In reviewing the comments my recent post on this Kim David situation, (blog entry from 9/4/2015), I did see a couple of areas where my comments need to be clarified somewhat. There are also a couple things I failed to point out.
The first item that came up was the seemingly obvious comparison to the current lawsuit regarding a flight attendant who happens to be a practicing Muslim, that was suspended for not serving alcohol. Here's a link to the story... [click here] The summary of the second item is as follows. A woman was hired to be a flight attendant for what appears to be a regional airline. Shortly after being hired she converted to Islam. It appears she took this seriously as she refused to serve alcohol, and wore a head scarf.
It appears that the flight attendant made arrangements so that other members of the crew could serve alcohol. That appears to have been going well without incident. Until that is, there was a complaint filed by a fellow flight attendant about her head scarf. It appears once the airline investigated the head scarf complaint the flight attendant in question was suspended for a period of time, and may be fired at the end of the suspension.
After researching the story, it is not clear to me at this point what exactly she was suspended for, and the airline is refusing to comment on a personnel matter. The whole thing is currently in litigation and likely will be for some time. It is an open question as to what she was suspended for, and what the overall situation was as a whole. Is this a uniform deviation matter? If it is I find it highly unlikely that the airline would have taken such drastic measures.
I don't believe there are enough facts overall to sustain this comparison at this point. I believe there is a lot more to this story than what is currently in the press. If I had to guess, I would say this is not this employee's first trip to her airline's human resources section. And would be willing to bet my paycheck that her religious beliefs have nothing at all to do with the airline's actions to date. It is unlikely the whole story will be told on this.
Having said all that, let me say that even if the comparison was valid, which there is no way to know for sure, there are a few key differences in the examples. The flight attendant was not an elected official. She did not take an oath to uphold the laws of the land. She was not work at a nexus of the rights of the public at large being provided. The fact that she was a Muslim appears, in my view, to be a tangential factor, at best, in this equation.
Even if it weren't she did not take an oath of office, she was not charged with fulfilling the legal needs and requirements of those that came before her. She was not a part of the implementation of the judicial system. She was not the deciding factor from an elected executive level in whether or not someone could avail themselves of their constitutional rights as defined by our nation's panoply of law and regulation. This is an unfair comparison on the order of an apple and a blue whale. Not even close to being similar enough to form a functional comparison.
This does bring me to the next item. One that I failed to mention in my first foray on this subject. We do not want a clerk of courts to be making decisions as to which laws they will abide by and enforce based on their religious beliefs. We do not want to live in a world in which the community as a whole is held hostage to the religious views of their local clerk of courts. What if the person did not believe that divorce was acceptable? Would it be acceptable if the clerk was saying my religion teaches me that divorce is a sin, and I can't be a party to that, so I won't enter any orders relating to it. Everyone in my county has to stay married. Would that be acceptable?
If the clerk refused to provide service to anyone not wearing the proper attire as dictated by their religion? Would it be acceptable for a clerk to refuse to provide service to someone who happens to be female, because of their religion's views on the proper role of women in society? Would it be acceptable for the clerk to say that no one can have eaten or handled pork prior to coming to their office? There are a host of other examples that could come up with this standard. The clear answer is no it would not be acceptable.
This bleeds into the fact that the clerk of courts office handles a lot of sensitive items that could be negatively impacted if religious belief is an acceptable reason to deny people services of that office. These offices handle things that must be done. Things like child support, restraining orders, and on and on. It is obvious that a divergence between what is legal and an acceptable in a secular society and the teachings of a particular faith, cannot be a basis for refusing to provide the service required of an elected official.
We can argue about the state of the law. We can argue about how we got here. We can argue about the validity of a court legislating from the bench. What we can't have is an official charged with upholding the laws of the land refusing to provide a service on the basis of faith, when faith and law diverge. If the courts say that it is legal for two people of the same sex to marry, and that is the state of the matter, then a clerk has no choice but to comply with the law. If they cannot comply then they have to step back out of the way and allow the service to be provided over their objections. Anything else is contemptible behavior.
In closing, let me say, that I would hold this opinion regardless of the religion of the clerk in question. I would hold this opinion even if this were not about religion. If this were about any other issue, I would say clerks are not allowed to let their personal views get in the way of the implementation of things their offices are charged to do. If the clerk in question cannot hold their nose and do it, or allow someone else in their office to do it for them, then they have no business being a clerk of courts. Thus endeth the rant.
