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Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

Good. Religious exemptions are pragmatic canaries for state overreach. People are not livestock, even if states and employers like to treat them that way. The idea of a religious exemption isn't just some pastafarian variation, it represents a very real line between the individual and group and whether one is a citizen or mere property.

This is the marking issue with biometrics. Are you a being with agency, or are you property represented by your mark? The point of privacy laws are that your consent is required, and taking things from you under duress or coercion is not consent.

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Religious exemptions shouldn't be a thing though. I should not get more protections or rights in any way than another citizen because I happen to have or claim different beliefs than them.

I'm not talking about being discriminated against because of religious beliefs, mind you. I'm talking about the right to do or refuse something (e.g., refuse a fingerprint or, or refuse to serve alcohol) and protection of those choices.

Telling people they can have a religion but they can't practice it is as laughabaly silly as telling them they have freedom of speech so long as they don't say undesirable things. The entire point of a religion is implementation and execution of beliefs as a practice, without that it's just belief or philosophy which I don't believe is protected specifically as you noted.

I think people who ride your train of thought just don't like religion and disagree with it being a fundamental right. To which I would vehementely disagree because most of the other important rights modern societies enjoy became a thing in a very religious time and religious reasoning was used (of course I have many more reasons as well). I think it boils down to what may seem like a false dichotomy but is very true -- you either take the route of regulating people's ability to live according to their belief or you don't.

Don't be surprised when this is used against you either. If you live in America or even some european countries (see poland and hungary) your irreligious practices become also regulated. If the state can regulate belief then it can for example force kids to pray at school or punish kids who pray at school. It took millenia of wars and conflict to finally decide, let's not tell other people how to believe and how to practice said belief. Let's not forget the past and even the present?

The OP point is still clear. If the law says "You must do x unless you have a religious exemption" then why should anyone at all be expected to do x if clearly it isn't important enough to enforce on all people.

If your religion includes killing people, it is still illegal regardless of your religion. So it seems reasonable that any law which can be overridden by a religious exemption should be dropped for all people.

There are established laws that take all it that into account. But new law should be crafted with people's legitimate beliefs in mind. You mention murder but how about something more controversial like a Christian baker being forced to make cakes for gay weddings? How is that not analogous to compelled speech and regulated religion? It is one thing for the government to restrict gay weddings, it is another to enforce people support it despite their beliefs.

Of course, in the eyes of western law, religion does not supersede the rule of law. But at the same time, legislation or judicial enforcement done in ignorance of the people's religions (or lack thereof) is in effect regulating their faith. Just citizens can't claim ignorance when they disobey the law, the gov shouldn't claim ignorance of people's beliefs either.

The only time it makes sense to infringe on religious freedom is when preventing infringement of others' liberty. Point being, murder violated someone's liberty while a baker refusing business violated a right (not liberty since other bakers are willing to serve the couple). I would draw the line by saying concerting to restrict others rights would violate liberties.

>something more controversial like a Christian baker being forced to make cakes for gay weddings?

I don't think this changes anything really. If religious people can use their religion as a valid reason for discrimination, why shouldn't everyone be able to discriminate?

To me, I think everyone should have exactly the same legal rights. Either everyone has to bake the cake or no one does.

The problem is the definition of "discrimination". Everyone _is_ able to discriminate all the time. I'm free to discriminate between cookie flavors I buy, or discriminate between genders of people I date. What the law forbids is not _serving_ people because of the color of their skin or their sexual preferences.

And that is also not the case of Jack Phillips. He didn't refuse to serve gay people, and IIRC the accusers on the case were regular clients.

He refused to _design_ a custom cake for a gay wedding, which is akin to a Jewish t-shirt designer refusing to design a logo involving a Swastika, or a black transgender baker refusing to bake a cake that says "white lives matter" or "sex is immutable".

This seems much more related to compelled speech than sexual discrimination.

>which is akin to a Jewish t-shirt designer refusing to design a logo involving a Swastika, or a black transgender baker refusing to bake a cake that says "white lives matter" or "sex is immutable" These are really not equivalent at all. Not even remotely.

As an atheist that's one thing I like about religion: preserving religious freedoms helps preserve the freedom of all people.

That said it's not a pure good. Religions can push for oppressive laws that match their beliefs.

and let's not forget that not having a religion is a religious freedom.

