No smoke without flamewar

[j4]

You may recall a bit of a debate recently about whether Christians should be forced to let gay people stay in their bed-and-breakfasts, in which people invented various analogous situations (as people are wont to do) as aids to debate. Here's one we didn't need to invent, from The Times' News in Brief on Monday:

Smoker put out

A smoker was denied cigarettes at a store because the assistant, a Muslim, said it was against her religion to sell tobacco. The woman smoker, 31, had tried to buy cigarettes at W. H. Smith in Cambridge. The company said that the customer should have realised the assistant was Muslim and would not sell tobacco.

How did the Times know that the woman was a smoker? She might have just been buying cigarettes for a friend. ... No, wait. Should smokers be allowed to refuse to be served by a Muslim? ... No, that's not it either. Hang on, I've got it: How can you tell if the checkout assistant is a Muslim? There isn't a punchline, but there probably would be if you started making assumptions like that based on, ooh, I don't know, the c*l**r of someone's sk*n, or their h**dg**r.

I would say "it's not just me, is it?" but a friend recently said (in an entirely other context) "I too spend a lot of time in culture shock at what's supposed to be my own culture." I think that sums it up, really.

Comments

[k425.livejournal.com]

I didn't mention pork. My brother is vegan - while he'd have no trouble working in many areas of a supermarket, he would object to handling meat. Similarly, I can see (recovering) alcoholics not wanting to work in the booze shelves. It's not always about religion.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Indeed. But vegans and recovering alcoholics are not so well defended by the law as religious and racial minorities. Yiou could, in theory, look at disability legislation for a recovering alcoholic; but objections arising from secular beliefs and issues of conscience are met with the retort "Well, if you don't want to work here, don't."

It is reasonable to discriminate on the basis of peoples' choices and preferences. It is, however, illegal to discriminate on racial and religious grounds - and legally precarious to make HR decisions, for even the soundest of business reasons, that have the effect of racial or religious discrimination.