The Glade 4.0

Ok, hypothetical time: A vegetarian member of PETA applied for a job at a slaughterhouse that involved, you know, slaughtering animals. When the company saw he was a PETA member, they asked if the fact they were a slaughterhouse slaughtering animals would cause him to decline an interview if one were offered. He responded that he is indeed a member of PETA and, due to his beliefs, he could not actually slaughter the animals. However, he said he would be interested in a job performing other functions related to the animals at the slaughterhouse, so he inquired if any such non-slaughter jobs were available. The slaughterhouse replied that no such jobs were available and, given that they were a slaughterhouse and he was a member of PETA, they declined to interview him. Now he is suing them for discriminating against him on the basis of his beliefs.

What do you think - valid lawsuit or bullshit nuisance?

Last I checked Vegetarianism wasnt a religion.

That said if you're (collectively) against what they do, then why apply. Hopefully it gets thrown out.

Also for the record, are you advocating that employers should be able to not hire people who don't share their values if those values affect job performance? So you are against ENDA then, right?

Personally I don't think you should ever be entitled to work for some one. If I am going to pay your salary i should be able to use whatever criteria I wish.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Veganism might as well be though, the same as the global warming fanatics who are so deep into it that HIGW isn't even falsifiable to them anymore.

Out of curiosity, what's the difference between a belief and a religion (legally speaking, or even logistically)?

Hmm. Relevant. http://io9.com/federal-employee-gets-fi ... 1614664221

Logistically not much. Legally I assume the founders used the word religion instead of belief for a reason. I think legal precedent states a certain threshold of tradition/ceremony is required for a belief to be religiously protected by the first amendment. This is done to prevent people from claiming religious protection for just about anything. However my statement was not about the merits of the case though, just taking issue with Dave's failed attempt of gotcha via analogy.

The Los Alamos issue is a little different, but I'm generally of the belief (nothing religious about it really ) that employment is pretty much "at will". However the government should probably be more neutral than its acting in this case. Difference between government and private employers and all that.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I'm pretty much OK with a private company not hiring anyone for any reason. I wouldn't do business with a company that wouldn't hire, say, Armenians or something, but I don't think Armenians should be able to sue that business. This goes double for people applying for jobs in companies they're morally opposed to (especially so opposed that they join a group opposing what the company does)

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The whole argument is absurd. If you cannot do the job, for any reason, be it disability, moral objection, or possession of the wrong body parts, you shouldn't be hired to do the job. What are you going to all day?

I would say that the company could reasonably suspect such a person was there for ulterior motives, and should be permitted to refuse them an interview on those grounds. I'm not sure about the analogy to the abortion situation, but for the sake of argument saying the analogy is appropriate, I'd say the same thing. It's pretty reasonable to assume a committed anti-abortion acitvist trying to get a job with an organization that provides abortions is not there purely for the paycheck.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

For the most part, yeah, I don't agree with imposing non-discrimination laws on private employers. The exceptions would be government contractors and companies otherwise accepting government grants and funding. The government shouldn't be funding discriminatory practices that it could not engage in itself. If you take the money, you agree to play by those rules. I would also make an exception for those rare and extreme circumstances where the level of societal discrimination is so intense and widespread that government intervention is the only way to crack the mold in the foreseeable future (e.g., the Civil Rights Act and similar legislation in the 1960s). An argument for anti-homosexual discrimination rising to that level could certainly have been made 40 or 50 years ago, but not today, so yes, all else being equal, I'm inclined to oppose ENDA standing on its own. However, given that we do impose anti-discrimination laws for other aspects of identity, and those laws aren't going anywhere, I'm conflicted about whether it's worse for the government to expand those laws to homosexuals or to continue discriminating itself by denying the protection of those laws to homosexuals. Sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. On balance, though, I probably come down on the opposition to ENDA side (much as I dislike the bulk of my company there).

Having said all that, even if we do have non-discrimination laws, I think it'd be nuts to require employers to accommodate employees with beliefs that materially interfere with their job performance, as in the two examples in my OP.

So if you openly admit to not being able to perform basic job functions, you don't get hired. It's that simple.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

So, companies like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon should not be able to deny employment to people who are members of Greenpeace? I don't think I want such people anywhere near a defense contractor position. I also don't think I want pro-life people anywhere near the actual performance of abortions, nor PETA members anywhere near meat that someone might actually eat.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

They should file a counter-suit to put the PETA member through the slaughter house and make a tasty burger.

If a person can't or won't do they job they are hired for then fire them or don't hire them.

Not hard.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Dude, if you are a card-carrying member of PETA and get any job at a slaughter house, you're the biggest tool on the planet and I hope you fall into the meat grinder.

That's not an option on the poll though.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn