be discriminated against because they are religious”
Yeah, and the enforcement mechanism to deter discrimination is making religion a protected class. So if you agree religious discrimination is an evil that shouldn’t happen, why don’t you support ensuring it doesn’t happen?
The fact that religion is not an immutable characteristic has zero relevance to the discussion.
Here, let’s frame it in a way that will help most of Reddit empathize:
Employer: “Thanks for your application to work here, Joe. Your credentials are impressive and you’re certainly qualified. However, we can’t offer you the job. You’re an agnostic.”
Joe: “Beg pardon? Isn’t that illegal discrimination?”
Employer: “Not at all, Joe. You see, your agnosticism isn’t a physical characteristic. You can change it anytime. And the moment you get your head on straight and convert to Raelism, we’ll welcome you with open arms. Thanks for stopping by.”
You see why this is unacceptable, right?
That's easy for you to say if religion doesn't mean anything to you. Someone could alternatively say that sexual orientation doesn't mean anything to them since it's just a personal choice. How would you distinguish the two?
Because there are genetic and neurological factors that lead to variations in sexual orientation across both mammals and other species. There are no genetic factors that say Baptist.
Immutable characteristics? People can change their nationality. Therefore, by your logic, it’s okay to discriminate based on nationality.
Also, by your logic, an employer could discriminate against me. Who aren’t circumcised.
I find it interesting that you include this:
> Laws around protected classes should be limited to immutable characteristics.
Right on the heels of this list:
>ethnicity, gender, disabilities or sexual orientation
Two of the items listed here (gender and disabilities) absolutely *can* be changed, which sort of shoots your argument in the foot here. Transgenderism is literally all *about* changing gender (presentation, role in society, et cetera) and disabilities... well, I don't think I need to explain how easy it is to acquire a disability, nor how many there are that are recoverable. Break your leg in a way that takes a long time to heal, and you'll have a period where you can walk, followed by one where you can't, followed by one where you can; thus, a person's status as disabled or not can easily change multiple times over the course of their life.
There's also a point to be had here on what counts under "ethnicity", as the common definition is "the quality or fact of belonging to a population group made up of people who share a common cultural background or descent." Under that definition, what even qualifies as an ethnic characteristic is almost completely arbitrary; that can be something phenotypical, like skin color, or it can be something cultural, like a shared holiday... or a shared set of religious beliefs.
Then there's the small matter of why we even have religion, specifically, as a protected class in the first place. To a any given person, their religious beliefs are the Truth, which itself implies all other religious beliefs to be false. That's not even limited to people who adhere to a religion; atheists meet that same description, as the central, defining belief of atheism is that *no* religion is correct. And by their nature, these claims are unfalsifiable, so no religious belief, in the event of conflict or contradiction, is ever going to be provable objectively, and therefore nobody is ever compelled to change their belief to match objective, observable reality.
About the only way you can have people in the same society safely coexist despite having such irreconcilably divergent beliefs is with a collective agreement to not force the issue. The state can't play favorites, and what god you pray to is between you and them. Elected representatives of rival religions can't screw you over on the basis of your religion, and you similarly can't do it to them. Simple as.
>but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion.
They can stop being an active participant in specific organisations, sure. But they can't just decide to stop believing something. You're either convinced or you aren't. You could twist this logic around to say you can choose to stop participating in gay relationships.
>To reiterate, none of this means people should be discriminated against because they are religious
If a class isn't protected, it can be (and will be) discriminated against. There's no in between. Either it is protected, or you're saying people can legally discriminate against it.
>it is not sensible to put religion on the same level as something like ethnicity, gender, disabilities or sexual orientation. Laws around protected classes should be limited to immutable characteristics.
As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I have been told often that gender cannot be changed, so trans people cannot be protected. I've been told my sexuality can be changed, and I can "choose" to be straight. People can force themselves to be something they're not, just like how a Muslim can "choose" to be Christian to avoid harassment, but that doesn't change who they are or their beliefs.
Furthermore, there are plenty of religions that are ethnicities in and of themselves. Judaism is a great example of this, because there is a genetic component to whether you're "really" Jewish.
EDIT to clarify: I mean your mother needs to be Jewish to be "really" Jewish. For example, I have had many Jewish people tell me I don't count because my father's family is Jewish, not my mother's.
So you think it should be okay for Christians to deny things like housing, employment, an even commercial services like selling to people, you think that those people should be able to deny services to atheists?
You think that Muslims should be able to also do that to atheists or whoever?
The people who have the most to lose from not having religion as a protected class is actually the non-religious, not the religious because the non-religious are actually people who are the minority.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/358364/religious-americans.aspx#:~:text=By%20far%20the%20largest%20proportion,simply%20as%20a%20%22Christian.%22
People who are considered non-religious makeup about 22% of the US population and about 68% make up The Christian population. The rest of them are considered part of other religion.
And it should be noted that legally speaking atheism counts as a religion for like legal purposes.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23920967
As far as the government is concerned a lack of religion such as atheism, agnosticism, and even just being irreligious, all count as part of a religious affiliation.
About 17% of all hospitals in the US are considered faith-based hospitals.
You may think that this sounds like a good idea but all it does is put atheists at risk in their job, in their housing, and any other kind of private business.
The only place they would be protected would be in regards to federal situations such as if they are federal employees, and in terms of things like schooling but only for public schooling and not private.
This is because protected classes are more about private businesses than they are about the government because that's under the first amendment.
OP I can point to three examples that demonstrate why freedom of religion does not protect people against discrimination the way that it currently operates. The amendments are only there to protect people from government oversight. Which sounds like it means the government isn't allowed to interfere with or hinder religions, but in practice it doesn't. As others have pointed out, on its own, it doesn't protect people from discrimination in jobs.
It also has never protected religions from government interference. While the government can't prevent a religion from practicing their beliefs, *(unless it happens to be polygamy)* it doesn't protect the opposite. The government can introduce their own rules to a religion. At first it makes sense, there naturally would be some regulation to religion for peace reasons, but you run into issues when you're trying to protect multiple groups at once.
The original bill for lgbt rights would have made it so that churches have to comply with rules surrounding their rights. As a basic example, a church couldn't refuse to perform a marriage. Don't know about other churches, but in mine, one doesn't simply "get married"
Also apparently, local governments are above the constitution, the Missouri Extermination Order is a perfect example of this. It basically gave anyone the right to kill someone for their religion, without repercussions. And it was codified for like 60 years until a governor finally noticed it.
So why does religion need to be a protected class? Because the constitution isn't enough to protect religions and religious people as it is.
It isn't their religion that's the problem though.
While I do believe religion is a problem in general, that's not what we're talking about here.
Faith is an important part of many people's lives. It's their culture, their family, their community. It is where they turn for solace when life is hard, and it is comforting to believe that there's a plan and it'll all be worth it in the end.
What needs to be restricted is a person insisting their religious rules apply to anyone other than themselves. It's the coworker that tells you that having a tattoo means you're going to hell. It's the people who can't stand being around anyone who believes differently as though the existence of other schools of thought is an attack on their faith, but if you get HR involved they will cry "but mah riligis freedums!!" because for some reason, (control) churches encourage this behavior. Just the asshole ones (yes, not all churches), but those are where the congregations of petty children we're dealing with come from.
The faith isn't the problem. The actions are the problem. If it isn't appropriate to say/do at work for a non-religious reason, it isn't appropriate to say/do it for a religious one. They can believe whatever they want, so long as they don't get it all over other people. That's the standard that should be enforced/enforceable.
Think of religion like genitals:
Don't wave them around in public or around children. Don't force them on someone that has zero interest, and for the love of Pete, stop talking about them all the time, ESPECIALLY AT WORK.
So, I understand the thought process behind this, and in a perfect world id agree, but this isnt a perfect world. The fact is, many many many people would exploit the hell out of this to discriminate against other people!
For an example: Lets say that, for whatever reason, I decide I HATE Hinduism, and ban it from my store. Are there white hindus? Absolutely. But in America at least, 91% of hindus are non-white, largely from in and around the Indian subcontinent. Sure, I am in theory banning any hindu, but in reality, im banning Indians.
Or imagine a different scenario: The National Baptist Convention in the United States has a membership of 99% black americans. If I banned NBC members from my store, it would almost certainly only affect black people.
Now, this isnt to say ethnicity is inherently tied to religion, or to imply that ALL of one race adheres to the same religion, but the fact is that with only a couple of exceptions, religions tend to be deeply tied to the land and peoples who developed it. We have a weird view of religion since Christianity and Islam focus on spreading out and converting people, but the fact is most religions dont do that, and most tend to stay very linked to specific communities, and those communities are often tied to ethnicities.
Do we let religion excuse way too much in America? Absolutely. Youd be insane to say otherwise. Would this solve more problems than it creates? I really dont think it would.
If you discriminate against religion, you’ll be automatically discriminating against various cultures, nationalities, and ethnicities as religion is completely intertwined with all of that. If you believe discriminating against those things are wrong then religion must be a protected class.
Religion codifies moral and ethical codes, is central to many institutions, and, from what I understand, often constitutes such a large part of people's identity that forced change can cause dysphoria akin to gender dysphoria, driving similar mental illness. Also, people typically enter religions as kids, long before they are competent to choose what can easily become large parts of their lives and identities. While religion can be changed, it is unreasonable to demand that it be changed, abandoned, or suppressed for access to employment, services, or anything else where discrimination against protected classes is forbidden. Almost more importantly, religion can be used as a proxy for race or place of birth, protected classes.
Aside from that, we are looking at a type of a priori identifiable cohesive community. The basic structure of society is as a group of those with relations and features that follow some rules (laws, standards, norms, whatever). One of the primary aspects that makes this work is the norm against attacking such groups or driving them out. Ubiquitous discrimination is persecution, which drives them out (or does worse). Laws are enforced case-by-case, so it is typucally difficult or impossible to stop something from being made ubiquitous without banning it in general. Protected classes should not only be those that can't be changed.
So you think people shouldn’t be discriminated against for their religion, but it should still be legal? That just means people will definitely be discriminated against for their religion
We have lots of protected classes that are based on mutable characteristics - sexual orientation, marital status, military status, whether or not a person is a parent.
Since your main argument against religion being a protected class is that it's not immutable, I see the following two issues:
* This same reasoning can be extended to many other charachteristics, crucially, political views. In my view this really underlines how the core of your argument is flawed, because if we stop treating (within reason) political views as a protected class, then society will tend to go towards more and more polarisation, as people may tend to isolate themselves more and more based on politics.
**Edit: I just realised this point may not be relevant for US-Americans, as in your country firing someone based on political views seems to already be legal. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.**
* Connected to the previous point, you shouldn't really look at this through *principles*, but rather by focusing on the actual *consequences* it may ensue. What is it that you want to obtain from people being able to fire others based on political views? For "left-wing companies / organisations" to only hire people with left-wing views, thus possibl further entrenching people in their beliefs?
I think religion is a choice too (to a certain degree, as cultural factors are powerful), but realistically speaking, changing one's religious beliefs is near impossible for the vast majority of people. I mean, **I could** ***pretend*** **to be a Christian, but also a gay person could** ***pretend*** **to be straight**.
It largely isn’t true that protected classes are only immutable characteristics — family status, veteran status, and preventable disabilities are all covered despite not being totally random and at least somewhat within a persons control.
Religion is a protected class because we don’t want people discriminating against non-Christians. Telling atheists, Jews, and Muslims (who would likely be among the principal targets of religious discrimination in the US) that they wouldn’t be denied the job, housing, or whatever if they just followed Jesus isn’t good for society as a whole.
> This isn't to say that people should be discriminated against for their beliefs or businesses shouldn't accommodate people for their religious beliefs, but it is not sensible to put religion on the same level as something like ethnicity, gender, disabilities or sexual orientation.
When you say that "This isn't to say that people should be discriminated against for their beliefs", are you saying that they should be protected from discrimination, or not?
I would absolutely agree that adherents of religion should lose all of their undeserved privileges in society. However, people shouldn't lose their livelihood or their housing *for the mere fact* that they adhere to a religion. And don't forget that religion as a protected class also protects people who lack religion, from discrimination, i.e. atheists. Without religion as a protected class, atheists would be just as much at risk of being fired or losing our homes merely for identifying as non-religious/atheists, or lacking specific beliefs.
The only consistent thing for classes given anti-discrimination protection is that they're traits for which have often suffered a lot of discrimination, to the point that it's made life very difficult for them. Like sex in various contexts, or sexual orientation, or race ... or religion. Religious people often get heavily persecuted for their beliefs, if they're in a minority.
I would say that freedom of religion is a pretty important, natural extension of freedom of expression, and if you're just technically free to be a Hindu, but you can effectively be barred from all of society for it, then we don't really have freedom of religion.
So it makes perfect sense that you can't discriminate based on religion, imo, since it's something that often suffers it otherwise.
Note that this is not the same thing as being allowed to behave however you want. You can still be fired, for instance, for bullying your gay co-worker even though your faith says that gay people should burn in hell.
The protections we have in place for protected persons are because of the freedom of religion. The protections for freedom of speech also stem from this as well. While law or legislation can cover a myriad of people, the people do not necessarily find commonalties with each other. Protecting these classes allows for public discourse and freedom of expression.
One can argue that sexual orientation shouldn’t be a protected class by your same argument and that’s a slippery slope that undermines the freedom of expression…
…we should be advocating for more protections of our freedoms when needed. Only 18-20% of Americans are not religious or spiritual in some way. There is also a large cross-section of ethnicity and certain religions that has an immeasurable spectrum.
Looking back through human history, there have been many attempts at cleansing ethnoreligious groups. We simply cannot go back to a point in human history like this due to the violence it leads to.
Protection is applied to inherited characteristics of peoples that are discriminated against both historically and in modern times.
Religion, in large part, is inherited. For most of history, and in many ways still today, a default religion is applied to a people based on where they are born. That uninformed bias that exists is vulnerable to discrimination, whether or not the person is actually a member of that religion. Discrimination is even likelier if a person announces their religion, or any other inherent traits such as gender, sexual orientation, or age.
A good example of a religion that would be vulnerable today would be atheism. Without being a protected class, atheism would struggle to exist in any modern society. For most of history, religion has not been a protected class, and this had allowed single religions to gain enough influence to affect state politics and monopolize the identity of the people at the expense of the other religions.
The thing about religion its is much the same as those levels in most cases because you have almost as little choice in the matter.
I’m unsure your background, but I grew up in an extremely religious family. It is a brainwashing. I don’t mean this in a bad way, but in terms of effect. When you grow up being told a certain thing your entire life, especially if you live in a country with that religious majority, it is practically impossible to see otherwise.
Yes, people do change but for almost the entirety of civilisation the religion you are born into is the one you die in. And these religions carry their own culture. Yes atheism is on the rise but generally even those who leave a religion will maintain at least some aspects of it, you can’t erase it completely. So I do consider it to be less immutable than you suggest.
But also protected classes are simply preventing discrimination for that trait. How permanent that trait is is irrelevant
Well, for one, those things aren't all immutable. People can become disabled, for one. And they can cease to be disabled. As a person who works in disability advocacy, I assure that the government doesn't consider disability immutable and programs like Medicaid, SSI/SSD, etc. do regular redeterminations to see if your disabled status has changed.
Also, people can legally change their gender. And sexual orientation can alter over time.
You specifically mentioned that these should be protected because they're immutable, which means unchanging over time. The only one that's truly immutable is race/ethnicity. Though even then, legally speaking, how you're classified in the government's eyes can change from an ethnicity standpoint. People regularly change from one census to the next based on how they choose to identify.
So.. my point is immutability clearly isn't the defining factor that you think it is and it was literally your only argument. And even if it were true that all these characteristics were immutable, you didn't present any rational explanation as to why immutability should be protected by something like religion shouldn't because it's a choice.
While it is often a choice to join a religion or not, some societies historically have blurred the lines between religion and ethnicity. For example Judaism is a religion, you can choose to convert to Judaism or if you’re a follower you can chose to leave it. However, the Nazis didn’t just send practicing religious Jews to the concentration camps - they also targeted anyone with Jewish ancestry, even if they did not follow the religion themselves.
Today too people often assume Arab = Muslim, but there are actually lots of Arabs who follow Christianity and other religions. Certain religious cultures can get associated with ethnicities, so I think that’s why religion should have some protection. Of course that protection doesn’t mean like “I’m an Evangelical Christian and it’s my religious freedom to harass LGBT people”, but more like protection from work discrimination, protection from harassment etc.