The first item that came up was the seemingly obvious comparison to the current lawsuit regarding a flight attendant who happens to be a practicing Muslim, that was suspended for not serving alcohol. Here's a link to the story... [click here] The summary of the second item is as follows. A woman was hired to be a flight attendant for what appears to be a regional airline. Shortly after being hired she converted to Islam. It appears she took this seriously as she refused to serve alcohol, and wore a head scarf.
It appears that the flight attendant made arrangements so that other members of the crew could serve alcohol. That appears to have been going well without incident. Until that is, there was a complaint filed by a fellow flight attendant about her head scarf. It appears once the airline investigated the head scarf complaint the flight attendant in question was suspended for a period of time, and may be fired at the end of the suspension.
After researching the story, it is not clear to me at this point what exactly she was suspended for, and the airline is refusing to comment on a personnel matter. The whole thing is currently in litigation and likely will be for some time. It is an open question as to what she was suspended for, and what the overall situation was as a whole. Is this a uniform deviation matter? If it is I find it highly unlikely that the airline would have taken such drastic measures.
I don't believe there are enough facts overall to sustain this comparison at this point. I believe there is a lot more to this story than what is currently in the press. If I had to guess, I would say this is not this employee's first trip to her airline's human resources section. And would be willing to bet my paycheck that her religious beliefs have nothing at all to do with the airline's actions to date. It is unlikely the whole story will be told on this.
Having said all that, let me say that even if the comparison was valid, which there is no way to know for sure, there are a few key differences in the examples. The flight attendant was not an elected official. She did not take an oath to uphold the laws of the land. She was not work at a nexus of the rights of the public at large being provided. The fact that she was a Muslim appears, in my view, to be a tangential factor, at best, in this equation.
Even if it weren't she did not take an oath of office, she was not charged with fulfilling the legal needs and requirements of those that came before her. She was not a part of the implementation of the judicial system. She was not the deciding factor from an elected executive level in whether or not someone could avail themselves of their constitutional rights as defined by our nation's panoply of law and regulation. This is an unfair comparison on the order of an apple and a blue whale. Not even close to being similar enough to form a functional comparison.
This does bring me to the next item. One that I failed to mention in my first foray on this subject. We do not want a clerk of courts to be making decisions as to which laws they will abide by and enforce based on their religious beliefs. We do not want to live in a world in which the community as a whole is held hostage to the religious views of their local clerk of courts. What if the person did not believe that divorce was acceptable? Would it be acceptable if the clerk was saying my religion teaches me that divorce is a sin, and I can't be a party to that, so I won't enter any orders relating to it. Everyone in my county has to stay married. Would that be acceptable?
If the clerk refused to provide service to anyone not wearing the proper attire as dictated by their religion? Would it be acceptable for a clerk to refuse to provide service to someone who happens to be female, because of their religion's views on the proper role of women in society? Would it be acceptable for the clerk to say that no one can have eaten or handled pork prior to coming to their office? There are a host of other examples that could come up with this standard. The clear answer is no it would not be acceptable.
This bleeds into the fact that the clerk of courts office handles a lot of sensitive items that could be negatively impacted if religious belief is an acceptable reason to deny people services of that office. These offices handle things that must be done. Things like child support, restraining orders, and on and on. It is obvious that a divergence between what is legal and an acceptable in a secular society and the teachings of a particular faith, cannot be a basis for refusing to provide the service required of an elected official.
We can argue about the state of the law. We can argue about how we got here. We can argue about the validity of a court legislating from the bench. What we can't have is an official charged with upholding the laws of the land refusing to provide a service on the basis of faith, when faith and law diverge. If the courts say that it is legal for two people of the same sex to marry, and that is the state of the matter, then a clerk has no choice but to comply with the law. If they cannot comply then they have to step back out of the way and allow the service to be provided over their objections. Anything else is contemptible behavior.
In closing, let me say, that I would hold this opinion regardless of the religion of the clerk in question. I would hold this opinion even if this were not about religion. If this were about any other issue, I would say clerks are not allowed to let their personal views get in the way of the implementation of things their offices are charged to do. If the clerk in question cannot hold their nose and do it, or allow someone else in their office to do it for them, then they have no business being a clerk of courts. Thus endeth the rant.