As an atheist I would expect you to understand "good" in your opinion might be "bad" in others'. For example, I think some forms of oppression are good. Like by all means opress jihadism,death cults and hardline communism.

Also, secular laws are seen as opressive to religious people.being forced to make a secular sign feels as opressive as being forced to pray at school. Both are a majority population implementing shared belief

I think it’s pretty clear by now that anything that can be excused with a religious exemption probably isn’t critical enough to be a legal requirement for the rest of the population.

Such as income taxes. I’m not against religious organizations not paying income tax but I do think they should pay property tax beyond the acreage required for the church/temple/mosque building, a garage and a parking lot. Allowances could be made if they run a pantry or a school for additional tax free land but no more of this having a church own dozens to hundreds of acres and buildings that they have little to no incentive to use for anything once purchased. Since they don’t pay property or income taxes, inflation does not hit them as hard but since they are competing for the same properties in the market they have an unfair advantage.

> Telling people they can have a religion but they can't practice it is as laughabaly silly as telling them they have freedom of speech so long as they don't say undesirable things.

Freedom of Speech != Freedom of Consequence.

Don't care for the rest of the comment because I've come to believe those that can't wrap their heads around the difference between civil and criminal law are not worth talking to about either.

Some might say there's irony in the religious component being mentioned, but I say it is natural. Not many incentives to think critically or against the grain in religion, not surprising it is rare amongst its proponents then.

> Freedom of Speech != Freedom of Consequence

This is becoming rather a tedious thought-terminating cliché in some circles. They rarely specify who should determine the consequences and which consequences are acceptable, which is usually exactly what's being discussed.

As in this case, where the discussion is whether losing one's job is an acceptable consequence when your beliefs lead you to action, inaction, or speech someone in power doesn't like.

Indeed, this was a very common argument by the regime apologists in South American military dictatorships.

>Freedom of Speech != Freedom of Consequence

Ah yes, Godwin's law for the 2020's. So we can fire people for spouting commie propaganda (ie promoting unions) now?

Why not send them to Gulags. We just need them to know beforehand that some kind of speech have this unfortunate consequence.

I agree about consequence. Both for speech and religion however, you are protected from and you are free from consequence by the government!

I didn't tell people they can have a religion but they can't practice it. And I never said freedom of religious belief was not a fundamental right. And I don't dislike religion. And what do you know of my "irreligious practices"?

Your whole post is just a big, oafish strawman. I might be insulted if it weren't so bad that it's actually making me laugh.

> most of the other important rights modern societies enjoy became a thing in a very religious time and religious reasoning was used

Which times? And what religious reasoning?

Personally, it makes me think of "Les Lumières", and I fail to see any religious reasoning in Voltaire or Rousseau.

So, being pretty sure we aren’t thinking of the same times and people, I’m curious.

I agree with you on principal but the courts have kind of interpreted the free exercise clause of the first amendment broadly by 2021 standards and there's not really any going back.

I'm not sure it's that bad. It's still the law in the United States that you cannot claim a religious exemption to a (state) law of general applicability. If the law applies to everyone regardless of religion and was not intended to impact a particular religious practice, then you cannot challenge it you because you claim that it affects your right to exercise your religion. See City of Boerne v. Flores, which affirmed Employment Division v. Smith despite Congress's attempt to legislate it away.

Would a state law banning infant male circumcision as genital mutilation without consent stand?

How about a state law against branding or tattooing infants or any other irreversible body modification?

Clearly these are both rhetorical questions with obvious answers. Whether or not those obvious answers are morally correct is another matter.

I'm not sure what point you are making here. Presumably your obvious answer is "yes"? For example, there are indeed some states that outlaw tattooing minors (although many states do permit it with parental consent).

I think he is pointing out that you could never ban circumcisions, but that it's scaring children for life, which is otherwise banned (tattoos). (and morally objectionable)

I'm not sure there isn't a path to banning circumcisions. After all the first amendment really only applies to the exercise of religious beliefs that affect your own personal autonomy. You can't claim a first amendment right to murder your enemies highlander style.

Ergo, while traditional, the fact that you are requesting the modification of another human (not yourself), I could see this not surviving a challenge down the line.

After all, female genital mutilation (which is obviously far worse) represents a similar request for modification of a living human - not yourself - for religious purposes, and it is outright banned in the overwhelming majority of the United States. While a Federal ban was struck down, it was not struck down on First Amendment grounds but rather due to same being outside the scope of enumerated powers of the federal government and not covered by the commerce clause. [1]

This leaves the state laws in force in all but 9 states.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation_in_t...

