Suit: Job offer pulled after religious accommodation request

[Hortensis]

70. Well, for all the noise around it, note that people are NOT able to use

the Civil Rights Act to destroy civil rights. They certainly keep trying, but erase all these laws and they'll not only come out way ahead by being free to discriminate based on their own religion, but they'll then be freed up to move on to other lines of attack on our freedoms. The fact that the religious right is trying to twist the law for their benefit should not make us forget that these laws were largely enacted to protect society from abuses by them, among others. The religious right furiously opposed passage of our civil rights laws.

I don't expect to change your mind, of course, but just explain my viewpoint.

In the case of the religious exemption law, it seems to strikes a workable balance between interests and to function acceptably in general. By far most employers are never called upon to make an exemption, but the "reasonable accommodation" and "no undue burden" clauses are available to those that do when they need to deny employment.

Note that for all the noise generated around Kim, the laws involved worked as intended, protecting society and her "employer," even if she didn't care to agree. How she sees herself is irrelevant, no matter how offensive we might find it, or how seditious in intent. What is relevant is that the law worked. It protected us from her. She does now have the option of filing her religious exemption claim in Kentucky after the federal courts have rejected it.

How about the other side: a young woman who graduates high school, studies to be a radiology technician, and then cannot get a job within 2 hours of her home and family because she wears a head scarf? And cannot get another job at the county's largest employer, an insurance billing center, for the same reason? Something that does not affect her work in the slightest way but signaled to the Kims out there that she is not one of them?

Multiply these serious practical problems by large numbers in a nation of 330,000,000 people. They don't just prevent us from truly being a nation where all have the right to liberty and pursuit of happiness but also create significant social and economic problems for society as a whole. A very large and very diverse society needs to find ways to rub along without hurting each other. That's just reality.