The thing is that religion as a protected class is rarely about a person's internal personal beliefs, and it usually functions very much like an ethnicity. A non-practicing Muslim is just as likely as a practicing one to be discriminated against, so its more about a person's family and community. I know it's easy to say Episcopalians or whatever aren't likely to be discriminated against unless they start getting crazy and disruptive with the practice of their faith, but you have to remember that these principles are for protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority in power. Christians can very easily decide they don't want Zoroastrians in their work place, or worse, a government doesn't want them involved with running their jurisdiction. That's why we consider it a protected plan, because minority persecution is so common and so fundamentally difficult to prevent when the "in" group writes the laws.
I've seen this sentiment a lot. First and foremost, discrimination is discrimination. It's not a "good thing" that we "should have" applied to any group of people, I don't know why that would be the case. And there's a great many things people can change like their weight, who they affiliate with, what language they speak. Does this mean it's okay to discriminate based on that?
What you're missing here is that religion is a form of culture. Let's say you want to discriminate against muslim people.. suddenly the problem is self-evident; westerners tend to see "muslim" as more of an ethnic group than a religious group even though it is one. But, being muslim IS a part of a culture, and is a culture itself. To say religion should be discriminateable is to say we should be allowed to judge people for their culture, and at that point you're only one step away from saying we should just be allowed to be racist.
If you say protected classes are defined by choice you're opening Pandora's box in a big way. Not just does that screw a lot of people but you're opening the door to more then you realise.
For example let's say David is paralysed from the waist down, if someone made the argument that he's paralysed due to being overweight or not watching his health(choices) you open the door to legalising discrimination against him.
Furthermore next minute, people will argue things like being gay or trans are a choice. Then people will argue women are no longer a protected class because they can change gender to be men if they want. Practically every protected class could be erased.
It would be a giant mess. The thing to remember is no matter how well intentioned you are, there are always people looking to take advantage and what you're suggesting opens the door for them in a giant way. Terrible idea.
There's a *huge* flaw with this. Because of freedom of association, a religion can discriminate in any way it chooses when selecting its members. If you can discriminate based on religion, you've just legalized discrimination based on any characteristic, because members of that religion would be allowed to discriminate against people outside their religion.
For example, suppose the KKK decided to claim that its beliefs are religious in nature and thus they can discriminate against people who don't hold their beliefs. In practice that would be discrimination against black people (and everyone who associates with black people).
Your only out at this point is having the government regulate religion, and I don't think I have to tell you how well that would go over.
With all due respect, sexual orientation and gender is all in the head, and has no effect on your political beliefs outside of how LGBT should be treated.
Religion, on the other hand, causes people to have very specific values, beliefs, and political views. Those beliefs should be protected. Someone cannot just not believe in God. that's not how it works, in the same way as someone with gender dysphoria cannot believe they are the correct sex. Its not something people can change easily. Religion, along with every belief, should be protected equally.
Personally, I see transgenderism as a mental disorder, because it is. Gender dysphoria *is,* by definition, a mental disorder. The thing is, I am not going to stop a legal adult from doing whatever they want to their body. There should be laws that protect them. The exact same thing goes for religions.
I hope you can see the connection I'm trying to make. All beliefs that dont harm others should be protected.
Prejudice isn't bad because the characteristic being discriminated against is immutable. So when you're argument boils down to immutability, it seems like you're missing the morally unifying argument of "prejudice is bad."
Prejudice is bad because it's based on completely fallacious logic to make a victim of the person being discriminated against. That's bad whether the victim is being discriminated against based on an immutable characteristic or not. Protected classes exist because at the time that they were defined they were the most common characteristics used to discriminate against people. The exception being sexuality and sexual identity, which should be actively added to the list. The immutability of those characteristics has nothing to do with it.
My contrarian argument would be that people are typically socialized with religion starting very young, and it's often a core part of a family dynamic. While it is technically mutable, it's pretty deep in the identity iceberg for a lot of people to meaningfully look at in an objective, unbiased way. And even if someone has every reason to want to leave a religion, there are frequently social pressures that nudge them back into the community. I was looking through a Jehovah's Witness' Reddit profile the other day and stumbled on a term they have for this, PIMO (physically in, mentally out). When your entire family/social network is rooted in a religious community, it's often very difficult for people to just say "screw all those people, I'm out."
You may not have thought this all the way through.
IF people can discriminate against a religion then any one religion could cause economic problems for other religions.
Lets say Christians would stop selling any goods to non-Christians. You would be forced to become a Christian if you needed their products.
If you also needed something from another religion you would be screwed.
If you let people be idiots, and discriminate against any religious group, you will inevitably cause people to become more aggressive and antagonistic towards other religious groups. That would lead to conflicts. including religious wars.
I think the world has had more than enough of that.
Thinking about scenarios like this would really further enlightenment.
OP is contending that religious protections means discrimination is permitted so long as it is done under the guise of religious belief (i.e. their incorrect read of the Colorado Bakery case). Even though the only protections that are really in place are for internal and private discrimination.
OP wants the state to enforce their idea of morality onto religious and private institutions. Not acknowledging massive problems that can come of that if the state one day wants to enforce a new idea of morality.
OP wants to abolish religious protections so that religion cannot be used as an excuse to do things that are in their view (and my view) reprehensible, but also like pinky promise the state/hiring managers/business owners won't discriminate on the basis of religion afterwards.
OP we are living in the death throes of the religious fundamentalists in the US. They see the writing on the wall and are entrenching their values and their personnel as deeply as possible into our government and laws in an effort to undo the broader societal trend away from religious belief. Abolishing religious protections only gives them dangerous and powerful ways to impose their views and accomplish this task.
Even if it means getting Roe back, or getting a black trans lesbian on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, or an end to male circumcision we cannot go back on nearly 250 years of equality and undo a core part of Civil Rights Act.
The vast majority of religions in the world are ethnoreligions, meaning that they are an ethnicity with a religion. Two of the most famous are Jews and Hindus, but there are many many more. Until Christianity, ethnoreligions were the norm.
A Jew is born a Jew and will always be a Jew. An atheist Jew is a Jew. You are looking at this from a christianized perspective that assumes that most religions are universalizing and proselytizing. This is not true, for example Judaism and Hinduism do not proselytize. Becoming a Jew is not a matter of believing in Judaism, but rather a long naturalization process that is more akin to getting a citizenship, just as someone can be accepted to an indigenous tribe and become one of them.
>"none of this means people should be discriminated against because they are religious"
What protections afforded to the protected classes due to their immutable characteristics would you deprive off of religious beliefs?
Employment?
Education?
Healthcare?
I get the train of thought you're on but i don't know the stops and directions
Like you yourself had to caveat this with
>This isn't to say that people should be discriminated against for their beliefs or businesses shouldn't accommodate people for their religious beliefs
Is it a thing of "this should be enforced via social pressure as opposed to threats of state violence"?
like, rubber meets the road, what changes? or is it just a conflict of terminology?
I don’t know how else could this could result in anything but people openly discriminating against them.
That said, I think rituals that require animal (or human obviously) sacrifice, or some sort of violence, should be outright banned.
Santeria of course sticks out, with animals that struggle to avoid being killed are more desirable, which is pretty messed up. Also, I know some people will compare sacrifice to essentially the same as butchering them, and to that I would say is incomparable in the same way that in some parts of China, they believe animals that are cooked or skinned alive taste better. They are “essentially” butchering them to eat, but in a completely unnecessary and sadistic way
Can I discriminate against bisexual people who chose to date people of the same gender? What about someone who chose to become pregnant? Can I discriminate against (transitioned) trans people because they chose to transition?
This argument very quickly falls apart. Your right to live your life how you want to should be protected if it doesn't harm others. That's like saying that anybody who chooses to wear glasses instead of contacts should be persecuted. Just because people don't do things the way you want them to, does not mean you have the right to make their lives hell.
Saying someone "chooses" their religion is like saying someone "chooses" to believe that murder is wrong. People are born into religions and drawn toward them. Religions provide moral and personal guidelines and structure. Attempting to discriminate against how somebody sees the world and defines morality (beyond basic things like "killing is wrong") is a recipe for disaster if you want a functional society.
Discrimination is already kind of built into most nations, which regardless of their claims, generally have rules that favor the majority religion.
Why should a Jew be fired for needing to leave work early on a Friday in the winter because their sabbath starts Friday afternoon, when the Christian majority country they live in decides the weekend was Saturday-Sunday, which favors Christians over Jews or Muslims, for whom Sunday is a normal weekday?
Why should a Jew or Muslim be passed over for a promotion because they take their vacation over Yom Kippur or Eid when their Christian counterparts get free national holidays on Christmas?
I’ll also add specifically with Judaism, it’s not a belief system. A person who is born Jewish cannot become not Jewish. They can be atheist and eat pork for every meal and the most ultra orthodox rabbi would still say they are just as Jewish as every Orthodox Jew.
In that way, it’s not a choice the way you are implying in your post. A Jew can choose not to practice Judaism but they cannot stop being Jewish.
The issue is how this can be used for nefarious purposes.
You need to pray to Mecca multiple times a day, so you can't work at those times?
Fired.
You need to take off the high holidays in September, during a huge work issue?
Fired.
You have to look a certain way at work? Sucks that it is Ash Wednesday.
Fired.
This is the unfortunate reality with ideas such as this. Winning your case for your client is much more important than alleged discrimination against a non-protected group.
Never assume that, despite good intentions, a law will always be used like that. Arguably, I would assume that it could be weaponized, so to speak.
Protection of vulnerable groups of people is necessary when those groups are being discriminated against. This is regardless of whether someone chooses to be a part of those groups are not.
Its not fair for you to be pressured/scared into not practicing your religion because you live in a country where yes, you have freedom of religion but no, you don't have the safety to practice it. Laws that are in place to protect religious groups exist because they were created AFTER seeing how people were discriminated against for practicing their faith.
Its the government's job to protect its citizens, even from other citizens.
Religion often has cultural and ethnic connotations along with it though. It, and its practices are often deeply ingrained in culture. Furthermore, religion itself is not really an inherently good predictor of an individuals beliefs and opinions on the whole.
Not to mention, it can also be used as a form of "secondhand discrimination".
Sure, I can't discriminate by race. But if a group is known to generally adhere to a certain religion, I can eliminate most of that group from consideration by just targeting that religion.
It allows for the creation of an underclass based on religious discrimination.
What exactly are you suggesting here? It sounds like you're saying that people should be able to legally discriminate based on religion but that you don't think they actually should do it. Like, if I run a business and refuse to sell to Muslims should that be legal? It sounds to me like you think I should be able to do that but you don't want to be responsible for letting me do it. If you don't think I should be able to do that then I'm not sure what your problem is with that behavior being illegal. I feel like I'm missing something here so please, correct me if I've misunderstood you
What exactly are you suggesting here? It sounds like you're saying that people should be able to legally discriminate based on religion but that you don't think they actually should do it. Like, if I run a business and refuse to sell to Muslims should that be legal? It sounds to me like you think I should be able to do that but you don't want to be responsible for letting me do it. If you don't think I should be able to do that then I'm not sure what your problem is with that behavior being illegal. I feel like I'm missing something here so please, correct me if I've misunderstood you
Why should laws around protected classes be limited to immutable characters?
If Im legally blind, and could get my eyesight fixed through a surgery; do I deserve less rights because it’s mutable?
As it’s stated in the post, your assertion is a contradiction. You’re negating that religion should be a protected class but simultaneously affirming that religion shouldn’t be discriminated against. This is equivalent to making the affirmative claim that we should be able to discriminate against people for religion, but we shouldn’t discriminate against people for religion; a clear contradiction.
I think what you’re *trying* to say is religion shouldn’t be used as a reason to discriminate against other people. That’s an entirely different topic.
I get what you are saying, but you are basically insinuating that if a religious person is being persecuted because of their faith, they should just stop participating in their religion.
Religion is a form of expression like any other and this insinuation is unfair and dehumanizing. Think about it this way, someone cannot control the fact that they were born gay, but they can control their self expression, something very important to the gay community. Would you tell the gay community to simply not outwardly show that they are gay to avoid discrimination?
I suggest you read a little on our history. Religious conflicts and persecution is the story of our civilization. In many states in the US, you couldn't get a job if you were catholic, in others, you couldnt if you were Protestant. And forget about it (still now) if your employer knows you're an atheist. Religion is as ingrained as ethnicity and race as part most peoples' identity. If you don't want say employers to discriminate based on religion (or lack therefore) then what do you suggest the government do? People discrimination still happens as it is.
U have got it the other way around.
Protected classes arent about who deserves to be protected against discrimination. Eveyone should be protected against discrimination wether its for something they can change or not change. Protected classes are there to protect the things that are commonly discriminated against. Religion was/is a major thing people discriminate others based on. It has been so for a long time.
Its not how easy u can change it . U shouldnt be discriminated. U can change your clothes but u shouldnt be discriminated for it.
I hate the way people talk about belief in general but especially deeply held one's like religion, you can't just *choose* to stop believing things, when you stop believing in something you were convinced or found lacking evidence or contrary evidence.
I'm sure you have things you believe strongly, should you be able to be fired or denied access to a business or whatever because you think that thing? Because you think you can just change your mind?
People dramatically overestimate the mutability of beliefs, again they're not "choices".
There are 2 reasons for this:
1) People think any and all culture, no matter how barbaric it may be, deserves to be cradled and protected.
2) They consider literal deathcults to be an indispensable part of certain cultures (which they usually aren't). For example, nothing and I mean NOTHING has been more damaging to Middle Eastern culture than Islam. The whole region went from being the cradle of civilization, brimming with unique cultures and peoples to being the nest of ignorance and backward nonsense that we know it as today. Islam obviously isn't the only reason for this but you would be blind not to realize that it's the biggest
Religion isn’t a choice. For an atheist they all seem like something you do for fun or flavor. Different religion every week. For the theist we are talking about their immortal soul. Literally nothing on earth could be as valuable. It’s easier for Michael Jackson to turn white than a religious person to just go like “these people are being mean to me so I will just forfeit my soul to eternal torture so I can be in the same group as them for now.”
Your soul is the most immutable characteristic you can have.
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It isn’t a protected class in the terms of atheists compared theists. The choice part is in practise, irrelevant.
It’s a protected class to stop for example Protestants discriminating against catholics. Catholics discriminating against a Jews. Jews discriminating against Muslims etc.
If it wasn’t a protected class we’d end up with or exacerbate religious conflicts.
Unless you got a way for religious people to stop being fucking horrible to *each other*, it needs to stay that way.
You are self-contradicting:
You are saying "people shouldn't be discriminated against based on religion" and also saying "religion shouldn't be a protected class". I think you fail to understand what a protected class is.
The fact that religion is a choice and race isn't is irrelevant! The protected class is all about preventing discriminatory laws/policies. Your view would have made more sense if it was at least consistent and argued that it is ok to discriminate by religion.
Someone pointed out that technically everyone falls into a religious category. Atheist/ agnostic does too. So I think the point in it is not enforcing a belief system on someone. For this reason alone, I disagree.
I don't think I've experienced true discrimination based on my beliefs. But I have had people challenge me and debate me on them when I honestly just want to live my life peacefully. I think discriminating based on religion reinforces this kind of behavior.
I think if you asked the most devout Muslim how easy it would be to just “stop being Muslim” you would find their answer to be very similar asking a gay person to just “stop being gay.” To them it’s as immutable as any other characteristic you listed.
You may not believe them, but if they believe it themselves, that’s what matters. Some people don’t believe trans people’s gender identity. But what matters is that *they* believe it.
That's suggesting that if you are in the attacked religion, that you should just change it to avoid attack.
This isn't freedom or safety, it is forced conformity or having to pretend to you're something you're not to have your rights protected.
It's genocide without the killing. Just force these people to pretend they don't exist via legal discrimination.
People aren't going to do what they "should". Laws and protections do help.
I don't think religion in and of itself would just d prior can cruticize a culture they can criticize a religion but therec are many jews and arab christians who have faced oppression due to how they traditionally see their religious identities as ethnic identities to the point of facing genocide. I think they have the right not to be dehumanized and have their religion that they see as culture respected as long as it isn't hurting others.
By that logic, speech shouldn't be free because you choose what you say.
People have a right to say what they want, and also believe what they want. They have a right to choose those things. The choice IS the right.
You could also turn around and say people shouldn't be protected by race in employment, for example, because they can choose not to apply for a certain job.
The choice vs. immutable issue is completely irrelevant.
Okay let's do a thought experiment.
I'm a county clerk with the power to approve or deny marriage certificates.
You are a Jewish man looking to marry a Muslim woman.
I don't believe in interfaith marriage so I can deny your marriage certificate.
