Who's Right In This Lawsuit?

Oct 6, 2019 13:21:32 GMT rizdek said:

Perhaps the law says this, but the thread title doesn't ask what the law says, but who is "right" in this lawsuit.

I'm answering from the standpoint of "right" vs "wrong" whether someone can make decisions about who works for them and what they can do/not do based on the employer's or owner's religious convictions.  If they can...and many on the religious right think one should be able to operate their businesses...make distinctions on who they serve and how they can serve them...based on their personal convictions, then why can't they make decisions on who works for them and what those employees do/say based on convictions.  And if someone has a personal conviction that thus and so is supposed happen...e.g. someone should come to their parties and can't "opt out" based on religious convictions, then they should be allowed to not keep that person in their employee. 

OR, people ought not be allowed to make business decisions at all, based on religious convictions.  Which is it? 

Ok, that's fair enough.  Who's right in the large sense rather than the legal sense?

The pure libertarian will say that civil rights laws should be abolished because business people should be left alone to hire and serve whoever they want for their own reasons.  And this seems to be what you're getting at.

But I say that businesses don't operate in a vacuum.  They operate in a society in which all people pay taxes which go to the kinds of things that businesses use and rely on (roads, police and fire depts., garbage disposal, etc.).  And thus, it's not overstepping for government to tell businesses to not discriminate in the kind of broad categories (race, religion, gender) that we've seen practiced in our history and to the detriment of a just and equitable society.