Agreed. I think it's very likely that a ban would be upheld against a Free Exercise challenge (even though at least one lower court did strike such a proposal down on this ground).

Some people think it would not survive a Due Process challenge, though, because there isn't a strong enough basis to overcome a parent's fundamental right to make decisions about their child. I could see that being a close question.

I agree, and I think the prevailing climate would have to change first. However I don't see anything that would make such a law fundamentally and obviously unconstitutional.

The case I could make is that it may prevent the child's right to future free exercise of a religion in which the, uh, package should be, err, OEM.

btw, IMO, I don't think parents should be in a position to make any irrevocable physical modifications to their children for religious or aesthetic purposes.

Once you turn 18, by all means, feel free to take a little off the top.

Sure there is. That's what amendments are for.

And in today’s political climate in the US, the chance of getting an amendment passed by 2/3 of both houses of Congress AND 38/50 states is basically nil.

That is not exactly true. Legislation like the Patriot Act or anti-child trafficking measures get bilateral support.

Replace religious exemption with phrase deep conviction; relation to religion is only in use in policy as mass religion played a role to counter government, requiring at least some compromise for government to gain the most popular religions/organizations as allies, to align with.

That is the Dutch standard, “deep conviction”, but I see no merit in that either.

One should not be given special privileges because one's convictions be “deep” which is, if anything, symptomatic of not basing them on prudence but on hysteria and emotion.

It's also irrelevant for the company itself; if a company can reasonably accommodate a man whose convictions are deep, it can do so the same with anyone else for the same reason.

I wholeheartedly agree. Where is the line in deep conviction?

can I steal if I had a deeply held religious conviction that it is appropriate?

The Roma believe themselves descended from the thief who stole Jesus' nail. Therefore, not only do they permit themselves to steal, but their stealing has widely been tolerated by authorities (even if not by the populations that they steal from).

That's been changing since the early twentieth century, but for decades the Roma were known as thieves. Unfortunately the stigma still lives until today.

EDIT: To the downvoters: Your social justice crusade is ridiculous. I'm not passing judgement on this group, I'm stating the facts. You'll notice that I called them Roma, like they call themselves today, and not the more common name associated with them in English which they decided themselves to avoid.

Hm, there is even no mention of the nail myth on the Roma Wikipedia page. But there is a separate page, not linked from the main Roma page, that explains it and even mentions that Roma are permitted to steal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_crucifixion_legend

  >  but for decades the Roma were known as

Centuries, not decades.

Religious exemptions are not limited to "official religions". Deep moral and philosophical exemptions can and have been made.

Sure, but if an exception is made for anyone based on their beliefs, it should be available to everyone universally regardless of their beliefs. Otherwise, people de facto have a different set of rights based on their beliefs.

These sorts of exceptions have historically been made in deference to pragmatism, an example being not drafting bona fide pacifists into the military due to the pointlessness thereof. But deferring to pragmatism when dealing with the topic of human rights is offensive.

> Sure, but if an exception is made for anyone based on their beliefs, it should be available to everyone universally regardless of their beliefs.

In the US it is, the government doesn't act as a priest determining who is or isn't part of the Faith. In Canada it is similar, the only requirement is one of sincerity and good faith.

> Otherwise, people de facto have a different set of rights based on their beliefs.

It only becomes a question or rights when a a restriction is applied in the first place. Religious exemptions always come up when some kind of government policy is mandated (state education, vaccines, taxes, etc.). The "additional" rights only appear as a consequence of personal agency in the first place. Which is why it was called "the canary in the coal mine of rights".

> But deferring to pragmatism when dealing with the topic of human rights is offensive.

Hugh? It seems to me that pragmatism has a well deserved place in every aspects of political life.

in canada i think the phrase is "conscience", but that doesn't mean objections of conscience are treated equally

> I'm talking about the right to do or refuse something (e.g., refuse a fingerprint or, or refuse to serve alcohol) and protection of those choices.

I hope you're not fond of "the weekend" considering it used to take a religious exemption to get a day off work at all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat

"Oop, gotta go — it's Buchwuch!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg58j-MoFic

That's not an argument.

Anything I don't like is an invalid argument

"The present-day concept of the relatively longer 'week-end' first arose in the industrial north of Britain in the early 19th century and was originally a voluntary arrangement between factory owners and workers allowing Saturday afternoon off from 2 pm on the basis that staff would be available for work sober and refreshed on Monday morning."