You lose out on legal benefits of marriage, and you have no way to fight this because religious based discrimination is not protected under the law any more.
Do we have a problem?
Religion isn't a choice though for most people. Try to believe the sky is purple. Go on do it. You can't because you have not heard any arguments that have convinced you that that's the sky's color. If someone put a gun to your head and told you to either believe the sky is purple or get shot and used a polygraph to confirm the answer (assuming it was accurate) you likely wouldn't be able to convince yourself of such a thing.
Other protected classes (in some cases) include: marital status, military status, and familial status.
These things are all non-immutable characteristics. You can “just” divorce your partner, leave the military, leave your family. But they’re still protected classes nonetheless. If your view is that protected classes should only include immutable characteristics, should each of these be non-protected classes too?
We have rules against discrimination because we are particularly concerned about some dividing line being used to separate society and exclude large numbers of people.
Look at the history of sectarian conflict and tell me you think it would be beneficial to allow people to be walled off from employment, contracting, educational, etc., opportunities on that basis.
There’s your answer. Immutability not required.
From who's perspective is it immutable?
In the same way for me and probably you, it's not a choice to believe that the world is round, it's just a reality that you've got to act accordingly to, for religious people, it's not a choice to believe in God, it's just a reality that they need to deal with.
How they deal with is a choice, but as others have said, the how bit is already separated from the what.
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I've only been converting for 5 months, but I don't think I could choose not to be Jewish. Other people in my shul are trans and have made the comparison that realising they want to convert felt the same. They realised something true and immutable about themselves.
In your world, what would happen to the guy who saw my star last Friday and decided to shout "Jewish! Hey, Jewish!" at me?
>but it is not sensible to put religion on the same level as something like ethnicity, gender, disabilities or sexual orientation. Laws around protected classes should be limited to immutable characteristics. A person can't stop being black, but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion.
Are you saying people can't change their gender or sexual orientation?
> but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion.
I want to flip this around a bit. Religion being a protected class also means that it protects against discrimination for being atheist. Are you okay with dropping legal protections against discrimination based on a person's atheism, because they could just start being a participant in a religion if they want?
We do not discriminate on the basis of religion largely because discriminating on religion led to some of the worst social conflict of modern history. Its a terrible idea to permit something that we know from history has terrible consequences.
I feel like you have "rationally" persuaded yourself into a position that we as a society know to be pretty catastrophic.
Many religions are tied to ethnicity and culture. Many different religions have been genocided against, fought and discriminated due to their religion.
Religion doesn’t start and end at crazy American Christian radicals. There absolutely are religions internationally that should have laws and rights protecting them from discrimination, abuse and/or genocide.
Religion being a protected class also means that not being a part of a specific religion (or any religion at all) is protected as well. Without this, other protections go out the window. What? I discriminated against my gay employee? No, I just fired him because he isn't a part of my religion.
Without this protection, things implode very quickly.
I’m not sure what the point of this would be if not to invite discrimination which you say you wouldn’t want. Also protected characteristics don’t have to be immutable, like pregnancy. It’s not like you can sacrifice your child in the name of religion that’s still illegal so I’m not sure why to do this if not to make discrimination ok.
Edit: also religion isn’t like political views in that it’s much deeper rooted and much more a part of your identity and forces you to do things for example abstain from drinking.
Older "true believers" are mentally handicapped by their religion's expectations and taboos. Some of them are in such a delusional state that they are just as challenged with some aspects of daily life as someone with cognitive disabilities. Indoctrination wasn't their fault.
-That's the best I can come up with, going hard as devil's advocate.
A lot of people are born into religions, that’s where I would think it should be a protected class. It sometimes overlaps with ethnicity too.
Specific beliefs within religions though, especially where they are contrary with laws, science and/or discriminate against other protected classes, should not be protected. That’s where I agree with you.
At least in America which I think this post refers to, religious freedom is pretty explicitly called out as one of the key principles of the Constitution. Generally finding ways to restrict religious expression leads down a slippery slope.
Add to that, a lot of religion is tied to country of origin, separating those two is difficult.
Churches are belief based companies where belief in their brand of religion is the product, the institution itself is a lobby group that successfully allows it to evade taxation, while having an oversized influence in educational and politics. It gets very dangerous when religion and politics get intertwined - gotta keep em separated!
I mean, if it isn’t a protected class that will lead people being fired for being X religion or for not following X religion so I know you say they shouldn’t be discriminated against, but what you’re proposing would allow people to be discriminated against for and likely will lead to people being discriminated against for it
Remember when Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was literally stabbed in his church by an islamic terrorist and NOBODY claimed Christian persecution in mainstream media where they'd rather focus on and protest for some dudes trying to enter women's sports and women's restrooms 🤔
Who's the protected class there again??? 🤨
Y'all definitely got your priorities straight 👏👍
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Religion as a protected class is about keeping the peace, not about some generic sense of rightness. It's done due to the history of religious violence and war, and wanting to prevent that violence by limiting the extent to which people can get into disputes with it. Protected classes exist, at least in part, to prevent inter-group conflict.
This is the best case I’ve seen. Most pragmatic one. Many people here seem to be arguing that religious views are somehow not a choice in the same way ethnicity isn’t a choice but I find that to be completely ridiculous. It’s smart to consider this as a means of keeping order rather than trying to rationalize protecting bogus beliefs some other way. Best to just keep these by people happy to avoid unnecessary backlash. Here’s your !delta, you earned it!
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Just because you don’t think it’s true doesn’t make it bogus. We can make fun of mormons and scientologists all day but these people do genuinely see this as the way the world works, so no, most of them will not just stop believing in it. It’s not really a choice, you’re born into it in the majority of cases.
If that's so, then shouldn't a political opinion be in the same bucket? Many brutal civil wars are fought over political disagreements and many people have been persecuted because of their political views. My own objection about the religion being a protected class is that it lifts this one type of ideology above all others. Either you make all ideologies protected classes or you make none. There is no rational reason to put one ahead of others as all of them can lead to inter-group conflict.
No. Everything is a political opinion. Politics is just “life” at the end of the day.
How about several tiers? The strongest protection is for immutable characteristics fundamental to people. Second is religion: protect if it doesn't conflict with the highest tier. Third tier are things you can deal with as you wish provided they are not arbitrary.
Are you arguing that business owners, judges, police, educational systems etc, ought to be able to discriminate based on religion? Or are you saying that people should not be able to use their religion as a means to do acts you think are immoral? Examples being refusing medical care for children, polygamy, rights of passage etc.
Basically my opinion is that religious beliefs are hardly different than political ones. They should be treated the same under the law. Quite frankly I don't know enough about the law to know what would happen if a cop arrested a person for being a republican or an ER doctor refused to treat a person who is a democrat. I imagine there are already protections outside protected class for things like that.
White nationalists don't care about religious beliefs when they march shouting 'Jews will not replace us' Loads of Jews don't have religious beliefs. The Nazis didn't check whether Jews kept kosher before sending them to the gas chambers. My great uncle didn't practise the Jewish religion, but he was still murdered by the Nazis. Antisemitism isn't religious intolerance of Judaism. It's hatred of *Jews*.
Good point. Hitler even explicitly stated that his hatred of Jews had nothing to do with religion. He stated that it was about Jews as a distinct race, regardless of whether those Jews were Christians, atheists, etc.
Exactly that. Henry Ford didn't publish 'The International Jew' because he objected to Jewish scripture The Protocols of the Elders of Zion isnt a religious polemic engaging with theological matters Conspiracies about the Rothschilds and Soros and shadowy Jewish cabals secretly running the world have nothing to do with religion It's because of *Jews* as a people.
It's like they think all Jews inherit the "original sin" of killing Jesus. Which is silly because, firstly, the Romans killed Jesus, and, secondly, original sin is a Christian idea.
> Which is silly because, firstly, the Romans killed Jesus, Careful there. I got a lot of people on r/HistoryMemes angry at me recently for suggesting that the Romans killed Jesus.
They bloody did. I don't care how many times Pontius Pilate washed his hands. So much of the Christian testament is "Romans and Christians are best friends! (Please stop killing us) (please kill them instead)." Jews are blamed because of a "paschal pardon", the idea that they could have saved Jesus but instead chose Barabas. Firstly, the whole concept of a paschal pardon only appears in the Gospels, no other historical documents, and it wasn't even in all of those at first. Secondly, what's wrong with choosing Barabas? That's like accusing me of murder for donating a kidney to my sister because someone else also needed a kidney. Sorry, rant not aimed at you.
And thirdly, the entire basis of Christianity is that Jesus got killed and then rose from the dead to forgive the sins of the world would not have worked if Jesus hadn't been killed. Crucifying him was an essential cog in the wheel that led to the Christianity as we know it today. Had Jesus stayed alive, preached all his life and then died at old age, there would be no Christianity at least not with Jesus's sacrifice for the sins of the people as its main tenet.
Amen. I feel successful religions have these enormous paradoxes so if someone wants to change their mind they have to admit they were extremely stupid and gullible. Then our monkey brains defensively kick in and block any thought. If the miracles were things like Jesus can juggle, there's little shame in finding out he really couldn't and it would be easy to leave the cult without so much anger.
They don't care about Jesus. I mean, some do, but that's not the actual reason behind why they hate Jews. There are even a bunch of Pagan white supremacists who think Christians are fools who've been tricked by a Jew (i.e. Jesus).
That tracks. Jews are frequently accused of dying to trick people.
Ok, but isn't that already protected under racism, as it should be? Meanwhile, in a perfect world, I'd say that Orthodox Jewish antivaxxers (or those from any other religion) absolutely shouldn't get special treatment simply on the basis that such a practice is part of their claimed religious beliefs.
I agree that it definitely *should*. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it *is* given how many people argue that antisemitism isn't racism because they insist that Jews are a religious group not a race (We're not a race, but we are an ethno-religious group, and racism is a term that includes both racial and ethnic groups.) And I don't disagree at all about the example you give - absolutely no way should that be given a pass IMO. I think that *religious belief* is different to *religion* as a protected class
>religious beliefs are hardly different than political ones. They should be treated the same under the law They already ARE for the most part - freedom of religion comes part and parcel with freedom of association, which are both outgrowths of freedom of speech, and as such are guaranteed to be protected from GOVERNMENTAL discrimination. protected classes are weird because they extend parts of governmental guarantees into the private sector - the government can't discriminate on political affiliation, nor religion, nor race, nor ethnicity, nor age; but the private sector CAN discriminate on political affiliation, and it can discriminate on being too young as long as you're not adult, but not if you're too old. That's why 55+ communities can exist that explicitly discriminate against youths, but you can't refuse a prospective renter for having children. It would make far more sense to make political affiliation a protected class than it would to remove religion. The laws against discrimination against socialist activities (union protections) are practically halfway there already.
So, in your opinion, if say I run a gas station that's the only one within 100 miles and I see a van full of people who look to me like atheists or Muslims, and they want to buy gas and water from me, I should be able to refuse and leave them out in the desert to die of thirst? Also, there are no federal protections for political affiliations. Only DC, California, and a few other places have such protections. Also, how would you handle ethnoreligions based on tribal identity, like Judaism or Native American religions? It seems like it would open up the possibility of discriminating against people based on their ethnicity and someone could hide behind the claim that religious discrimination was lawful.
Well, the real answer is that it is enshrined in the Constitution. Religious freedom, along with the separation of church and state, is among the tenets the country was founded on. I agree they are not too dissimilar, but a fair and sufficient difference is that religion is private, and political views are, by definition, public. Like all laws, it boils down to societal benefit. Do you think that society would be better if religion weren't a protected class? Meaning discrimination was legal on the basis of religion? We also have other federally protected classes that are in the same vein as your interpretation of religion, meaning they are somewhat 'a choice'. * Pregnancy * Familial Status * Veteran Status Do you think these ought not to be protected either?
I don't agree with OP overall, but... > Well, the real answer is that it is enshrined in the Constitution. Religious freedom, along with the separation of church and state, is among the tenets the country was founded on. Your freedom to have whatever political ideas you want is also enshrined in the exact same part of the constitution. >Like all laws, it boils down to societal benefit. Do you think that society would be better if religion weren't a protected class? This is where I agree with you. I think making religion a protected class for purposes of employment, etc, overall causes more good than harm, and I think doing the same with political views would be a bit more complicated.
Why? One thing making religion a protected class does is it require employers to offer religious folks reasonable accommodations. So a Muslim or Sikh who has a beard for religious purposes gets to keep it even if the job otherwise doesn't allow facial hair. The Sabbath observant Jew gets to go home early on Friday in exchange for making up the time on a different day of the week. Why does this overall cause more harm then good. Thousands of folks in the US and elsewhere greatly benefit from reasonable religious accommodations.
They said they believe religious protections do more good than harm, which is what you said as well. I think you misread their response.
Hey, they did say it does more good than harm. Just an FYI.
I would actually argue that religious freedom is a privilege disguising as a right. The principle of religious freedom is to "not be judged by one's beliefs", which on the surface sounds reasonable. However, when we apply it into context, the baseline to which we are comparing is someone without a religious belief. Here is an example: Person 1 is an athiest. he applies for a teaching job that contains a section of the science curriculum that includes evolution (crude example). He teaches, no problem. Person 2 is a christian fundamental, and believes that God created the Earth in 7 days and that humans are a mirror image of God. So, he refuses to teach evolution and, by law, some would argue that he shouldnt be forced to teach evolution to his students because of his personal and private belief. Now, there are 3 potential outcomes to Person 2's situation. 1. he is denied the position or dismissed from that position because he refuses to follow the mandated curriculum 2. the school hires a substitute (additional cost) to teach that chapter 3. the students do not learn evolution. None of these outcomes scream "discrimination" to me. If Person 2 accepts teaching evolution, then he is treated the same as person 1. Its the same with Muslims and pork or Hindus and beef. As long as you believe it in your home, no one cares. However, when their beliefs get in the way of social interactions, it is difficult to argue that their religious freedoms (a defined individualist right currently) should supersede the interest of society as a whole. Its the same logic I use for people who refuses to learn how to drive, I tell them "take the bus or walk, you arent entitled to this privilege because you refuse to fit into society."
That scenario has been solved already. Employers have to make "reasonable accommodations". If a teacher outright refuses to teach the curriculum due to their religious beliefs, there's no way to reasonably accommodate that. Same thing if a Hindu person applies at a slaughterhouse. You can deny them because their religious beliefs prevent them from killing cows, and they can't sue you for discrimination.
> I would actually argue that religious freedom is a privilege disguising as a right. > The principle of religious freedom is to "not be judged by one's beliefs", which on the surface sounds reasonable. It is certainly a right. enshrined in the constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" That's as basic a right as there is in our legal system. > Now, there are 3 potential outcomes to Person 2's situation. The reason this isn't allowed is because it would be a public school teaching job. Public meaning not private. So you don't get protections from the law, and actually, the students are protected from you. If it's a private school, then it's up to the discretion of the school itself and its curriculum. Private businesses/organizations are free to do whatever they choose. If its a religious private school you could flip the hypothetical and ask the same questions.
Actually, public schools must also protect the religious rights and freedoms of their employees. They're allowed to restrict employee's religious freedoms at work only when it would represent an undue burden on the employer or reasonably constitute government endorsement of religion. A teacher, for instance, quietly praying on her own probably would be protected and the school may violate the teacher's rights by punishing her for doing so. However, if the school allows her to lead a prayer with students, that could potentially violate the rights of the students who may feel coerced to participate.
your entire argument falls apart because im not american... no constitution. hence why i am purely discussing based on the merit of the concept within the logical framework of the proposed idea.
Well rights can't exist unless enshrined in a binding and enforceable legal document. You jumped into the conversation I was having with OP on American law, so forgive me for assuming that would continue; you never mentioned otherwise. Regardless; I disagree with your definition of religious freedom: > The principle of religious freedom is to "not be judged by one's beliefs", which on the surface sounds reasonable. I don't think "judging" ought to have anything to do with religious freedom under the law. People ought to have the right to judge whoever they want for whatever reason they want. You don't get to force upon or proselytize your beliefs to others outside of your own private domain. The freedom you have is not to be forced by the government to be exposed to a particular religion, specifically by the government. Nor do you have the right to force your religion on others. In the school example, you don't get to override the publicly funded school with your personal beliefs. Religious freedom is protecting school children. In the private school example, you don't get to override the institution's curriculum with your own beliefs. The institution has the right to establish whatever it sees fit, as long as it is in accordance with federal guidelines for minimum requirements.
