Ref: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1716779

For the lawyers on the board, with some governments (US, Canada and others) having law/policy prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of gender, race, religion and sexual orientation (I missed a few), which will prevail between religion and sexual orientation?

What I'm saying is that one can be a member of any religion one wants, but does this override the requirement not to discriminate based on sexual orientation?

I realize that this refers to hiring, but doesn't it also refer to day-to-day employment? If someone is actively engaged -- and, therefore, believes -- in a religion that discriminates based on race, gender or sexual orientation, isn't that a problem with government or other employers subject to non-discrimination law?

If I put up an "I hate gays" or even "I believe the gay lifestyle is wrong" banner in my workplace, I think I'd be disciplined or fired.

You can fault a religious institution, but you cannot penalize its members. We all know that people belong to a religion mostly because of birth, not conscious choice.

Most people who belong to a religion have very different ideas from the institution. Show me a 20-something married Catholic couple who doesn't use contraception. Most people in America support gay marriage, even as most churches oppose it.

In government, you would get in a lot of trouble so saying you wouldn't hire a Mormon because of what the LDS Church believes. It is explicitly against the law to discriminate based on religion.

Freedom for religion and from religion is what freedom is all about.

The government is not allowed to discriminate you on the basis of your beliefs unless they interfere with your ability to perform your duties.

Were it otherwise, you'd have a severely depleted workforce. You can join PETA if you work for the TSA, but you'll still be expected to screen the rest of us omnivores. You can be a Muslim police officer, but you can't get upset at your coworkers that eat bacon. You can be a Mormon FBI agent, but you'll be expected to investigate crimes against homosexuals. Such is the nature of things.

The government can't -- and really shouldn't -- categorically discriminate in hiring on the basis of the personal beliefs of the people it is hiring. Were it to do so, we'd end up with all sorts of ludicrous situations. And anyone that wants to use the force of government to exclude Mormons from government employ is, to put it mildly, totally ignorant of the consequences such an action would bring not only for Mormons but for wide swaths of people with other beliefs.

Only if a member of any religion that believes in bigotry acts upon these belief in the workplace, can they be punished.

Believing that gays are evil are sinners at the workplace it is fine. The law only applies to actions not beliefs.

You can be as bigoted as you want to be in a government workforce.

What you cannot do is openly express your views that would violate any of the EEO protected subjects. Nor can you discriminate others openly or discreetly because of those views.

You can be KKK and still work for the government.

Though not too many probably seek active employment because they know the ramifications of vocalizing or advocating their beliefs on the job.

Free speech is only free depending on the venue. It's free to a degree in government settings. It isn't in the private sector.

An employee in a privately held company does not have the same rights of free expression, and depending on their employer can be fired for exercising free expression.

Mormons by and large make excellent employees in the government sector, because of their perceived honesty, patriotism - and a strong work ethic.

Yes, I understand -- and realize they can't be touched. I'm just thinking it's time we made people stand up for the policies of the organizations/faiths they belong to.

GC Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, I understand -- and realize they can't be
> touched. I'm just thinking it's time we made
> people stand up for the policies of the
> organizations/faiths they belong to.

"Making" people do things hardly ever works out well.
Educating them as to why it's a good idea to act socially responsible, not be bigoted, and not discriminate is much more successful.

And, frankly, I'd personally rather have a bunch of mormons (and others of other 'faiths') who DON'T stand up for the policies of their 'faiths.' Those are the more reasonable people, the ones I'm happy to deal with. It's the hard-core fanatics that cause most of the trouble.

What a horribly atrocious idea.

So some government committee gets to decide which ideas are 'approved'? Do you realize how slippery of a slope this is?

Whenever somebody comes up with an idea as badly thought out as this one, I try to introduce a thought exercise. It goes like this:

First, imagine the solution you're proposing. The Mormon church is bigoted (as determined by fiat). Ergo, its members should not be eligible for government employ. Brilliant! We've stamped out some small element of bigotry.

Now, imagine that your worst ideological opponents have their hands on the levers of power. Anti-Semitism is on the rise (for examples, see here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/02/college-anti-israel-divestment_n_6784650.html). Are you a Jew that identifies with Israel? Well, maybe you shouldn't have a job with the government either. And, hey, the Qu'ran is pretty anti-homosexual too, so we should probably keep any Muslims from government service.

As part of your newfound effort to categorize people by religion, you make a database of people, sorted by religion, for all federal and state organizations to use, otherwise how will we know who to discriminate against? Given the generally shitty job the government does with IT, of course it gets hacked, and of course it gets leaked. Meanwhile, various people on the left and right are trying to tell you that categorizing people by religion is generally a bad idea, but you ignore them (and wide swaths of history) because, dammit, the Mormons don't deserve government jobs.

This is a bewilderingly bad idea. You should feel bad for proposing it and even worse for defending it, as it's essentially bigotry personified. You may think you're better than Mormons, but at least they are not defending kicking homosexuals out of government service (witness, for example, Oaks excoriating Kim Davis for breaking the law) or creating a religious litmus test for government employ.