Your post did not even attempt to address anything I wrote. It was not an argument. Hoping I'm not fond of weekends is not an argument.

It’s a challenge — poster is asking if you also oppose weekends, since that would be presumably required to make your argument consistent with other things unmentioned.

A vague rhetorical question is not an argument even if the person who wrote it may have had some logic or data behind what they said that could be formed into a proper argument. It's just a lazy, way overused tool that is more often than not employed when no such sound argument exists. They can't type out of logical coherent opposition, so they throw out some vague snide kind of question that's supposed to look like a gotcha but really doesn't mean anything when you look at it. It's lazy and underhanded because it puts some of the burden back on the other person to refute it, at least on internet forums like this. The irony of the poster getting upset when I gave an equal-effort response!

And if you think I would need to "oppose weekends" (whatever that means) to be consistent, then you are wrong about that too. What exactly is it you think I am trying to argue, and how would failing to "oppose weekends" make my argument inconsistent?

At the risk of putting forth someone else’s argument, I feel like it’s pretty easy to guess what they were saying. Because you were stating that no one should receive special benefits because of their religion, one must question how weekends could come about in such a system, considering they likely started as a religious observance. Obviously the system that fostered their development allowed such benefits to be granted, but if they followed your model, they would not, and we might be working 7 day work weeks today as a result. Is that not bad?

> At the risk of putting forth someone else’s argument, I feel like it’s pretty easy to guess what they were saying.

So now you see how it wasn't an argument? You have to guess at what their actual argument! So they expect me to guess and construct an argument for them, and then refute it? Rubbish.

> Because you were stating that no one should receive special benefits because of their religion, one must question how weekends could come about in such a system,

Why must one question that? My argument was not "religion is responsible for nothing that I personally like or agree with". So this is just a bad strawman.

> considering they likely started as a religious observance.

If we were to change topic completely and argue about the origin of 5 day working week and other workplace health and safety reforms, I really don't know enough of the history of it. I have no problems acknowledging and being thankful for good things that religion has brought (if religion was responsible for the weekend, great that people had the sense to take my position on the matter and not restrict the weekend to religious people). However I would be slightly curious why it happened to come about right around the time of rising power of the labor movement in the west, and not any other time in the several millennia of these religions before then. Maybe just a coincidence. But either way I don't really care, I like weekends and I don't want them restricted to people with particular beliefs, so that's +1 for my argument.

Generally speaking, when good things have to be imported from the past, that’s a sign the present is broken. The old things are still seen as good, so why couldn’t they be created today?

Why should we not allow new advancements? If a religion has a good idea, people in that religion should be allowed to experiment with it. Maybe it will turn into something that can benefit society at large.

These are all wild pot shots that really don't form coherent arguments against my position. And you still have not had the decency to acknowledge or accept anything I wrote, or answer my question.

I mean, you're actually trying to equate giving everyone equal rights and protections under the law with not allowing new advancements. Sorry this is just stupid bad-faith arguing tactics.

I'd be happy to come back and respond to something substantial but obviously I'm not going to keep going down this path.

> And you still have not had the decency to acknowledge or accept anything I wrote, or answer my question.

Sorry, there was just a lot to respond to and I picked what seemed like the most productive parts to reply to.

> So now you see how it wasn't an argument? You have to guess at what their actual argument!

Regardless, a rhetorical question isn't useless. Most of the famous paradoxes are rhetorical questions that sparked a lot of debate within a community. Simply because it is not an argument does not mean it's lazy or not to be responded to.

> Why must one question that?

I find this an odd question to hear on a forum full of skeptics... IMO, we should question everything. It's just the best way to engage with a world full of misleading appearances.

> My argument was not "religion is responsible for nothing that I personally like or agree with".

But if you derive benefit from something created by religion, it is somewhat hypocritical to want to stamp out the ability of religions to create benefits for people.

Strawman. I don't want to stamp out the ability of religions to create benefits for people.

At this point we're both wasting each other's time here so that's it from me responding to these dishonest comments.

This article is about a religion creating benefits for a person, but you don't want that to happen. How is that a dishonest comment?

I am also not following whatever point you are trying to make or how it relates to the person you are responding to. It has nothing to do with liking or disliking your stance, but simply with your stance or idea not being presented clearly.