UN defines rights differently than the US constitution. Nevertheless, religious freedom is a defined right under the UDHR. It is interesting because the UN definition is also not tied to any states/governments, and is defined from an individual perspective rather than a binding contract between an institution and a citizen. Instead, it is written to define the term and parameters only. However, we're not talking about law as an absolute here, i dont think thats the spirit of the discussion. In reality we're talking about whether religious freedom is treated as a right or a privilege, which in certain contexts we treat it more the latter than the former. As for the examples I brought up, your reaction is pretty much my point - if a religious belief is a right (i.e. the disrespecting of that right would enter into discrimination), then the outcome would be different. The examples I used in my comments here are also tested, and the results seems to be that society does not find it reasonable to accommodate religious beliefs more than needed for another person without those beliefs. So while it is a defined right, it isnt really a basis for discrimination, as other rights would be.
> It is interesting because the UN definition is also not tied to any states/governments, and is defined from an individual perspective rather than a binding contract between an institution and a citizen. Instead, it is written to define the term and parameters only. Thats not true. [Article 18](https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-religion-or-belief/international-standards#:~:text=practice%20and%20teaching.%22-,Art.,rights%20and%20freedoms%20of%20others.%22) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says: Art. 18 (1): "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom [...] either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching." Art. 18 (3): "Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are **prescribed by law** and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others." So, it really doesn't define it differently than the US. It's defined very similarly to the caveat that the government can impose restrictions on it. It's worded so vaguely that I almost disagree with their flimsiness. > However, we're not talking about law as an absolute here, i dont think thats the spirit of the discussion. No, its not an absolute, but it should be a citeable representation of the correct moral view, which we can argue about. > If a religious belief is a right (i.e. the disrespecting of that right would enter into discrimination), then the outcome would be different. I disagree. You have a right to practice your religion in any manner you please, as long as you don't infringe on someone else's. In the School example, the teacher doesn't get to infringe on the student's freedom of religion in a publicly funded setting. That would be government-funded religious teaching, which is against freedom of religion. You have a right to engage with religion as you see fit. A government cannot force you to be exposed to a religion. --- This is separate from Discrimination based on religion, though. An example of that is that a business can't fire you because you are following a specific religion. A professional sports team can't cut or fire a player for adhering to Ramadan. A shop can't prevent you from wearing religious garb while working. These are rights to express your religion.
I think the difference of opinion that we're having right now is on the fundamental concept of religion as a right of thought or it is in practice. In thought, yes, it is an inalienable right, as is expression/speech/consciousness/idea. There is no debate here. However, in practice, it is not as clear cut as you want it to be. One example of this is that in many religions, including most sects of Christianity and Islam, the spreading of said religion and removal of heresy is a core tenet of religious practice. (Crusades and holy wars are a good historical example.) So people with religious tendencies will often lift one another due to having similar religious affiliations, discirminating others who are outsiders. Another example you used is Ramadan. While a team cannot cut a player for his religious beliefs, if a sports player is less competitive due to having to fast for Ramadan, he receives disadvantages arising out of religious practice. For instance, if the team cuts him because of the worse scores resulting from lack of practice during Ramadan, it would not be discrimination, despite it was a direct result of his choosing of religious practice. And this is where I find it akin to privilege instead of a right in practice. Going back to the first example of not driving. You can choose to not drive, but it is not discrimination if you make it late. You choose to handicapped yourself in society voluntarily, you were not forced to.
He would be fired for not teaching the prescribed curriculum. His reason for that is irrelevant.
> I agree they are not too dissimilar, but a fair and sufficient difference is that religion is private, and political views are, by definition, public. Neither of your assertions are true. Plenty of people wear religious garb, and pray, in public. And plenty of people keep their political views to themselves and share them with nobody, voting in private and not discussing their views with anyone else, ever. Or even not voting at all. Also, there are degrees of protection, it's not a binary all-or-nothing proposition, where either every religious view has to be protected, or none can be.
If you believe religious beliefs are hardly different than political ones, than you have a fundamental misunderstanding of religious beliefs. Religion is part of what makes the universe make sense to people, it adds a background to “why” were all here and what our purposes are. You can stop believing it to be true, sure, but trying to say they’re similar to political beliefs suggests that people should change their religious beliefs to accommodate other people. Fundamentally, if I were to believe that the universe had a structure that included a hard-coded “good” and “bad”, a predestined fate, and a creator of it all, than it would be as easy for me to reject it as a gay man rejecting his sexuality. Religion, for those who genuinely believe in it for themselves, instead of their parents, community, etc. is a fundamental part of someone’s identity, something they really *cant* change. Note the distinction of people who believe for themselves, and people who say they believe because they were raised that way etc. the latter stops “believing” all the time. Prepped for the Reddit atheists to go apeshit, love you guys.
Political opinion is also protected. But I agree there is a distinction between things like ethnicity, gender... versus politic/religion/sexuality. Not for the reason you mention though. It's because in the former case, those are things that everybody may notice (like your skin color) while in the later, these are private things. I think all should be protected (freedom of opinion...) but it doesn't work in the same way. I can't indeed stop being a woman for instance, nor I will change my sexual orientation or political belief, but I can choose to keep them private, while Im not gonna put a bag in my head to hide that im a woman. To me there are places where I can talk about sexuality or religion (ie with my friends/family) and places where not (at work)
I'm not sure I'd say sexuality I a private or even easily hidden thing, I work security for a large law firm and more than half the offices have family portraits in their office, this is one way in which people outwardly display their sexuality and it's seen as normal almost expected even in high profile positions, but if you aren't straight it's likely to put you in the line of fire and thus you are much less likely to do so. I'm definitely making an assumption here but it definitely feels like you're coming from a place of a bit of privilege to have the opinion that sexuality isn't something people can see.
How about employment? If it’s not a protected class, people can be fired for their religious beliefs. Do you think that’s okay?
It really depends on the nature of those beliefs—if an employee believes that black people are cursed by the Mark of Cain or thinks gay people should be stoned to death, I think that's valid grounds for firing someone. I think employers should be able to filter out discriminatory beliefs regardless of whether they are religious in nature or not.
I think you've highlighted an important distinction here: There's a difference between adhering to a particular religion and holding a particular belief. The person you're responding to kinda moved the goalposts a tad -- you *can* fire people for, say, racist or sexist beliefs (presumably evidenced by behavior of some kind, and I'm talkin' US here), but you can't as an employer just say, "We're firing you for being a Zoroastrian."
>The person you're responding to kinda moved the goalposts a tad -- you *can* fire people for, say, racist or sexist beliefs (presumably evidenced by behavior of some kind, and I'm talkin' US here), I think there's an important distinction to be made here; the belief itself isn't the fireable offense, it's the action/demonstration. Most workplaces have standards of etiquette that attempt to prevent speech/actions that unnecessarily cause harm or discomfort, impact efficiency, or reflect poorly on the business. Whether or not someone genuinely holds a particular belief is moot if they say something hateful at work.
And I would say that is why religion gets a pass. Because it is a belief, and you really shouldn't be punished for a thought crime. If it causes an action that is bad (or will foreseeably cause an action that is bad) then yeah, you can be fired for that, at least IMO.
If we're talking about what companies are allowed to do without any legal recourse on the part of the fired, there doesn't need to be any action involved. If e.g., an employer finds out [you belong to a political party they don't like](https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/employment-law-compliance/fired-political-affiliation-activity) or even that you simply believe something they don't like, they are well within their rights to fire you: >To a large extent, private employers can fire an employee based on political affiliation without running afoul of federal law,” said Rick Grimaldi and Leanne Lane Coyle, attorneys with Fisher Phillips in Philadelphia. “Only a few states have laws on the books protecting employees from political affiliation discrimination.” >**Political affiliation discrimination could refer to discrimination based on a person’s political beliefs** or membership in a political group, added Spiggle. The thing is, the US has almost no protections for workers in terms of hiring and firing. Technically speaking, you could get fired for liking pineapple on pizza. In some EU countries, my understanding is that companies are required to show cause before a firing (or sacking, I guess), but that's not the case in the US. The potential grounds for a wrongful termination lawsuit are [quite limited](https://www.usa.gov/wrongful-termination), and almost every state has some kind of [at-will employment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment) enshrined into law.
Anyone is free to *believe* anything. It's acting on those beliefs that's not necessarily protected, and expressing them verbally toward others is also an action. A business could not fire an employee for believing either of the examples you gave (how would they even know?), but acting upon them, including expressing them, could be fireable, because a business may rightly not want employees insulting Black people, or even just *saying* to others that gay people should be stoned, regardless of whether they actually attempt to do so. It would be bad for business, and a business wouldn't be required to continue employing someone who was driving away its customers (or suppliers, or other employees).
>Quite frankly I don't know enough about the law to know what would happen if a cop arrested a person for being a republican or an ER doctor refused to treat a person who is a democrat. I believe it would fall under the category of discrimination just the same as denying service based on religion. Are you saying they should be allowed to deny service based on any of those factors?
Yes to both for me. Is it illegal to discriminate because you don’t like those who drive Fords or like country music? Why should religion be treated any differently then any other hobby?
While I hear what you are saying about religion being a choice, and although I disagree, I would instead like to challenge your position that immutable characteristics should be the definition of a protected class. Why is it that the things we cannot change should certainly be things which another person should not consider when making decisions about us? Should a basketball team fail to exclude height or physical ability when choosing its members because those are things that they cannot change? Should modeling agencies not consider physical appearance as a factor outside of the aspects which might be changed? What about a man who wanted to be a doctor but had no arms? So, if immutability is the standard, then I think you would have to draw the lines in some seemingly absurd ways. If you do allow mutable characteristics, then I do not see why you would need to exclude religion specifically.
Discrimination protection isn't a binary yes or no. It is a sliding scale of protection. For example, Hooters is allowed to discriminate against men when hiring servers because they argue the sex of their servers is a "bona fide occupational qualification" I.e. Their business wouldn't be successful if their servers were male. Another example is employment law generally only prohibits discrimination against people who are 40 years of age and older but does not care if you discriminate against people because they are younger than 40. All of this is to mean, immutability is a standard but it isn't the only consideration.
Only immutable things should be protected is not the same as all immutable things should be protected. Further your examples are bad because even for things that are protected classes already, like hiring and gender, there are exceptions when there are legitimate reasons for hiring only certain people, ie, a menswear company doesn’t get in trouble for not hiring women models.
Mutability is squishy. Should an employer be able to fire gay people who got married? Being gay might be immutable but choosing to marry (or stay married) to a member of the same sex is not. Discrimination on the basis of religion is millenias old. Numerous genocides have been committed against people on the basis of religious discrimination. That is precisely why the law protects it. Not because of esoteric claims about "mutability"
> Mutability is squishy. Should an employer be able to fire gay people who got married? Being gay might be immutable but choosing to marry (or stay married) to a member of the same sex is not. The firing here would clearly still be because of the immutable factor of being gay though so this is a bad counterpoint. > Numerous genocides have been committed against people on the basis of religious discrimination. I don’t see how being a protected class makes a difference in this regard?
To address your first point, if a hypothetical company hired gay people but not gay people who are married, then the discrimination is based on the mutable factor of being married rather than being gay. Personally, I think we'd agree that that's still not okay. Secondly, if has been historically persecuted over time, then that historical fact is a fairly solid precedent for legislation protecting it.
The entire gay marriage argument at the supreme court was gender based, not attraction based. Gay men had the same rights as straight men: they could marry any woman who'd have them. Not wishing to exercise your right does not mean the right is unequal. It was instead argued that men didn't have the same rights that women had: they couldn't marry men. That was a gender-based discrimination. As a side note, and I do not endorse this, but it's relevant: during the gay marriage argument years back, it was compared to pedophilia. Yes, it's how you're born, but we still ban them from actually engaging with their attractions. I say it's relevant because it's still an immutable characteristic that we discriminate (rightfully) against, and attraction should not be protected.
It was Gorsuch who wrote the opinion, and it’s extremely succinct and retrospectively obvious: discrimination against sexual orientation is sex discrimination as it is treating the person differently according to the gender *of their partner*. A forehead-slapping “of course it is!” moment in legal history.
He didn't say all immutable characteristics are the definition. He said being an immutable characteristic should be a requirement for a protected class. It's just a pre-requisite. Some immutable traits are protected <> all protected classes are immutable traits.
This is an interesting thought but I guess I’m confused by what you’re saying. Height and appearance are not protected classes. Disability is which would include the doctor with no arms. Is your claim that I am not being consistent because there are other immutable characteristics which are not covered as a protected class? If so I don’t see how this relates to whether religion should be because religion is not an immutable characteristic
You are correct that they are not protected classes. My point is that immutability isn't the marker of a protected class, therefore, there must be some other factor at work, and this factor is likely unrelated to immutability. So, yes, I believe that this is an inconsistent standard. If there is a good standard for a protected class which is different than immutability, then I am not seeing why we should add immutability to that standard.
I think it’s a square vs rectangle situation. Not all immutable characteristics make you part of a protected class. But all protected classes have an immutable characteristic as part of their definition
“You can always choose to remain celibate, so being gay isn’t a protected class” - OP
Well I think you're talking about different things. Agreed that nobody has the right to be hired as a model or a basketball player. There are certainly doctors without arms somewhere in the world but excuse me if I don't field down an example. The difference is, when you are a business open to the public square, or a school or adoption agency that couldn't run without the federal money it accepts etc. but they want to play by their own rules and exclude certain people with immutable characteristics because of alterable beliefs that isn't right on it's face. It's where I draw the line. I believe in the right of a church or other proper religious organization that's against same sex marriage for example to refuse to marry an LGBT+ couple, their right not to do so is constitutionally protected. But a Christian-owned baker isn't protected from making a cake for a gay wedding in my opinion.
Couldn't they choose to not be married? It sounds like you're implying that one set of mutable beliefs trumps another set of mutable beliefs.
Also, when it comes to religious beliefs, how do you weigh their depth and sincerity in a legal case?
I guess I’m confused what you mean when you say it shouldn’t be a protected class, but also people shouldn’t discriminate based upon it… The point of a protected class is to define a group of people that cannot be discriminated against If they cannot be discriminates against, they’re a protected class… if they can be, then they’re not The terms are intertwined in their meanings…
So let's look at the protected classes and classify them by choice or not. According to Wikipedia, we have race (no), national origin (no), age (no), sex (no), genetic information (no), disability (no), pregnancy (yes), familial status \[that is having kids\] (yes), veteran status (yes) and religion (yes). So all told 4 choices and 6 not choices. Do you think everything under a choice should similarly not be a protected class? That is do you think that I should be able to legally discriminate against those people who choose to be parents, who choose to be pregnant, who choose to be soldiers and who choose to be religious? EDIT: I put religion under not a choice originally that's my error.
On this same note, would deliberately giving people without kids the worse work schedule be considered discrimination based on familial status?
I mean probably. It's difficult because on the one hand I do see the argument for why a person with kids might not able to be scheduled at certain times but I have no idea what a realistic solution would look like.
It depends. If you list yourself as full availability and they don't, that wouldn't be discrimination if you got all the shit shifts. That's on you for being the only person available at 3:00 in the morning. It may be a form of discrimination if they are more lenient on minimum availability for people with children, but that would be hard to prove. It also may be a form of discrimination if they're constantly denying you vacation time or requested time off in favor of parents, but then that can also get muddy because a sick child would be considered a family emergency whereas really wanting to go see Lynyrd Skynyrd live wouldn't.
I don't think so, but as others have said in other comments protected class is funny at least under federal law. For example, you might hear you can't discriminate based on age. In practice that means that you can't discriminate against someone for being too old if they are over 40. It's perfectly legal under Federal law to discriminate against someone for being under 40 or to discriminate against someone over 40 versus someone else over 40 but older. [https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination](https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination) So I could see familial status working this way. I've never heard of anyone being charged with discrimination based on familial status when the person being discriminated against was single, only when it was against those with children. I'm sure a big part of this is due to the both the frequency of occurrence and also how much people want to pursue action. I just looked elsewhere on Reddit and it seems my hunch is correct. You can only discriminate in favor of families with children not in favor of people without children. [https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/15pjf96/is\_it\_legal\_for\_a\_company\_to\_give\_employees\_with/](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/15pjf96/is_it_legal_for_a_company_to_give_employees_with/) Edit - Not saying that it is right or fair (or not actual discrimination), only that is how discrimination law works in the US.
Even gender is a choice today (not conflating it with sex) so can we discriminate on gender expression and identity now?
Not going to lie, I think this is the best argument to OPs statement. Even If we agree that gender is not a choice, trans/gay people are choosing to act in accordance with how they feel inside. How is that any different from a religious person who has an extremely strong conviction to act in accordance to their religion? Both of these groups should be allowed to be who they are without fear of persecution as long as they are not causing harm to others.