Wasn't that the basis of the Kim Davis kerfuffle that landed her bigoted behind in the slammer?

Kim Davis didn't get into trouble for believing that homosexual marriage was wrong; rather, she got into trouble because she failed to follow U.S. law after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the matter of homosexual marriage. In other words, government (and most other) employees have to put their personal beliefs aside when they go to work.

GC wrote:

>For the lawyers on the board, with some governments (US, Canada and others) having law/policy prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of gender, race, religion and sexual orientation (I missed a few), which will prevail between religion and sexual orientation?

Those laws state that the government cannot discrimate against anyone for ANY of those reasons. Thus it makes no sense to ask which reason would prevail.

Yes, I get that Richard. I guess what I'm suggesting is that people who have obvious ties to organizations that clearly do, should perhaps not work for a gov't agency that has those standards.

I'm not talking about personal feelings; I'm talking about a verifiable membership with an organization that is clearly on the record for discriminating for those reasons.

For example, law enforcement agencies try to screen out bigots, so if you know they support -- and are a member of -- a bigoted organization......

GC:
In the U.S., you cannot ask about religion during a job interview; it is similar to asking about a disability. Now, one might assume from looking at a resume that a potential employee might be LDs if he/she graduated from either BYU or BYU-Idaho, but I understand that there are non-Mormons who attend both universities so one has to be careful about one's assumptions.

With regard to organizations such as the KKK, many very intelligent interviewees have figured out that even mentioning that organization on a resume would get that resume thrown in the trash. The one thing employers can do (though they can't ask potential employees about it during an interview) is to check to see if a potential employee has a criminal record which could pinpoint if that potential employee is, in fact, part of the KKK or some other organization that could get the employer into trouble if the potential employee was hired.

What I'm saying is that while not all employers (especially the small ones) follow the law, it can be difficult to determine during the job selection process if a potential employee is a member of the KKK or some other hate group, unless the potential employee voluntarily supplys that information.

Mormonism is rather strong in the greater Washington, D.C. area. The temple is one reason (for a great many years, it was the only thing going in the mid-Atlantic and New England,) but the number of Mormons working in the area is the other. It is well known that Mormons are recruited by the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the Secret Service, and other government agencies. They are liked for their clean living and language abilities. I don't see this changing any time soon.

For a long time I thought that the Washington Post had developed a pro-Mormon bias -- not quite sure why. Now their coverage seems more balanced to me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2015 08:16PM by summer.

Understood "summer", but now the LDS church has gone from being against gays to laying down a hard marker -- thus making them an on-the-record bigoted organization.

So, let's say that 7 percent of the FBI is Mormon; then 7 percent of the FBI are bigots -- or at least associated with it through LDS membership. Those already in can be counselled, but future hires -- post Nov. 5, 2015 -- should have to disavow their church (or any other on-the-record bigoted organization) to join.

You see, two can play this game. I think the way to bring down the Mormon church is to highlight its members for the freaks they are. Those that want to be normal, non-bigoted human beings can disavow the freak-show (to use Steve Benson's term).

GC:
There are two big problems with your analysis:

1) As pointed out elsewhere, the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of the freedom of religion. The U.S. government (and other employers) simply cannot use a religious litmus test when it comes to hiring employees, and it really doesn't matter what religious organization one is talking about.

2) The U.S. government (and other employers) cannot by law ask questions of potential employees that are unrelated to the actual duties of the job. If they could, you would find a lot more people without employment simply because they didn't adhere to some beliefs of the employer that were not job-related.

Yes, these protections protect Mormons! But they also protect disabled people (like yours truly) and women and minorities as well.

Sometimes you just have to take the bad with the good.

Understood -- and I like those protections being in place, as you note.

Just FYI, I'm not advocating a religious litmus test. Rather, it would be a test for membership in any organization -- religious or not -- that is on the record as being against those very things the constitution is trying to protect.

So, I think they could ask if a potential recruit is a member of a hate group (any group that clearly discriminates based on race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion, etc.)which the LDS church is.

A hate group could be a religion or not -- the gov't doesn't care. That wouldn't be part of the question.

Ultimately, who decides what a hate group is?
Is RfM a hate group? Are "anti-mormons" a hate group?
ETB would likely have considered civil rights groups hate groups.
TSM and DHO consider pro-gay rights groups to be hate groups.

Some fundamentalist religionists would consider atheists to be members of a hate group (and vice versa).

How do we decide which groups to ban?

Any group that is on-the-record (i.e. First Presidency statement against gays the other daY) regarding those things (race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.) that the constitution is trying to protect.

I don't think that would include RFM, atheists, pro-gay groups, civil rights groups, etc. -- unless you can show an official statement/policy somewhere that they discriminate as per above.

Here's a start from Wikipedia:

"A hate group is an organized group or movement that advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence towards members of a race, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or any other designated sector of society."