Monday, April 13, 2015

Easier than getting a law passed



Okay, I had decided after my burnout that I didn’t want to get annoyed about things again that easily, but after quite some recent stuff about people denying services of various kinds to others based on their race/gender/sexual orientation, I have something to say about the topic myself.

If you have a problem with serving a person in your job because said person is, according to your eyes or to that personal belief system of yours, the wrong race/gender/sexual orientation or whatever, there is a much easier solution than passing laws: Don’t work in a service job. Yes, it is that easy.

If you take a job in service, no matter whether as a cashier, a pharmacist, a doctor (technically, doctors and nurses also work in service, since they provide health service), a pizza baker, or something else, you will have to be ready to serve everyone - as long as they are ready to uphold their part of the deal and hand you money for it. It doesn’t matter what your religious book or your preacher or your conscience has to say about it. If your conscience tells you to absolutely not do it again, then get another job, one where you don’t have to do that again.

And if you consider yourself a Christian, you might want to read all of your holy book one of these days, not just the part that justifies your prejudices. It’s going to take a while, especially if you read all of it, Old and New Testament. You might be shocked by the content especially of the New Testament. You see, this guy called Jesus whom you believe in, he had a strange way of seeing things. In essence, he only wanted people to do one thing: be nice to others. He sided with the poorest, with the outcasts of society. And he said there was only one rule to follow: love others like you love yourself (or, in some cases of extreme self-loathing, perhaps a little more than yourself).

The same, by the way, goes for the religious organisations operating public places over here in Germany, like kindergartens, schools, or hospitals. Stop looking down on people who you think have done the wrong thing. Stop choosing your employees merely by their religious belief and their marital status (nobody who got divorced and remarried is allowed to work in a Roman-Catholic kindergarten, school, or hospital). You want to serve society? You want to actually get people to listen to what you say? You want your slice of the cake? Then act like a responsible part of society and accept its reality. Divorce is reality, religious freedom is reality. Deal with it!

You don’t need to make laws to allow people to discriminate against others based on their personal belief. What you need, is to make laws to forbid people to discriminate against others for whatever reason (religious belief, race, gender, sexual orientation, whatever).

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