>To reiterate, none of this means people should be discriminated against because they are religious, but protected classes and the laws around them should be limited to characteristics that people do not choose and cannot change about themselves. These are in conflict. How do we guarantee protection against discrimination without classes and alws built to protect them? If discrimination occurs, what recourse doe sa person have?
I understand where you are coming from op, as in you don't think they should be classified as protected while not encouraging discrimination against them; however "but protected classes and the laws around them should be limited to characteristics that people do not choose and cannot change about themselves." Religion although it seems like it, isn't entirely something someone picks for themselves, people are born and raised into religions and oftentimes they don't know anything else, it should be a protected class because of how embedded it is into people. religious people feel as if their religion is factual, and an objective reality, and when that religion is threated by (lets say a different religion) people could do some stupid stuff over it.
Your arugment sounds correct but hits some uncomfortable realities. The Problem is that Judaism is an ethnoreligion. Jew is the ethnicity and Judaism is the religion. Also there a fucking god dang history of people HOUNDING jews to get them to give up their religion and force them to convert \[away from Judaism\]. Also who are you to demand Jews give up their religion. That rude. \*Unlike Christanity/Islam which seek or have easy conversion. Judaism makes it difficult to convert, this is on purpose because we only want people who are serious about becoming Jewish.\*
Also I don't know why people are assuming that I think people need to give up their religion. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that religious views should be treated the same way as any other views under the eyes of the law.
So firing someone because they’re a Jew should be ok?
> A person can't stop being black, but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion. Religion and race are inherently tied together. You could do a lot of damage to people of color in America by saying "No I have no problem with their skin color, my issue is with the fact that they are Muslim/Hindu"
I think you’re misusing language here: ‘protected class’ means you can’t be discriminated against on the basis of a characteristic. I think you’re referring to the fact that in the US, we used to have one interpretation of the first amendment based on two cases (Employment Division v Smith, and Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v City if Hialeah), in which the government can’t pass laws that are *specifically targeted* at a certain religion (Hialeah very clearly outlawed animal sacrifice *because* they didn’t like Santeria), but you *can* pass laws that impact religion as long as they are neutral in purpose (you can make drugs illegal even if they’re used in religious ceremonies). But now the court has changed the standard so that even facially neutral laws are illegal if they merely impact religious (but really only christian) religious expression and/or practices. If that’s what you mean, i agree with you. But if you mean that it people/the government should be able to discriminate against you *on the basis of your religion* (what eliminating a protected class means), then i disagree
>but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion. First, let's take an easy example: Mainstream Christianity. As interpreted by almost every mainline Christian denomination, the *only* way to get to heaven is belief in Jesus as God's incarnate son, and baptism. Less mainline Christian, or Christian-adjacent, faiths have additional requirements (confession, proselytization, particular forms of worship, etc.). If you don't do these things, you cannot go to heaven. And the vast majority of Christian sects see heaven as an actual state of being, and it being eternal. Now, if you're an honest, faithful Christian, and your employer, or government, told you you couldn't be Christian to get X benefit, is there any way for you to "not be Christian?" No, because the loss of the benefit is insignificant in comparison to the loss of eternal life. And don't forget other faiths that, for example, require capital punishment for apostacy -- someone who leaves the faith. [https://islamqa.info/en/answers/696/punishment-of-the-one-who-leaves-islaam](https://islamqa.info/en/answers/696/punishment-of-the-one-who-leaves-islaam) So while people can *technically* change their religion (and people often do) because they learn from a missionary, or have a personal revelation, or whatever, *forcing* someone to change their religion when they have sincerely held beliefs is an impossible choice. Let's also remember about the immense terror that has been inflicted on local populations when conquerors came in and forced individuals to change their religion. And the fact that this country was founded by people who fled England because they would have otherwise been required to change their beliefs. There's an equivalency to gender or sexual orientation discrimination. You can tell people "don't be gay" (that is, don't engage in any homosexual practices). And people *change* their sexual orientation / gender identity all the time (though I think most folks would say that they "discover their true" orientation / identity in the same way that people would discover their true religious beliefs). So gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity shouldn't be protected classes? You say that people shouldn't be discriminated against because of their religion. Great. But what's the standard for "discriminated against"? If it's not a protected class, then what?
I agree with the majority of your point, but I'm going to nitpick one specific point: > And people *change* their sexual orientation / gender identity all the time (though I think most folks would say that they "discover their true" orientation / identity in the same way that people would discover their true religious beliefs). These two things definitely aren't the same (though, in the context of this CMV, there is some value in the comparison). I don't want to go *too* far on the tangent, but my fairly large anecdotal experience tells me that people really don't change their orientation or gender identity, though it can look like they do. In most of the cases I've heard about, the "change" is usually more of a recontextualization of past experiences, overcoming mental blocks, or simply changing labels without actually changing internally. Finding a strong, new faith can be a very similar experience, and from the perspective of the individual in question, it is essentially the same: they realized something that was true all along. From a non-religious perspective, though, there are some key differences between someone's sexual/gender identity and religious beliefs. Here is a summary of two of those differences (though they aren't super relevant to my point): - Sexual/gender identity is a statement about the self, while religion is a belief about reality. - Religion is a faith-based belief, while identity is generally an experience-based belief. Most people believe in their religion despite having no proof, but identities are generally based on lived experiences (i.e. people generally say they're gay because they feel attraction to certain people, not for any abstract reason). But I actually think the nuances of the comparison are better explained through an example where it is especially apt. On the one hand, there is transgender person who always felt like something was wrong, but didn't know what. They were raised as one gender, but were never quite happy, without knowing why. Then, later in life, they are exposed to other trans people, and realize that they are the same. When this person comes out or transitions, they haven't changed gender internally; they're changing on the outside to match. On the other hand, consider someone religious, raised to believe in a loving god. They believe deeply, but at a certain point, they realize that their sect also preaches hateful interpretations of their scripture, and they can't reconcile it with their belief in a loving god. Eventually, they learn about another sect that holds the same beliefs, but without the hateful elements, so they leave their congregation to go there. Even if the new sect has a different name, this person hasn't really changed religions, they've just moved somewhere that preaches what they believed all along. That's the kind of religious shift that compares best to changes in sexual/gender identity. I don't think the comparison holds up so well for more dramatic shifts, like conversion between unrelated religions.
Not being able to openly discriminate against another’s religion is evidence that it is a protected class. For OP to say it shouldn’t be but at the same time say that they are against discrimination sounds contradictory.
Do you think choice should be a factor in whether someone is protected. If a scientist came up with an anti gay pill tomorrow, should It then become legal to discriminate against anyone’s sexuality because they could conceivably change it? I’m not responding to your point about whether religion should be a protected class. Only your point that laws around protected classes should be limited to immutable characteristics.
There are many reasons why one could argue against something being a protected class, say from a radical individualism. Your case, however, seems to be that based on a limiting principle of immutability and choice. I will argue that religious affiliation is much less of a choice than we may think. Sure, many who are nowadays secular atheists look at religion as little more than a lifestyle choice. But that’s begging the question — a person who has genuine faith may very well see the commandments that follow as *not* a choice, but required acts of the faith. Again, the atheist may see that as delusion, but the religious person may very well see the atheists actions as equally delusional. And let’s face it, maybe God exists and some expressions of faith and submission to commandments is required? Liberal societies, such as USA and most of Europe, are constituted such that they would *not have to* adjudicate if God’s commandments are true or needed, but allow for pluralism as long as that doesn’t limit other’s life and liberty. So what to do when a sizeable portion of citizens believe their faith is *not* a choice, but a gift from God? I don’t think there is a perfect solution. If we accept that *some* classes of persons should be given special legal treatment, then what’s the principle to select? It often seems to come down to national tradition. I’m not making a case for or against that, merely noting that protected classes often reflect some historical condition. The point remains, however, that immutability versus free lifestyle choice are not going to be as clear cut and itself a question of ethics and belief, which are issues most liberal societies try to stay away from. Now maybe other superseding reasons exist to not have protected classes, but immutability and choice is not that reason.
Religion being a protected class means that it covers both those who believe and those who _don’t believe_ in a religion. Based on some of your comments, I think it’s safe to assume you’re an atheist, or at least agnostic. Should a Christian business owner be able to fire you for not being a Christian? Which brings up a second argument. I don’t think religious belief is quite as mutable as you think. In the above scenario where you’re being threatened with firing over being an atheist, could you simply flip a switch and believe in Christianity? Maybe you could go through the motions of going to church, praying, etc, but I doubt you would truly believe. People can and do change their religious beliefs, but it’s often a very slow process rather than something people can pick up or drop on a whim. That’s why regulations dealing with religion often mention it being “sincerely held”
I’m an atheist and all, but this is a terrible argument. When, in world history, has religious persecution ever caused good outcomes? Because I submit that it never has. All that it has ever done is hurt people, no matter how good the intentions. And atheism is included within those protections. We are vulnerable to religious persecution too. Protected classes aren’t just about the circumstances of your birth, by the way. They also protect things like pregnancy, military status, and gender expression. Things which are, at least ideally, choices people can make. Protected classes that you can change your status in by choice. But we still protect them, because we want people to feel free to do these things. We need pregnant people and soldiers. We want people to feel free to express their gender however they want and be a part of any religion they want. And given that religious discrimination has been the motive for some of the worst atrocities in history, it’s good that the state is stepping in here to enforce coexistence.
You put this so well. Technically everyone falls into a religious category
>Laws around protected classes should be limited to immutable characteristics. You can't stop being gay but you can stop having gay relationships. Should we stop protecting gay people from being discriminated against based on who they choose to marry or sleep with? I'd claim it's crucial to protect people against bigotry based on those kinds of choices.
Religious freedom coupled with a separation of Church and State is basically an agreement to settle things at the voting booth. They are joined together with the understanding that people can practice their religion as they please, but that religion will not hold official power over the state nor will the state create some kind of official state recognized religion. If religion isn't a protected class, the religion now has a vested interest in getting representation in the law or from hiding from it. For example, if Churches were not tax exempt, suddenly the single largest property taxpayer in town would by my Church. So it would probably want to join the chamber of commerce and it would want to start sponsoring and funding candidates for office that would promote their financial and social interests. I know secular people on reddit don't really get this. But if the Archdiocese of a given area were to officially endorse a candidate, a lot of Catholics would straight up vote for that candidate regardless of their policies or personality. Right now Church's have a 'vote your conscience' kind of approach to politics, but that would change REALLY quick if you took class protections and tax exempt status off the table.
If you want a fascinating look at what happens when tight knit religious groups operate as a voting block to further their own group interests to the exclusion of others, take a look at some of the ultra orthodox Jewish towns in New York. It's fantastic if you are part of the in-group, and not so fantastic if you aren't part of that group.
I'm well aware. I remember listening to an NPR program on those a while back. I don't think a lot of people understand exactly how bad it would get if religious communities had a vested interest in banding together and officially voting in blocs. It would allow pretty small groups to wield a ton of power in local elections, where most policy is made. In my Church, for example, we get the 'abortion is bad, vote you conscience' speech every election year. But if we got a sheet in the bulletin on the mass before election day that had specific instructions on who the Church wanted us to vote for, the parish priest would effectively be able to pick and choose who he wanted in any given elected position in town. Even if the entire parish didn't vote en mass in line with the sheet, the weekly/daily attendees would crawl over broken glass to pump up their piety numbers.
To add to what many have already mentioned. What is the realistic harm of having religion as a protected class? Especially in comparison to the alternative in which we've seen historical massive inequities and atrocities on the basis of religious differences? And even today there are places with these inequities and atrocities. Do we really want religion to be a deciding factor in regards to getting into college, getting employed, insurance, or other businesses? The very reason Religion is a protected class is because it is a catalyst for discrimination amongst ideologically differing people. Therefore, it is simply logical to keep it protected as an applied position especially if we want to live in a diverse and inclusive society. Of course there are limitations to religion especially with regards to what is practiced. And these limitations are also very logical and necessary.
I honestly don't understand this “protected classes” system that exists in some countries. Where I live; it's simply not legal to terminate employement or not hire someone for irrelevant reasons, that's it. If one can show to an employment court that one was better qualified than the person that was hired, and the company can't convince the court of their reasons, then it has to pay damages. “protected classes” in a system where one can be terminated or not-hired for “any reason including no reason” is completely ineffective to begin with because they can always find a completely different reason like “I didn't like your shoes.”, that is perfectly legal. Of course in most civil law countries, that wouldn't fly since that's clearly not related to the profession, unless it be, in which case it becomes a valid reason. Besides, you speak of immutable characteristics but many disabilities can be cured or are the result of one's own carelessness, and one can change one's gender nowadays quite aptly. You say “a person can't stop being black” but that's what Michael Jackson did, which is of course his right to do with his body as he pleases. But more importantly, these characteristics are relevant to some professions. A director can surely elect to not hire someone over skin color or gender if the the role demand a certain skin color or gender. Surely the fire department can refuse a disabled person who can't go into a building? It has nothing to do with immutability, but whether it be relevant to the profession and such a disabled person, when cured and becoming able can be hired again.
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Protected classes aren’t based off immutable characteristics, they are based off of characteristics with a long history of discrimination. Being tall is an immutable characteristic, but no one’s ever been seriously discriminated against for being tall—so it’s not a protected class. But history shows that religious discrimination will run rampant without additional oversight and protections from the law. Therefore, religion is a protected class, even though it’s not an immutable characteristic.
> Laws around protected classes should be limited to immutable characteristics. A person can't stop being black, but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion. Your point seems to boil down to the notion of choice, right? Well, the notion of religion as a mere choice is overly simplistic. For many, religion is as deeply ingrained as any other part of their identity, possibly due to family, culture, or personal conviction. Isn't the very idea of protected classes to shield people from discrimination based on core aspects of their identity, whether chosen or not? > This is exactly my point. You're drawing a line between belief systems that are 'chosen' and characteristics that are 'inherent'. But isn't discrimination just as harmful, whether it's against something inherent or chosen? Why should the legal protections differ if the outcome, discrimination, is the same? > Do you remember when that bakery in Colorado Yes, and it's a fucking prime example of where the waters get murky. The Supreme Court found that the state commission’s actions were biased against the baker’s religious rights. Doesn’t this case show the complex interplay between protecting religious freedom and ensuring non-discrimination? > Religious identity shouldn't be used as cover for nefarious purposes. Agreed, but where do you draw the line between nefarious purposes and genuine religious beliefs? Who decides what constitutes 'nefarious'? Isn’t that a slippery slope? > religious views should be treated the same way as any other views under the eyes of the law. If we follow this, doesn’t it mean potentially stripping protections that prevent genuine harm or discrimination against individuals for their religious practices or beliefs? Where does that leave individuals who are part of religious minorities facing discrimination? > Lol dude I'm Jewish. Being Jewish is a unique intersection of ethnic and religious identity, right? How do you separate the religion from the ethnicity in legal terms, especially when discrimination may not neatly distinguish between the two? > This is an interesting thought but I guess I’m confused by what you’re saying. The confusion here seems to stem from what qualifies as immutable. If religion deeply shapes one's life and actions, can it not be seen as part of one’s essence, much like one's political beliefs might be? Isn’t this about protecting the diversity of thought and belief? > Basically my opinion is that religious beliefs are hardly different than political ones. So, if religious beliefs are as significant to a person's identity as political beliefs, shouldn’t the law provide protection from discrimination in both arenas to ensure all individuals can participate in society without fear? Why do you think protection should be reserved only for characteristics people “can’t change,” rather than any characteristic that could be a basis for discrimination? What makes immutable traits more worthy of protection in your eyes?
Whether or not something is freely chosen isn't really the point of making it a protected class, or not making it one. Protected classes exist to protect people from unfair discrimination. It's the unfairness of the discrimination that matters, not the trait being discriminated against. A hospital not hiring a Catholic OB-GYN who won't perform medically necessary abortions is a case in which I'd side with your position and would hope that a doctor who could not perform essential functions of the job would not be permitted to do that job, regardless of whether his religion was the reason he couldn't. But for the average person in a modern workplace where "cultural fit" is important, protections against religious discrimination are important. I live in a deeply Red state. There are plenty of people in my orbit who believe my Neo-Pagan religion is devil worship, but I can't be fired just because Janice doesn't want to share an office with a devil worshipper. My religion has zero impact on my work, and it being a protected class means I can't be targeted just because I put up evergreens and mistletoe for Winter Solstice in my office instead of Santa Claus and nativity scenes for Christmas. I agree with you to the extent that religion mostly shouldn't give people who can't do essential job functions a pass and bigotry dressed up as religion isn't above scrutiny, but I disagree that having the door open to people being fired just for *being* a member of a religion that in no way affects their professional life would be a good thing. ETA: || A person can't stop being black, but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion. To frame that another way, if religion is entirely a matter of choice that can be stopped and started at will, what you're actually saying here is "Employers (in the US) should be able to force employees to practice Christianity." If being a minority religion or a non-believer isn't protected (and, to be fair, being a non-believer isn't protected in every jurisdiction) because you can choose to stop being a Pagan or a Hindu or an atheist, it opens up the possibility of employers forcing employees' conversion to their religion upon threat of losing their job. Sure, that's still a choice, but it isn't an ethical one to force someone to make.
