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Comment by Inconel | Hacker News Reader

I'm not the poster you're responding to, and I like to think I have a reasonably good understanding of why modern societies don't discriminate on characteristics which a person can't change, and while I personally find it unethical to discriminate against someone based on their religious views, I have a hard time discerning why religion should get that protection while "ideology" shouldn't? As a non religious person I find religion both fairly ideological and something that a person can readily change, at least in a free society.

I've looked through your profile and you always seem to provide good explanations so I'd love to hear your thoughts. I hope you can believe me that this is a question asked in good faith.

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For the sake of productive discussion, let's narrow 'modern societies' to the United States since 1964 (when Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was passed). In 1965, the Supreme court held (in United States v. Seeger) that:

'The test of religious belief [...] is whether it is a sincere and meaningful belief occupying in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by the God of those admittedly qualified for the exemption.'

So a non-religious person like yourself can have their 'ideology' legally protected from discrimination, as long as it passes the same 'sincere and meaningful' test that other protected religious beliefs do.

So the key to answering your good-faith question is in the definition/scope of 'religious' belief. A 'religious' belief (in this narrow context of US Title VII law) must meet a higher standard than a more general 'ideological' belief in that it must be both sincere and meaningful, and I would argue that a sincere belief meeting this higher standard is, by definition, not 'something that a person can readily change'.

This is a pretty great explanation for me, your last point is something I hadn't considered before and definitely gives me a lot to think about. I wish I was able to more meaningfully engage with you and the other posters here but I feel I'm always so far out of my element.

But why can't I make religious jokes at my workplace, if my ideology requires fighting religion, and the most acceptable place for it is lunches at work?

Religious accommodations are not required by law if the employer can demonstrate that granting them would impose an 'undue hardship' on the conduct of the employer's business, which in this case would be liability for claims of religious harassment.

Stumbling by prayer rooms in tech companies is an insult on my world view, but I doubt courts would let me call it harassment.

Not to mention me having to pay for them indirectly.

Let us apply the standard to mentioned example: Nazism.

> it must be both sincere

Yes.

> and meaningful

Most certainly yes, considering the millions that fought for and against it.

> a place parallel to that filled by the God

Ultimate goal of purification.

Charismatic and visionary leader.

Integrated New Testament and writings by Martin Luther as holy texts. John 8:44, Cleansing of the Temple, Luther's On Jews and Their Lies

Aryan/Nordic chosen race. (Compare: Jewish chosen race.)

"Sought to convince all parts of the new German society to subordinate their personal interests to the 'common good'" (Compare golden rule, and religious communes.)

> not 'something that a person can readily change'

Often yes. (Though I do take issue with this one, given that conversion is the most talked about religious experience there is.)

The courts don't disagree in general principle. In Peterson v. Wilmur Communications [1], the courts held that "a follower of the World Church of the Creator, an organization that preaches a system of beliefs called Creativity, the central tenet of which is white supremacy" (more or less a 'religion for Nazism') was protected from religious discrimination because the "Creativity functions as religion in his life; thus, Creativity is for him a religion regardless of whether it espouses goodness or ill."

[1] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/...

What 'projektir said - while religion is definitely changeable in theory in ways that race, gender, age, disability, etc. aren't, as a cultural phenomenon it's definitely heritable, and in particular, the parts that tend to stick are often the parts that aren't associated with ideology. If your social structure has been based around your church (or equivalent) since childhood, it's much easier to change your opinions on what things are moral or what directions a just government should take than to stop showing up. If your family goes to a certain worship service in the winter, you shouldn't face discrimination for going to that service too, and you shouldn't need to defend yourself by saying "I don't actually believe any of it" in public, for everyone including your family to hear.

(It's true that one way to solve this problem would be to highly regulate (or ban, but that's not quite necessary) religion and make sure that people's day-to-day interactions outside of worship are free from religion, with the aim of making it easier to change religions in practice. This would probably start with making it illegal for parents to take their children along with them to religious services or education. There are certain advantages there - but it would be such a huge change from existing free societies and such a huge infringement on how we currently treat religious liberty, that it's hard to say that this is how a free society should work.)

This is also why free societies with nondiscrimination-on-religion norms also tend to give partial but only partial deference to religious beliefs that conflict with secular laws. If it is important to you to have one day of the week off plus a few holy days, great, we can certainly protect your right to do that. If it is important to you that you not have to engage in war, that's fine but we'll still draft you into non-combat service. If it's important to you that you not execute certain laws as a government official or fill certain prescriptions as a pharmacist, that's also fine but you're going to need to find some career other than being an official a pharmacist.

I appreciate both you and projektir taking the time to respond to me, everything you've said makes a lot of sense but I'm still left with some additional questions. It's way past my bedtime and I don't think I can articulate my questions very well at this time and I'll probably come off sounding like I'm trolling, which I certainly don't want to do since you took the time to type out such a well reasoned response. Do you perhaps have any suggestions for further reading on this topic that I could do on my own time? Keep in mind I'm not particularly smart or well read, but I'm definitely interested in exploring this topic in more depth.

Religions often run in families and have very strong sticking power, in a way that's different from a college student turning to nihilism. For many people, their religion is not very changeable because it's a major part of their identity and without it they would not be properly themselves and don't know what to do and it would cause them great alarm.

Religions are often very sticky by location or by cultural subset, so if you decide to discriminate against religions, often you're not really discriminating against someone's free thought, but just where they happened to be born and what kind of culture they grew up with.

> at least in a free society

Lots of religious people do not come from societies one would reasonably call "free".

The things you've said certainly make sense but I feel like much of that also applies to political ideology. It certainly seems to me like much of that ideology is at least partly subject to location and culture. In particular I feel that a large part of our individual ideologies are based on our past experiences and the way those experiences shape our perspective of the world at large.

Edit: If we're going to use the logic that religious views should be protected due to their inherent "stickiness" relating to family and culture, and other aspects out of one's immediate control, I'm not convinced that other ideological views are any less "sticky" and thus not equally worthy of protection.

The specific question that prompted this was, why don't we protect Nazism the way we protect religion, and to that I'd say that I have heard of exceedingly few Nazis who have inherited it from their parents and feel the need to keep up external trappings of Nazism for the sake of family or social status. (The only example I can really think of is the Gaede twins, who renounced their mother's ideology by the time they were adults, and if you refined the question to not discriminating against minor children professing Nazi beliefs at their mother's direction, I am totally fine with figuring out a way to write a non-discrimination law about that.)

I don't really find that ideology is anywhere near as sticky, as I've had a much easier time discussing nuances with ideologues compared to religious people, and, more importantly, ideology is just nowhere near as stand out.

You can be a communist without anyone knowing. I have a set of some very odd beliefs, nobody really knows unless they ask.

You can't quite do that with religion when you have days you can't eat meat or you can't work because you have to go to a special building or what not. Or often religion instructs you to talk about it. Ideology can stay in your head; religions (properly followed) tend to be disruptive to one's entire lifestyle, so if a society doesn't protect it, it can as well declare the religion invalid for what that's going to do to it.

Which might be what the society wants to do, but you should understand what it is that you're doing.

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