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TechnographColumn: No alcohol, no problem in Minneapolis cabs: Fairly applying judgments on religion in the private sector
By Lally Gartel
Posted: 10/26/06 Section: Opinions
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What is interesting about conservative fear and commentary on this issue, and others like it, is its blatant hypocrisy. I wholeheartedly agree that taxi drivers should not be able to impose their religious beliefs on customers without paying some sort of financial price; they will lose many customers. If their religious beliefs come first, then sacrifices should be made in public life to hold particular kinds of jobs and do particular kinds of things. But I also think that deeply religious Christian pharmacists have a duty to fill all prescriptions, including ones which may not align with their religious beliefs, or pay the price by changing professions or losing their job.
Daniel Pipes, the most vocal conservative and anti-Islamicist columnist and academic, says smugly that the taxi driver's actions "…intrude Islamic law into a mundane transaction of American commercial life." I don't see Pipes arguing, anywhere in my research about him, that Christian law shouldn't be inserted into mundane transactions in the American commercial life of women who choose to go on birth control or get medicinal abortions.
The fact is that our personal religious choices are important, but not important enough to impose upon others, particularly in the realm of public commercial life. Some conservatives play up our freedoms to buy, say, and do anything as long as it does not harm or impose upon others. They expect taxi drivers to adhere to these claims, but say nothing about the doctors and pharmacists, whom they support, inserting their religion into the lives of patients and customers.
The right policy is to leave religion out of public life, particularly in a country as ethnically and religiously diverse as the United States. When we begin making exceptions for faiths we like more, or that are majorities, or that are particularly vehement in their convictions, we lose the ability to have a thriving and popular public sector. But, of course, this doesn't just apply to Muslim taxi drivers. It applies to everyone.
Daniel Pipes, the most vocal conservative and anti-Islamicist columnist and academic, says smugly that the taxi driver's actions "…intrude Islamic law into a mundane transaction of American commercial life." I don't see Pipes arguing, anywhere in my research about him, that Christian law shouldn't be inserted into mundane transactions in the American commercial life of women who choose to go on birth control or get medicinal abortions.
The fact is that our personal religious choices are important, but not important enough to impose upon others, particularly in the realm of public commercial life. Some conservatives play up our freedoms to buy, say, and do anything as long as it does not harm or impose upon others. They expect taxi drivers to adhere to these claims, but say nothing about the doctors and pharmacists, whom they support, inserting their religion into the lives of patients and customers.
The right policy is to leave religion out of public life, particularly in a country as ethnically and religiously diverse as the United States. When we begin making exceptions for faiths we like more, or that are majorities, or that are particularly vehement in their convictions, we lose the ability to have a thriving and popular public sector. But, of course, this doesn't just apply to Muslim taxi drivers. It applies to everyone.
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