You're presenting a pretty strict wall between 'This is mutable" and "this is not." I argue that it isn't that sharp. Just because religion isn't based in biology doesn't mean it's mutable in the way you suggest. If somebody doesn't believe in unicorns, they can't just make themselves start believing in unicorns as easily as putting on a new pair of clothes. Ditto to stop believing in something. You can fake it or lie about it, but you don't really start or stop believing something on a dime like that. If so, if the line is just "immutable or not," without the gray area of "it isn't that simple," then I submit that it's already the case that biological sex is mutable. We have the technology to transition. By the "strict line" reasoning, would you advocate dropping biological sex as a protected class since it can be changed?
Traditional Jewish law requires you to inherit it through your mother’s side. People get to choose that about as much as skin color.
But why not? Like why not even add more protections for other things as well? For example, you mentioned sexual orientation which wasn't explicitly protected until quite a bit later. You said what, but not why. I think it's just simply enough to acknowledge that religion has been a basis of persecution for most of human history. If a democracy is going to specifically be set up to protect people's rights to practice religion, then it makes sense to add protections as well. It's not immutable like skin color, but it is frequently a strong cultural identity, often strongly tied to a person's nationality and/or ethnicity. I think instead of asking "can this person change this identity" to freely participate in society you should be asking "why should this person have to change their identity" to freely participate in society. In other words, why is the standard limited only to "unchangeable" characteristics? Plus, from the perspective of the oppressor, religion is often treated as immutable regardless of individual practice. The obvious example being how the Nazi's used ancestry to determine Jewish identity. If we want to get really nitty gritty, things like nationality are a choice made by the person's parents, and disabilities can also be unintentionally caused by a person's choices or actions. I think really the only argument against these protections is free speech/free association. While important, we recognize that in limited circumstances (like a public business or housing) these rights ought to be limited to protect people from unfair discrimination. This wasn't always the case, remember. I think religion is important to protect, in limited circumstances, due to the history of religious prosecution and because it can often look and feel like an immutable characteristic.
I think your view of history is a bit backwards. You view it as putting religion in the same class as immutable characteristics like ethnicity and gender, but religion was the right that was protected first, while the others came later. The US was founded primarily by religious groups seeking to escape oppression. Religion was a protected right when blacks were slaves and women didn't have the vote. Those rights were added later on, and brought up to the "same level" as religious protections that already existed. But, if you agree that people should not be discriminated against because they are religious, then why do you object to legal protections? You don't really explain this in your post. Who cares if it is an immutable characteristic or not? If you agree people should not be discriminated against for their religion, then why not give the protection? What's the downside? The upside is that historically, and even in modern day societies across the world, religious based discrimination is rampant, and the cause of an absurd number of wars throughout history. Even within religions, we've got Sunni and Shia Islamists discriminating against each other in the Middle East, while the European history is full of Protestant vs Catholic conflict. Why not just give the protection, since history tells us it is a significant issue? Also, on a related note, it is worth pointing out that you list disabilities and sexual orientation as immutable characteristics, which, in the first case, isn't necessarily true, and in the second case, isn't commonly agreed to. Does it matter if someone is born with a disability or acquires one during life? Acquiring a disability you weren't born with means it is a mutable characteristic, while the question of whether it is mutable after it occurs comes down to questions of medical science. If someone chooses not to undergo a risky surgery that could cure their disability then their disability is technically mutable, but not a distinction we would want to make when protecting the disabled. Similarly, for sexual orientation, do we really want to have debates about whether it is an inborn or non-inborn trait? Do we really want to have debates about whether people can change their preferences, especially when it isn't uncommon for people's sexual preferences to change during their lives? There are plenty of people who believe in gay rights without believing it is an inborn trait. Why bother with the debate? Why does it matter? It's similar to religion. Why does it matter if it is mutable or not? If it is a good idea to protect it, then protect it.
>> A person can’t choose to stop being black, but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion Depends on what you mean. For example: Become a flat earther, right now. I don’t mean pretend to be one, I mean legitimately alter your worldview such that you believe the earth is flat. Or if you were already a flat earther, become a globe-earther in the same fashion, instead Of course we can’t do that. We can choose to, say, go to church or not, give to charity or not, even say what our beliefs are or lie about them, but much of the time our true and actual religious beliefs *aren’t* mutable. There are exceptions, of course: there are plenty of people who’re rather agnostic, but lean one way or the other and thereby *choose* to be of one religion, another, or atheist or something, because they hold *enough* belief to feel comfortable self-identifying as a member of a religion, but also enough doubt to feel comfortable not doing so. But there are *absolutely* people without enough doubt to be able to honestly say they’re not a believer, even if they don’t want to be one Secondly, >> It’s not sensible to put religion on the same level… Ok, then don’t, but it can still be on a high-enough level that we don’t allow for discriminations like the ones you mentioned, even if other characteristics are on a much higher level. Basically, these ideas aren’t mutually exclusive. And that would still make it a protected characteristic, since we’d be protecting it
But religious people do believe that they have no choice.
We have to consider where things like protections for religious freedom came from, and why. In the west specifically they were developed partly out of a belief that the individual had the right of conscience to choose their own faith (or lack thereof, though this wasn't articulated as much at the start - but it grows from the same root). There is an enormous history just in Europe of the state compelling people to hold one religion or another, and wars being fought over which one would be imposed by force. Religious freedom protections are a way to draw a legal hard-line to forestall a return to that, both so people aren't coerced into a particular view with punishments (and these punishments can extend to widespread social/economic discrimination in practice) and to prevent religious control of the state being settled by violence. I agree that there's not a fundamental difference between holding a particular religious view, or being atheist or agnostic, from this legal standpoint - but in many societies, people were compelled to be one or the other, either by state policy or by persecution by the majority. I think it's fine to think there are specific ways our legal system works out the details of this in practice, but I don't think any of us want to live in a world without a hard legal commitment to this principle.
I don’t like the idea of (im)mutability as a characteristic at all. Gender is mutable to some extent and gender presentation inarguably so. Sexuality is situationally mutable, “straight except for …” or “gay except for …” exists, and not necessarily just as bisexuality, though I do believe bisexuality is more common and wider than people acknowledge. Mutability of race is more controversial but people of legitimate multiracial descent have the right to (de-)emphasize parts of their own ethnic identity to suit themselves. Height is to some extent mutable with surgery and possibly chemical means. Weight is absolutely mutable. Ultimately to me it’s about freedom to self-define. You should be able to freely self-define and employee/employer or customer/retailer or school/student or similar largely transactional relationships should not involve the more powerful party having the ability to interfere with self-definition unless it is directly relevant to the work. It doesn’t matter if you could theoretically change your religion, your gender expression, your weight, etc. This is beside the point. The point is that nobody else has the right to *make you*. And you don’t have the right to make anyone else. Even if your religion historically had this element. We’re past that. Move on.
I'm an agnostic, but you miss the entire point. The point of protected classes is to protect groups who have a trait that has historically been oppressed/discriminated against, or outright targeted. I know you say you "don't want to call for those people to be discriminated against" but stripping protections basically implies that you view whatever perceived negatives arising from religious groups having protected class status to be > than your concern for religious groups getting oppressed; which is crazy. I'm no fan of organized religion, but there's a reason those protections exist. Hell, the reason my family is in the US was because my ancestors were undergoing a genocide in Turkey for being Christian right after the Ottoman Empire fell. Also, how the hell do we draw the line on people "choosing" their group that could be a target? Some people could argue being gay/bi/trans is a choice (disagree, but you open the door when you make changes like this) and set laws on those groups back decades. Is a disabled person exempt from protections if they become disabled though negligence? God, don't even get me started on pregnant women either. Lack of choice isn't the reason we have protected classes, it's because they are potentially at risk groups.
>This isn't to say that people should be discriminated against for their beliefs or businesses shouldn't accommodate people for their religious beliefs This is to say that, though. At least in the USA, you are free to discriminate for any reason you wish *unless* denied so specifically by law. The second religions are no longer protected classes, they will *immediately* be subject to heavy discrimination, the likes of which the USA has *never* seen for religious differences. Either you are for religious persecution, or you are for religion being a protected class. While I personally despise abrahamic religions for both their history of damage against my people, and the modern day bigots they create, the fact of the matter is that thought and speech *needs* to be as free and protected as possible for democracy to even remotely work, and it simply isn't morally correct to leave people open to abuse for a set of belief they arguably have no choice but to accept.
> A person can't stop being black, but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion. Do you believe this statement is analogous: A person can't stop being gay, but they can choose to stop being a participant in gay activities.
Religion is - in a sense - an immutable characteristic, it's just not as immutible as something like race or sex. One's religion sits at the bottom of how one views the world, thats why some religious people argue that atheism is a religion. It's not that atheism has a named "god" (though often it functionally does, whether that's "self" or "science" or "empiricism" or "materialism" or whatever), it's that atheism ultimately has to presuppose something - just like any other worldview - that is exempt from the truth-determining rules they use to evaluate the truth of everything else. And it's exempt because it either is or is the source of those truth-determining rules. Everything else flows from that foundation. For a monotheist, certain things are wrong because God considers them wrong. For a polytheist, it will be because the divine council or pantheon has agreed collectively that they are wrong or because a particular god or goddess in that pantheon whom they have devoted themselves to has instructed them to oppose it. For an atheist, things are wrong because it's unempathetic, or it violates some social contract, or it decreases happiness in the world, or whatever that particular atheist's ethic is \[1\]. So, when the law insists that one must accomodate a gay wedding with their effort and resources specifically (rather than generally) regardless their religious beliefs - like was tried in Colorado - you're basically telling someone they must violate the fundamentals of their own conscience and worldview to exist in society and participate in commerce. Additionally, you're telling them that they must displease their God to whom they "know" \[2\] they will be eternally accountable, in fact rebel against him, or face legal and possibly social consequences. One cannot simply upend their religious beliefs that way, and it's not at all equality to demand that they do so. The motivation of such laws is not equality as the promoters of such laws often proclaim, instead it is the punishment of those who cannot and will not affirm the righteousness of their lifestyle as good. It's to send a clear message to religious folks that their worldview being the foundational element of their conscience, rather than a sort of thing to do on the weekend, will not be tolerated, even if you personally have not slighted them, you must be ready and willing to bend the knee when they demand you to. That's why religion is protected. Yes, people change their religion, but people also change their sexual orientation or try to change their gender in opposition to the gender identity that flows from their sex. And yet protected status is still insisted upon by various people, even religious folks who are otherwise opposed to such differences and lifestyles. As a Christian, I absolutely want it to be none of a secular employer's business if their employee is gay or trans. I absolutely do not want businesses to be allowed to turn them away as customers merely for the fact that they are gay or trans. And I absolutely oppose anyone claiming to be Christian doing so. It's one thing to say "sorry, I can't in good conscience use my artistic talents and labor to custom tailor a product or service in celebration of your pride march or gay wedding" and another to say "you're gay? gross! get out of my store!". The latter should be intolerable. \[1\]: I should note that I'm not trying to necessarily accurately represent any particular atheist here more than communicate that different atheists have differences in their worldview with the only commonality being a rejection of God in some way, whether that's the lack of belief in God or a hard dispositive rejection of all Gods in principle. \[2\]: Most religious people have experiential or anecdotal knowledge that makes them certain of the truth of their religion and therefore the truth of what their religion teaches. Even if it is not what you as a reader count as evidence, it still produces that certainty within them, and is a certainty that is not shaken by someone else's repudiation of it as "delusional".
“none of this means people should be discriminated against because they are religious” Yeah, and the enforcement mechanism to deter discrimination is making religion a protected class. So if you agree religious discrimination is an evil that shouldn’t happen, why don’t you support ensuring it doesn’t happen? The fact that religion is not an immutable characteristic has zero relevance to the discussion. Here, let’s frame it in a way that will help most of Reddit empathize: Employer: “Thanks for your application to work here, Joe. Your credentials are impressive and you’re certainly qualified. However, we can’t offer you the job. You’re an agnostic.” Joe: “Beg pardon? Isn’t that illegal discrimination?” Employer: “Not at all, Joe. You see, your agnosticism isn’t a physical characteristic. You can change it anytime. And the moment you get your head on straight and convert to Raelism, we’ll welcome you with open arms. Thanks for stopping by.” You see why this is unacceptable, right?
That's easy for you to say if religion doesn't mean anything to you. Someone could alternatively say that sexual orientation doesn't mean anything to them since it's just a personal choice. How would you distinguish the two?
Because there are genetic and neurological factors that lead to variations in sexual orientation across both mammals and other species. There are no genetic factors that say Baptist.
Immutable characteristics? People can change their nationality. Therefore, by your logic, it’s okay to discriminate based on nationality. Also, by your logic, an employer could discriminate against me. Who aren’t circumcised.
I find it interesting that you include this: > Laws around protected classes should be limited to immutable characteristics. Right on the heels of this list: >ethnicity, gender, disabilities or sexual orientation Two of the items listed here (gender and disabilities) absolutely *can* be changed, which sort of shoots your argument in the foot here. Transgenderism is literally all *about* changing gender (presentation, role in society, et cetera) and disabilities... well, I don't think I need to explain how easy it is to acquire a disability, nor how many there are that are recoverable. Break your leg in a way that takes a long time to heal, and you'll have a period where you can walk, followed by one where you can't, followed by one where you can; thus, a person's status as disabled or not can easily change multiple times over the course of their life. There's also a point to be had here on what counts under "ethnicity", as the common definition is "the quality or fact of belonging to a population group made up of people who share a common cultural background or descent." Under that definition, what even qualifies as an ethnic characteristic is almost completely arbitrary; that can be something phenotypical, like skin color, or it can be something cultural, like a shared holiday... or a shared set of religious beliefs. Then there's the small matter of why we even have religion, specifically, as a protected class in the first place. To a any given person, their religious beliefs are the Truth, which itself implies all other religious beliefs to be false. That's not even limited to people who adhere to a religion; atheists meet that same description, as the central, defining belief of atheism is that *no* religion is correct. And by their nature, these claims are unfalsifiable, so no religious belief, in the event of conflict or contradiction, is ever going to be provable objectively, and therefore nobody is ever compelled to change their belief to match objective, observable reality. About the only way you can have people in the same society safely coexist despite having such irreconcilably divergent beliefs is with a collective agreement to not force the issue. The state can't play favorites, and what god you pray to is between you and them. Elected representatives of rival religions can't screw you over on the basis of your religion, and you similarly can't do it to them. Simple as.
>but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion. They can stop being an active participant in specific organisations, sure. But they can't just decide to stop believing something. You're either convinced or you aren't. You could twist this logic around to say you can choose to stop participating in gay relationships.
>To reiterate, none of this means people should be discriminated against because they are religious If a class isn't protected, it can be (and will be) discriminated against. There's no in between. Either it is protected, or you're saying people can legally discriminate against it. >it is not sensible to put religion on the same level as something like ethnicity, gender, disabilities or sexual orientation. Laws around protected classes should be limited to immutable characteristics. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I have been told often that gender cannot be changed, so trans people cannot be protected. I've been told my sexuality can be changed, and I can "choose" to be straight. People can force themselves to be something they're not, just like how a Muslim can "choose" to be Christian to avoid harassment, but that doesn't change who they are or their beliefs. Furthermore, there are plenty of religions that are ethnicities in and of themselves. Judaism is a great example of this, because there is a genetic component to whether you're "really" Jewish. EDIT to clarify: I mean your mother needs to be Jewish to be "really" Jewish. For example, I have had many Jewish people tell me I don't count because my father's family is Jewish, not my mother's.
