Macy's fires discriminating employee

[DonnaT]

http://lezgetreal.com/2011/12/macys-fir ... ans-woman/

There are those who seem to confuse religious belief with religious dictatorship, and it appears that Natalie Johnson at the Macy’s department store in San Antonio, Texas made that mistake recently when she refused to allow a trans woman to use the women’s dressing rooms at the store . . . What Johnson did was engage in harassment of an individual who is trans. What she got was fired.

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“Macy’s will not tolerate harassment of any type based on race, ethnicity, age, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, physical or mental disability, genetic information, military status, marital status, medical condition, or any other category protected by law. Engaging in harassment of others will lead to discipline, up to and including termination of the associate violating Macy’s Anti-Harassment policy.”

[Absaroka]

The whole religious freedom thing comes down to "my religion says stone witches, there for my religious freedom was compromised when I wasn't allowed to kill the witch next door.

Easy to be outraged. On the other hand when we get into freedom vs some end of life issues, to use another example, the waters can get murky.

Zari

[Anouk]

If you have such beliefs that leads you to dicriminating behaviour, you just have to choose the career where you can avoid this kind of coincidences.

[Paula G]

Now we are not told what religion she thought she was practising, or indeed in what way the use of a changing room offended her believes. I would have thought that not using a changing room would have been a lot more offensive.

It does indicate the problems when conflicting rights collide, does my right to religious expression conflict with your right to freedom express your sexuality, or indeed your taste in shoes. There have been a few cases recently in the UK where people have been sacked for such things as wearing a cross, clearly this us outrageous, however if the same person had been asking all her Islamic customers if they "Knew Christ as their personal Saviour" then that would have crossed the line. When working for a Company it is reasonable to expect that you have to comply with their policies.

This should of course include all policies, someone not complying with the Company Health & Safety policy, or perhaps a policy on confidentiality would expect to be dismissed, It seem perfectly reasonable that an employee involved in customer service should expect to comply with the employers Anti Harassment policy should be subject to disciplinary procedures.

[Ralitsa]

It is not logically possible to avoid discrimination. Every single choice involves discrimination of one sort or another. So it really irritates me when people throw out the accusation: "that is discrimination". It displays a lack of critical thinking and sloppy logic. As Paula points out, discrimination against someone who chooses to use no changing room at all is OK.
Which means that the real subject here is, not whether discrimination is OK, but rather which discrimination is legally allowed and which is not. According to my laywer, laws have nothing to do with morality, they are simply the tyrrany of the majority. I used to sail with a guy who said "I can't discriminate against people because of their race, or religion, or ethnicity, or sexual preference. But I can still discriminate against stupid people, so I will." Nobody has ever accused sailors of being PC
The point is, be careful about celebrating some "legal victory" because it has nothing to do with what is right or wrong, but only what happens to be popular at the moment.

[JoAnnDallas]

What Macy's did was a example of the separation of Church and State that we have in this country. IIRC there are laws that simple state that the church shall not interfere with the State and the State shall not interfere with the church. It means the church can not tell the state how to run the country and the State will not tell the church how to run it's church.
This lady customer violated this principal.

[Carolynn]

It wasn't the customer, it was the employee that did the discrimination. That's why Macy's could fire her.

Carolynn

[Paula G]

In the UK we have an established Church, the Church of England is part of the state, and the state only functions as part of the Church. The Queen is the Head of State, and the Head of the Church, she reigns by the authority of being crowned by the Church, the reason why the US state is separated from church is to be different to the UK.

More to the point, as far as I can see when it comes to civil liberties, and fundamental human rights many states are up to a century behind European Countries, whether they have established Churches, (like UK and Spain) or not (like France & Germany)

[Absaroka]

The US was settled by many different European groups, even before the wave of immigration in the mid 1800's The Southwest was initially mostly settled by the Spanish. The Northeast was more settled by religious dissidents, while the South had more unlanded nobility-youngest child of youngest child and so on. These were the people who set the tone of society even though the majority of the population of course was made up of poor people who came to America because it had to be better than the old country, even before the industrial revolution. And of course in some places large numbers of slaves, many of whom concluded that the God their owners served was clearly more powerful and converted to their owner's religion.

The point is that the South was more influenced by folks who wanted to recreate the religious and power structure in England, since they felt they stood to benefit from it. The Northeast, settled by dissidents, felt differently. Thus there is sometimes less support for the separation of church and state in the South, even though today that country has had untold other influences as well.

The posting of the 10 commandments in the court room in some city in the South is an interesting illustration of this. What is often not understood is that the 10 commandments are a tad different in the Protestant Bible as opposed to the Catholic Bible. In particular the 3rd and either the 9th or 10th are different. I'd think that you could have a huge arguement in the North over this as there are many members of both groups. However in the South there are less Catholics in some places, and the illusion that there is only one version remains, which sort of goes hand in hand with combining church and state.