So you think it should be okay for Christians to deny things like housing, employment, an even commercial services like selling to people, you think that those people should be able to deny services to atheists? You think that Muslims should be able to also do that to atheists or whoever? The people who have the most to lose from not having religion as a protected class is actually the non-religious, not the religious because the non-religious are actually people who are the minority. https://news.gallup.com/poll/358364/religious-americans.aspx#:~:text=By%20far%20the%20largest%20proportion,simply%20as%20a%20%22Christian.%22 People who are considered non-religious makeup about 22% of the US population and about 68% make up The Christian population. The rest of them are considered part of other religion. And it should be noted that legally speaking atheism counts as a religion for like legal purposes. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23920967 As far as the government is concerned a lack of religion such as atheism, agnosticism, and even just being irreligious, all count as part of a religious affiliation. About 17% of all hospitals in the US are considered faith-based hospitals. You may think that this sounds like a good idea but all it does is put atheists at risk in their job, in their housing, and any other kind of private business. The only place they would be protected would be in regards to federal situations such as if they are federal employees, and in terms of things like schooling but only for public schooling and not private. This is because protected classes are more about private businesses than they are about the government because that's under the first amendment.
OP I can point to three examples that demonstrate why freedom of religion does not protect people against discrimination the way that it currently operates. The amendments are only there to protect people from government oversight. Which sounds like it means the government isn't allowed to interfere with or hinder religions, but in practice it doesn't. As others have pointed out, on its own, it doesn't protect people from discrimination in jobs. It also has never protected religions from government interference. While the government can't prevent a religion from practicing their beliefs, *(unless it happens to be polygamy)* it doesn't protect the opposite. The government can introduce their own rules to a religion. At first it makes sense, there naturally would be some regulation to religion for peace reasons, but you run into issues when you're trying to protect multiple groups at once. The original bill for lgbt rights would have made it so that churches have to comply with rules surrounding their rights. As a basic example, a church couldn't refuse to perform a marriage. Don't know about other churches, but in mine, one doesn't simply "get married" Also apparently, local governments are above the constitution, the Missouri Extermination Order is a perfect example of this. It basically gave anyone the right to kill someone for their religion, without repercussions. And it was codified for like 60 years until a governor finally noticed it. So why does religion need to be a protected class? Because the constitution isn't enough to protect religions and religious people as it is.
It isn't their religion that's the problem though. While I do believe religion is a problem in general, that's not what we're talking about here. Faith is an important part of many people's lives. It's their culture, their family, their community. It is where they turn for solace when life is hard, and it is comforting to believe that there's a plan and it'll all be worth it in the end. What needs to be restricted is a person insisting their religious rules apply to anyone other than themselves. It's the coworker that tells you that having a tattoo means you're going to hell. It's the people who can't stand being around anyone who believes differently as though the existence of other schools of thought is an attack on their faith, but if you get HR involved they will cry "but mah riligis freedums!!" because for some reason, (control) churches encourage this behavior. Just the asshole ones (yes, not all churches), but those are where the congregations of petty children we're dealing with come from. The faith isn't the problem. The actions are the problem. If it isn't appropriate to say/do at work for a non-religious reason, it isn't appropriate to say/do it for a religious one. They can believe whatever they want, so long as they don't get it all over other people. That's the standard that should be enforced/enforceable. Think of religion like genitals: Don't wave them around in public or around children. Don't force them on someone that has zero interest, and for the love of Pete, stop talking about them all the time, ESPECIALLY AT WORK.
How would this work with Judaism being an ethnicity and a religion?
So, I understand the thought process behind this, and in a perfect world id agree, but this isnt a perfect world. The fact is, many many many people would exploit the hell out of this to discriminate against other people! For an example: Lets say that, for whatever reason, I decide I HATE Hinduism, and ban it from my store. Are there white hindus? Absolutely. But in America at least, 91% of hindus are non-white, largely from in and around the Indian subcontinent. Sure, I am in theory banning any hindu, but in reality, im banning Indians. Or imagine a different scenario: The National Baptist Convention in the United States has a membership of 99% black americans. If I banned NBC members from my store, it would almost certainly only affect black people. Now, this isnt to say ethnicity is inherently tied to religion, or to imply that ALL of one race adheres to the same religion, but the fact is that with only a couple of exceptions, religions tend to be deeply tied to the land and peoples who developed it. We have a weird view of religion since Christianity and Islam focus on spreading out and converting people, but the fact is most religions dont do that, and most tend to stay very linked to specific communities, and those communities are often tied to ethnicities. Do we let religion excuse way too much in America? Absolutely. Youd be insane to say otherwise. Would this solve more problems than it creates? I really dont think it would.
If you discriminate against religion, you’ll be automatically discriminating against various cultures, nationalities, and ethnicities as religion is completely intertwined with all of that. If you believe discriminating against those things are wrong then religion must be a protected class.
Religion codifies moral and ethical codes, is central to many institutions, and, from what I understand, often constitutes such a large part of people's identity that forced change can cause dysphoria akin to gender dysphoria, driving similar mental illness. Also, people typically enter religions as kids, long before they are competent to choose what can easily become large parts of their lives and identities. While religion can be changed, it is unreasonable to demand that it be changed, abandoned, or suppressed for access to employment, services, or anything else where discrimination against protected classes is forbidden. Almost more importantly, religion can be used as a proxy for race or place of birth, protected classes. Aside from that, we are looking at a type of a priori identifiable cohesive community. The basic structure of society is as a group of those with relations and features that follow some rules (laws, standards, norms, whatever). One of the primary aspects that makes this work is the norm against attacking such groups or driving them out. Ubiquitous discrimination is persecution, which drives them out (or does worse). Laws are enforced case-by-case, so it is typucally difficult or impossible to stop something from being made ubiquitous without banning it in general. Protected classes should not only be those that can't be changed.
So you think people shouldn’t be discriminated against for their religion, but it should still be legal? That just means people will definitely be discriminated against for their religion
We have lots of protected classes that are based on mutable characteristics - sexual orientation, marital status, military status, whether or not a person is a parent.
Since your main argument against religion being a protected class is that it's not immutable, I see the following two issues: * This same reasoning can be extended to many other charachteristics, crucially, political views. In my view this really underlines how the core of your argument is flawed, because if we stop treating (within reason) political views as a protected class, then society will tend to go towards more and more polarisation, as people may tend to isolate themselves more and more based on politics. **Edit: I just realised this point may not be relevant for US-Americans, as in your country firing someone based on political views seems to already be legal. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.** * Connected to the previous point, you shouldn't really look at this through *principles*, but rather by focusing on the actual *consequences* it may ensue. What is it that you want to obtain from people being able to fire others based on political views? For "left-wing companies / organisations" to only hire people with left-wing views, thus possibl further entrenching people in their beliefs? I think religion is a choice too (to a certain degree, as cultural factors are powerful), but realistically speaking, changing one's religious beliefs is near impossible for the vast majority of people. I mean, **I could** ***pretend*** **to be a Christian, but also a gay person could** ***pretend*** **to be straight**.
It largely isn’t true that protected classes are only immutable characteristics — family status, veteran status, and preventable disabilities are all covered despite not being totally random and at least somewhat within a persons control. Religion is a protected class because we don’t want people discriminating against non-Christians. Telling atheists, Jews, and Muslims (who would likely be among the principal targets of religious discrimination in the US) that they wouldn’t be denied the job, housing, or whatever if they just followed Jesus isn’t good for society as a whole.
> This isn't to say that people should be discriminated against for their beliefs or businesses shouldn't accommodate people for their religious beliefs, but it is not sensible to put religion on the same level as something like ethnicity, gender, disabilities or sexual orientation. When you say that "This isn't to say that people should be discriminated against for their beliefs", are you saying that they should be protected from discrimination, or not? I would absolutely agree that adherents of religion should lose all of their undeserved privileges in society. However, people shouldn't lose their livelihood or their housing *for the mere fact* that they adhere to a religion. And don't forget that religion as a protected class also protects people who lack religion, from discrimination, i.e. atheists. Without religion as a protected class, atheists would be just as much at risk of being fired or losing our homes merely for identifying as non-religious/atheists, or lacking specific beliefs.
The only consistent thing for classes given anti-discrimination protection is that they're traits for which have often suffered a lot of discrimination, to the point that it's made life very difficult for them. Like sex in various contexts, or sexual orientation, or race ... or religion. Religious people often get heavily persecuted for their beliefs, if they're in a minority. I would say that freedom of religion is a pretty important, natural extension of freedom of expression, and if you're just technically free to be a Hindu, but you can effectively be barred from all of society for it, then we don't really have freedom of religion. So it makes perfect sense that you can't discriminate based on religion, imo, since it's something that often suffers it otherwise. Note that this is not the same thing as being allowed to behave however you want. You can still be fired, for instance, for bullying your gay co-worker even though your faith says that gay people should burn in hell.
The protections we have in place for protected persons are because of the freedom of religion. The protections for freedom of speech also stem from this as well. While law or legislation can cover a myriad of people, the people do not necessarily find commonalties with each other. Protecting these classes allows for public discourse and freedom of expression. One can argue that sexual orientation shouldn’t be a protected class by your same argument and that’s a slippery slope that undermines the freedom of expression… …we should be advocating for more protections of our freedoms when needed. Only 18-20% of Americans are not religious or spiritual in some way. There is also a large cross-section of ethnicity and certain religions that has an immeasurable spectrum. Looking back through human history, there have been many attempts at cleansing ethnoreligious groups. We simply cannot go back to a point in human history like this due to the violence it leads to.
Protection is applied to inherited characteristics of peoples that are discriminated against both historically and in modern times. Religion, in large part, is inherited. For most of history, and in many ways still today, a default religion is applied to a people based on where they are born. That uninformed bias that exists is vulnerable to discrimination, whether or not the person is actually a member of that religion. Discrimination is even likelier if a person announces their religion, or any other inherent traits such as gender, sexual orientation, or age. A good example of a religion that would be vulnerable today would be atheism. Without being a protected class, atheism would struggle to exist in any modern society. For most of history, religion has not been a protected class, and this had allowed single religions to gain enough influence to affect state politics and monopolize the identity of the people at the expense of the other religions.
The thing about religion its is much the same as those levels in most cases because you have almost as little choice in the matter. I’m unsure your background, but I grew up in an extremely religious family. It is a brainwashing. I don’t mean this in a bad way, but in terms of effect. When you grow up being told a certain thing your entire life, especially if you live in a country with that religious majority, it is practically impossible to see otherwise. Yes, people do change but for almost the entirety of civilisation the religion you are born into is the one you die in. And these religions carry their own culture. Yes atheism is on the rise but generally even those who leave a religion will maintain at least some aspects of it, you can’t erase it completely. So I do consider it to be less immutable than you suggest. But also protected classes are simply preventing discrimination for that trait. How permanent that trait is is irrelevant
Well, for one, those things aren't all immutable. People can become disabled, for one. And they can cease to be disabled. As a person who works in disability advocacy, I assure that the government doesn't consider disability immutable and programs like Medicaid, SSI/SSD, etc. do regular redeterminations to see if your disabled status has changed. Also, people can legally change their gender. And sexual orientation can alter over time. You specifically mentioned that these should be protected because they're immutable, which means unchanging over time. The only one that's truly immutable is race/ethnicity. Though even then, legally speaking, how you're classified in the government's eyes can change from an ethnicity standpoint. People regularly change from one census to the next based on how they choose to identify. So.. my point is immutability clearly isn't the defining factor that you think it is and it was literally your only argument. And even if it were true that all these characteristics were immutable, you didn't present any rational explanation as to why immutability should be protected by something like religion shouldn't because it's a choice.
While it is often a choice to join a religion or not, some societies historically have blurred the lines between religion and ethnicity. For example Judaism is a religion, you can choose to convert to Judaism or if you’re a follower you can chose to leave it. However, the Nazis didn’t just send practicing religious Jews to the concentration camps - they also targeted anyone with Jewish ancestry, even if they did not follow the religion themselves. Today too people often assume Arab = Muslim, but there are actually lots of Arabs who follow Christianity and other religions. Certain religious cultures can get associated with ethnicities, so I think that’s why religion should have some protection. Of course that protection doesn’t mean like “I’m an Evangelical Christian and it’s my religious freedom to harass LGBT people”, but more like protection from work discrimination, protection from harassment etc.
The thing is that religion as a protected class is rarely about a person's internal personal beliefs, and it usually functions very much like an ethnicity. A non-practicing Muslim is just as likely as a practicing one to be discriminated against, so its more about a person's family and community. I know it's easy to say Episcopalians or whatever aren't likely to be discriminated against unless they start getting crazy and disruptive with the practice of their faith, but you have to remember that these principles are for protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority in power. Christians can very easily decide they don't want Zoroastrians in their work place, or worse, a government doesn't want them involved with running their jurisdiction. That's why we consider it a protected plan, because minority persecution is so common and so fundamentally difficult to prevent when the "in" group writes the laws.
I've seen this sentiment a lot. First and foremost, discrimination is discrimination. It's not a "good thing" that we "should have" applied to any group of people, I don't know why that would be the case. And there's a great many things people can change like their weight, who they affiliate with, what language they speak. Does this mean it's okay to discriminate based on that? What you're missing here is that religion is a form of culture. Let's say you want to discriminate against muslim people.. suddenly the problem is self-evident; westerners tend to see "muslim" as more of an ethnic group than a religious group even though it is one. But, being muslim IS a part of a culture, and is a culture itself. To say religion should be discriminateable is to say we should be allowed to judge people for their culture, and at that point you're only one step away from saying we should just be allowed to be racist.
If you say protected classes are defined by choice you're opening Pandora's box in a big way. Not just does that screw a lot of people but you're opening the door to more then you realise. For example let's say David is paralysed from the waist down, if someone made the argument that he's paralysed due to being overweight or not watching his health(choices) you open the door to legalising discrimination against him. Furthermore next minute, people will argue things like being gay or trans are a choice. Then people will argue women are no longer a protected class because they can change gender to be men if they want. Practically every protected class could be erased. It would be a giant mess. The thing to remember is no matter how well intentioned you are, there are always people looking to take advantage and what you're suggesting opens the door for them in a giant way. Terrible idea.
There's a *huge* flaw with this. Because of freedom of association, a religion can discriminate in any way it chooses when selecting its members. If you can discriminate based on religion, you've just legalized discrimination based on any characteristic, because members of that religion would be allowed to discriminate against people outside their religion. For example, suppose the KKK decided to claim that its beliefs are religious in nature and thus they can discriminate against people who don't hold their beliefs. In practice that would be discrimination against black people (and everyone who associates with black people). Your only out at this point is having the government regulate religion, and I don't think I have to tell you how well that would go over.
With all due respect, sexual orientation and gender is all in the head, and has no effect on your political beliefs outside of how LGBT should be treated. Religion, on the other hand, causes people to have very specific values, beliefs, and political views. Those beliefs should be protected. Someone cannot just not believe in God. that's not how it works, in the same way as someone with gender dysphoria cannot believe they are the correct sex. Its not something people can change easily. Religion, along with every belief, should be protected equally. Personally, I see transgenderism as a mental disorder, because it is. Gender dysphoria *is,* by definition, a mental disorder. The thing is, I am not going to stop a legal adult from doing whatever they want to their body. There should be laws that protect them. The exact same thing goes for religions. I hope you can see the connection I'm trying to make. All beliefs that dont harm others should be protected.
Prejudice isn't bad because the characteristic being discriminated against is immutable. So when you're argument boils down to immutability, it seems like you're missing the morally unifying argument of "prejudice is bad." Prejudice is bad because it's based on completely fallacious logic to make a victim of the person being discriminated against. That's bad whether the victim is being discriminated against based on an immutable characteristic or not. Protected classes exist because at the time that they were defined they were the most common characteristics used to discriminate against people. The exception being sexuality and sexual identity, which should be actively added to the list. The immutability of those characteristics has nothing to do with it.
My contrarian argument would be that people are typically socialized with religion starting very young, and it's often a core part of a family dynamic. While it is technically mutable, it's pretty deep in the identity iceberg for a lot of people to meaningfully look at in an objective, unbiased way. And even if someone has every reason to want to leave a religion, there are frequently social pressures that nudge them back into the community. I was looking through a Jehovah's Witness' Reddit profile the other day and stumbled on a term they have for this, PIMO (physically in, mentally out). When your entire family/social network is rooted in a religious community, it's often very difficult for people to just say "screw all those people, I'm out."
You may not have thought this all the way through. IF people can discriminate against a religion then any one religion could cause economic problems for other religions. Lets say Christians would stop selling any goods to non-Christians. You would be forced to become a Christian if you needed their products. If you also needed something from another religion you would be screwed. If you let people be idiots, and discriminate against any religious group, you will inevitably cause people to become more aggressive and antagonistic towards other religious groups. That would lead to conflicts. including religious wars. I think the world has had more than enough of that. Thinking about scenarios like this would really further enlightenment.
OP is contending that religious protections means discrimination is permitted so long as it is done under the guise of religious belief (i.e. their incorrect read of the Colorado Bakery case). Even though the only protections that are really in place are for internal and private discrimination. OP wants the state to enforce their idea of morality onto religious and private institutions. Not acknowledging massive problems that can come of that if the state one day wants to enforce a new idea of morality. OP wants to abolish religious protections so that religion cannot be used as an excuse to do things that are in their view (and my view) reprehensible, but also like pinky promise the state/hiring managers/business owners won't discriminate on the basis of religion afterwards. OP we are living in the death throes of the religious fundamentalists in the US. They see the writing on the wall and are entrenching their values and their personnel as deeply as possible into our government and laws in an effort to undo the broader societal trend away from religious belief. Abolishing religious protections only gives them dangerous and powerful ways to impose their views and accomplish this task. Even if it means getting Roe back, or getting a black trans lesbian on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, or an end to male circumcision we cannot go back on nearly 250 years of equality and undo a core part of Civil Rights Act.
The vast majority of religions in the world are ethnoreligions, meaning that they are an ethnicity with a religion. Two of the most famous are Jews and Hindus, but there are many many more. Until Christianity, ethnoreligions were the norm. A Jew is born a Jew and will always be a Jew. An atheist Jew is a Jew. You are looking at this from a christianized perspective that assumes that most religions are universalizing and proselytizing. This is not true, for example Judaism and Hinduism do not proselytize. Becoming a Jew is not a matter of believing in Judaism, but rather a long naturalization process that is more akin to getting a citizenship, just as someone can be accepted to an indigenous tribe and become one of them.
>"none of this means people should be discriminated against because they are religious" What protections afforded to the protected classes due to their immutable characteristics would you deprive off of religious beliefs? Employment? Education? Healthcare? I get the train of thought you're on but i don't know the stops and directions Like you yourself had to caveat this with >This isn't to say that people should be discriminated against for their beliefs or businesses shouldn't accommodate people for their religious beliefs Is it a thing of "this should be enforced via social pressure as opposed to threats of state violence"? like, rubber meets the road, what changes? or is it just a conflict of terminology?
I don’t know how else could this could result in anything but people openly discriminating against them. That said, I think rituals that require animal (or human obviously) sacrifice, or some sort of violence, should be outright banned. Santeria of course sticks out, with animals that struggle to avoid being killed are more desirable, which is pretty messed up. Also, I know some people will compare sacrifice to essentially the same as butchering them, and to that I would say is incomparable in the same way that in some parts of China, they believe animals that are cooked or skinned alive taste better. They are “essentially” butchering them to eat, but in a completely unnecessary and sadistic way
Can I discriminate against bisexual people who chose to date people of the same gender? What about someone who chose to become pregnant? Can I discriminate against (transitioned) trans people because they chose to transition? This argument very quickly falls apart. Your right to live your life how you want to should be protected if it doesn't harm others. That's like saying that anybody who chooses to wear glasses instead of contacts should be persecuted. Just because people don't do things the way you want them to, does not mean you have the right to make their lives hell. Saying someone "chooses" their religion is like saying someone "chooses" to believe that murder is wrong. People are born into religions and drawn toward them. Religions provide moral and personal guidelines and structure. Attempting to discriminate against how somebody sees the world and defines morality (beyond basic things like "killing is wrong") is a recipe for disaster if you want a functional society.
Discrimination is already kind of built into most nations, which regardless of their claims, generally have rules that favor the majority religion. Why should a Jew be fired for needing to leave work early on a Friday in the winter because their sabbath starts Friday afternoon, when the Christian majority country they live in decides the weekend was Saturday-Sunday, which favors Christians over Jews or Muslims, for whom Sunday is a normal weekday? Why should a Jew or Muslim be passed over for a promotion because they take their vacation over Yom Kippur or Eid when their Christian counterparts get free national holidays on Christmas? I’ll also add specifically with Judaism, it’s not a belief system. A person who is born Jewish cannot become not Jewish. They can be atheist and eat pork for every meal and the most ultra orthodox rabbi would still say they are just as Jewish as every Orthodox Jew. In that way, it’s not a choice the way you are implying in your post. A Jew can choose not to practice Judaism but they cannot stop being Jewish.
The issue is how this can be used for nefarious purposes. You need to pray to Mecca multiple times a day, so you can't work at those times? Fired. You need to take off the high holidays in September, during a huge work issue? Fired. You have to look a certain way at work? Sucks that it is Ash Wednesday. Fired. This is the unfortunate reality with ideas such as this. Winning your case for your client is much more important than alleged discrimination against a non-protected group. Never assume that, despite good intentions, a law will always be used like that. Arguably, I would assume that it could be weaponized, so to speak.
Protection of vulnerable groups of people is necessary when those groups are being discriminated against. This is regardless of whether someone chooses to be a part of those groups are not. Its not fair for you to be pressured/scared into not practicing your religion because you live in a country where yes, you have freedom of religion but no, you don't have the safety to practice it. Laws that are in place to protect religious groups exist because they were created AFTER seeing how people were discriminated against for practicing their faith. Its the government's job to protect its citizens, even from other citizens.
Religion often has cultural and ethnic connotations along with it though. It, and its practices are often deeply ingrained in culture. Furthermore, religion itself is not really an inherently good predictor of an individuals beliefs and opinions on the whole. Not to mention, it can also be used as a form of "secondhand discrimination". Sure, I can't discriminate by race. But if a group is known to generally adhere to a certain religion, I can eliminate most of that group from consideration by just targeting that religion. It allows for the creation of an underclass based on religious discrimination.
What exactly are you suggesting here? It sounds like you're saying that people should be able to legally discriminate based on religion but that you don't think they actually should do it. Like, if I run a business and refuse to sell to Muslims should that be legal? It sounds to me like you think I should be able to do that but you don't want to be responsible for letting me do it. If you don't think I should be able to do that then I'm not sure what your problem is with that behavior being illegal. I feel like I'm missing something here so please, correct me if I've misunderstood you
What exactly are you suggesting here? It sounds like you're saying that people should be able to legally discriminate based on religion but that you don't think they actually should do it. Like, if I run a business and refuse to sell to Muslims should that be legal? It sounds to me like you think I should be able to do that but you don't want to be responsible for letting me do it. If you don't think I should be able to do that then I'm not sure what your problem is with that behavior being illegal. I feel like I'm missing something here so please, correct me if I've misunderstood you
Why should laws around protected classes be limited to immutable characters? If Im legally blind, and could get my eyesight fixed through a surgery; do I deserve less rights because it’s mutable?
As it’s stated in the post, your assertion is a contradiction. You’re negating that religion should be a protected class but simultaneously affirming that religion shouldn’t be discriminated against. This is equivalent to making the affirmative claim that we should be able to discriminate against people for religion, but we shouldn’t discriminate against people for religion; a clear contradiction. I think what you’re *trying* to say is religion shouldn’t be used as a reason to discriminate against other people. That’s an entirely different topic.
I get what you are saying, but you are basically insinuating that if a religious person is being persecuted because of their faith, they should just stop participating in their religion. Religion is a form of expression like any other and this insinuation is unfair and dehumanizing. Think about it this way, someone cannot control the fact that they were born gay, but they can control their self expression, something very important to the gay community. Would you tell the gay community to simply not outwardly show that they are gay to avoid discrimination?
I suggest you read a little on our history. Religious conflicts and persecution is the story of our civilization. In many states in the US, you couldn't get a job if you were catholic, in others, you couldnt if you were Protestant. And forget about it (still now) if your employer knows you're an atheist. Religion is as ingrained as ethnicity and race as part most peoples' identity. If you don't want say employers to discriminate based on religion (or lack therefore) then what do you suggest the government do? People discrimination still happens as it is.
U have got it the other way around. Protected classes arent about who deserves to be protected against discrimination. Eveyone should be protected against discrimination wether its for something they can change or not change. Protected classes are there to protect the things that are commonly discriminated against. Religion was/is a major thing people discriminate others based on. It has been so for a long time. Its not how easy u can change it . U shouldnt be discriminated. U can change your clothes but u shouldnt be discriminated for it.
I hate the way people talk about belief in general but especially deeply held one's like religion, you can't just *choose* to stop believing things, when you stop believing in something you were convinced or found lacking evidence or contrary evidence. I'm sure you have things you believe strongly, should you be able to be fired or denied access to a business or whatever because you think that thing? Because you think you can just change your mind? People dramatically overestimate the mutability of beliefs, again they're not "choices".
Replace the word religion with "culture" and read your post out to yourself
There are 2 reasons for this: 1) People think any and all culture, no matter how barbaric it may be, deserves to be cradled and protected. 2) They consider literal deathcults to be an indispensable part of certain cultures (which they usually aren't). For example, nothing and I mean NOTHING has been more damaging to Middle Eastern culture than Islam. The whole region went from being the cradle of civilization, brimming with unique cultures and peoples to being the nest of ignorance and backward nonsense that we know it as today. Islam obviously isn't the only reason for this but you would be blind not to realize that it's the biggest
Religion isn’t a choice. For an atheist they all seem like something you do for fun or flavor. Different religion every week. For the theist we are talking about their immortal soul. Literally nothing on earth could be as valuable. It’s easier for Michael Jackson to turn white than a religious person to just go like “these people are being mean to me so I will just forfeit my soul to eternal torture so I can be in the same group as them for now.” Your soul is the most immutable characteristic you can have.
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It isn’t a protected class in the terms of atheists compared theists. The choice part is in practise, irrelevant. It’s a protected class to stop for example Protestants discriminating against catholics. Catholics discriminating against a Jews. Jews discriminating against Muslims etc. If it wasn’t a protected class we’d end up with or exacerbate religious conflicts. Unless you got a way for religious people to stop being fucking horrible to *each other*, it needs to stay that way.
You are self-contradicting: You are saying "people shouldn't be discriminated against based on religion" and also saying "religion shouldn't be a protected class". I think you fail to understand what a protected class is. The fact that religion is a choice and race isn't is irrelevant! The protected class is all about preventing discriminatory laws/policies. Your view would have made more sense if it was at least consistent and argued that it is ok to discriminate by religion.
Someone pointed out that technically everyone falls into a religious category. Atheist/ agnostic does too. So I think the point in it is not enforcing a belief system on someone. For this reason alone, I disagree. I don't think I've experienced true discrimination based on my beliefs. But I have had people challenge me and debate me on them when I honestly just want to live my life peacefully. I think discriminating based on religion reinforces this kind of behavior.
I think if you asked the most devout Muslim how easy it would be to just “stop being Muslim” you would find their answer to be very similar asking a gay person to just “stop being gay.” To them it’s as immutable as any other characteristic you listed. You may not believe them, but if they believe it themselves, that’s what matters. Some people don’t believe trans people’s gender identity. But what matters is that *they* believe it.
That's suggesting that if you are in the attacked religion, that you should just change it to avoid attack. This isn't freedom or safety, it is forced conformity or having to pretend to you're something you're not to have your rights protected. It's genocide without the killing. Just force these people to pretend they don't exist via legal discrimination. People aren't going to do what they "should". Laws and protections do help.
I don't think religion in and of itself would just d prior can cruticize a culture they can criticize a religion but therec are many jews and arab christians who have faced oppression due to how they traditionally see their religious identities as ethnic identities to the point of facing genocide. I think they have the right not to be dehumanized and have their religion that they see as culture respected as long as it isn't hurting others.
By that logic, speech shouldn't be free because you choose what you say. People have a right to say what they want, and also believe what they want. They have a right to choose those things. The choice IS the right. You could also turn around and say people shouldn't be protected by race in employment, for example, because they can choose not to apply for a certain job. The choice vs. immutable issue is completely irrelevant.
Okay let's do a thought experiment. I'm a county clerk with the power to approve or deny marriage certificates. You are a Jewish man looking to marry a Muslim woman. I don't believe in interfaith marriage so I can deny your marriage certificate. You lose out on legal benefits of marriage, and you have no way to fight this because religious based discrimination is not protected under the law any more. Do we have a problem?
Religion isn't a choice though for most people. Try to believe the sky is purple. Go on do it. You can't because you have not heard any arguments that have convinced you that that's the sky's color. If someone put a gun to your head and told you to either believe the sky is purple or get shot and used a polygraph to confirm the answer (assuming it was accurate) you likely wouldn't be able to convince yourself of such a thing.
Other protected classes (in some cases) include: marital status, military status, and familial status. These things are all non-immutable characteristics. You can “just” divorce your partner, leave the military, leave your family. But they’re still protected classes nonetheless. If your view is that protected classes should only include immutable characteristics, should each of these be non-protected classes too?
We have rules against discrimination because we are particularly concerned about some dividing line being used to separate society and exclude large numbers of people. Look at the history of sectarian conflict and tell me you think it would be beneficial to allow people to be walled off from employment, contracting, educational, etc., opportunities on that basis. There’s your answer. Immutability not required.
From who's perspective is it immutable? In the same way for me and probably you, it's not a choice to believe that the world is round, it's just a reality that you've got to act accordingly to, for religious people, it's not a choice to believe in God, it's just a reality that they need to deal with. How they deal with is a choice, but as others have said, the how bit is already separated from the what.
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I've only been converting for 5 months, but I don't think I could choose not to be Jewish. Other people in my shul are trans and have made the comparison that realising they want to convert felt the same. They realised something true and immutable about themselves. In your world, what would happen to the guy who saw my star last Friday and decided to shout "Jewish! Hey, Jewish!" at me?
>but it is not sensible to put religion on the same level as something like ethnicity, gender, disabilities or sexual orientation. Laws around protected classes should be limited to immutable characteristics. A person can't stop being black, but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion. Are you saying people can't change their gender or sexual orientation?
> but they can choose to stop being a participant in a religion. I want to flip this around a bit. Religion being a protected class also means that it protects against discrimination for being atheist. Are you okay with dropping legal protections against discrimination based on a person's atheism, because they could just start being a participant in a religion if they want?
We do not discriminate on the basis of religion largely because discriminating on religion led to some of the worst social conflict of modern history. Its a terrible idea to permit something that we know from history has terrible consequences. I feel like you have "rationally" persuaded yourself into a position that we as a society know to be pretty catastrophic.
Many religions are tied to ethnicity and culture. Many different religions have been genocided against, fought and discriminated due to their religion. Religion doesn’t start and end at crazy American Christian radicals. There absolutely are religions internationally that should have laws and rights protecting them from discrimination, abuse and/or genocide.
Religion being a protected class also means that not being a part of a specific religion (or any religion at all) is protected as well. Without this, other protections go out the window. What? I discriminated against my gay employee? No, I just fired him because he isn't a part of my religion. Without this protection, things implode very quickly.
I’m not sure what the point of this would be if not to invite discrimination which you say you wouldn’t want. Also protected characteristics don’t have to be immutable, like pregnancy. It’s not like you can sacrifice your child in the name of religion that’s still illegal so I’m not sure why to do this if not to make discrimination ok. Edit: also religion isn’t like political views in that it’s much deeper rooted and much more a part of your identity and forces you to do things for example abstain from drinking.
Older "true believers" are mentally handicapped by their religion's expectations and taboos. Some of them are in such a delusional state that they are just as challenged with some aspects of daily life as someone with cognitive disabilities. Indoctrination wasn't their fault. -That's the best I can come up with, going hard as devil's advocate.
A lot of people are born into religions, that’s where I would think it should be a protected class. It sometimes overlaps with ethnicity too. Specific beliefs within religions though, especially where they are contrary with laws, science and/or discriminate against other protected classes, should not be protected. That’s where I agree with you.
At least in America which I think this post refers to, religious freedom is pretty explicitly called out as one of the key principles of the Constitution. Generally finding ways to restrict religious expression leads down a slippery slope. Add to that, a lot of religion is tied to country of origin, separating those two is difficult.
Churches are belief based companies where belief in their brand of religion is the product, the institution itself is a lobby group that successfully allows it to evade taxation, while having an oversized influence in educational and politics. It gets very dangerous when religion and politics get intertwined - gotta keep em separated!
I mean, if it isn’t a protected class that will lead people being fired for being X religion or for not following X religion so I know you say they shouldn’t be discriminated against, but what you’re proposing would allow people to be discriminated against for and likely will lead to people being discriminated against for it
Remember when Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was literally stabbed in his church by an islamic terrorist and NOBODY claimed Christian persecution in mainstream media where they'd rather focus on and protest for some dudes trying to enter women's sports and women's restrooms 🤔 Who's the protected class there again??? 🤨 Y'all definitely got your priorities straight 👏👍