  > That's not an argument.

No, it's a conversation. And I hope you're not fond of "thou shall not murder" either.

That's not an argument or a conversation.

All right, then I'll rephrase as you seem inclined towards the former and not the latter.

On what axiom do you base the premise that citizens should not murder fellow citizens in your society?

What exactly do you think it would prove if I said the ten commandments is the basis? My point is that murder should be illegal regardless of the religion of the perpetrator or the victim, not that no laws are to be influenced by or borrowed from religion!

You saying there shouldn’t be religious exceptions is a religious statement. “Should” or “should not” implies that there is an objective best way or morally just way that goes above and beyond the scientific method, any such path of reasoning unless a part of a social contract or agreed upon definitions of such, it is religious in nature and thus unable to be proven beyond the echo chamber of people who already believe it.

This begs the question around "more," as though rights were a scalar measure of something fungible granted by a state, like allocating food between children. You probably wouldn't argue against the principle of rights of a minority to protections of their interest, and in the case of this exemption, the individual is the ultimate minority.

Many (most) governments throughout history didn’t respect religious diversity and unless Ik mistaken such intolerance tended to lead to worse outcomes. You’re fundamentally making an argument against institutional pluralism.

Disagree.

There’s a big difference between an Orthodox Jew being required to work on Saturday, and someone who just likes college football.

Accommodations that come from deepseated beliefs need to be treated with utmost respect.

Disagree.

There's no reason the state should say one person's personal choice to follow a religion allows them to forever be exempt from Saturday work, but someone who chooses to follow football has no right or guarantee to ever enjoy a Saturday. They deserve equal protections.

There are many people out there far more passionate about their hobbies than many people who use their religion to excuse them from various expectations. They shouldn't be denied enjoyment.

>There's no reason the state should say one person's personal choice to follow a religion

Religious people don’t see practicing their faith as a choice though, they see it as an obligation. Watching college ball is as tedious as religion but never an obligation

Football fanatics don't see missing a game as a choice either.

There's a massive difference between I like football a lot and I am accountable to God to keep the 4th Commandment.

Ezekiel 22:8,31 ESV

"You have despised my holy things and profaned my Sabbaths... [31] Therefore I have poured out my indignation upon them. I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath. I have returned their way upon their heads, declares the Lord GOD."

Ultimately freedom of religion prevents the situation in which a person is forced to come to the conclusion that a lower authority (government) is attempting to usurp the highest authority (God). At that point, any religious person has three bad alternatives:

1. Disobey God.

2. Suffer persecution from the government.

3. Rebel against the government.

Not every religion has a violent god who threatens death and eternal suffering for operating a mouse and keyboard on a Saturday, yet people of other religions are all granted equal exemptions as those who do choose to believe they'll be struck down.

> There’s a big difference between an Orthodox Jew being required to work on Saturday, and someone who just likes college football.

You can't just leave me hanging there! What's the big difference?

What if that Saturday watching football is the person's passion and the only time of the week they feel happy? Who is a 3rd-party to step in and be the decider of what other peoples' wants and needs and feelings and beliefs are?

Surely the default, simplest, easiest, and most just position is to treat everyone the same.

> Accommodations that come from deepseated beliefs need to be treated with utmost respect.

I don't think they need to at all. Plenty of flat earthers, anti vaxxers, climate denialists, conspiracy theorists have extremely deep seated beliefs to the point of religious fervor. There are also religions or religious people whose beliefs are abhorrent or wrong to others. Why would they or any other belief religious or otherwise entitle them to respect or rights or allowances that nobody else has?

Here's how you just completely skirt all that and make it fair and equal for all: give everyone equal rights and protections.

  > > Accommodations that come from deepseated beliefs need to be treated with utmost respect.

  > I don't think they need to at all.

Do you have a deepseated belief that people should not murder? What about people who don't have such a belief?

These flimsy rhetorical questions are not the cunning gotchas you think they are. What about people who have a deepseated belief that they should murder?

Clearly "deepseated belief" is not a good basis to hand out rights to people, and a belief does not have any "need" to be given any particular respect based on how deep seated someone's faith in it might be.

Religious exemption is a proxy for an exemption of conscience. Which is something you should care about, unless you're perfectly tuned with the social zeitgeist.

And it's an excellent proxy since most people's consciences are formed by their religious beliefs (maybe not most HNers, but that's observational bias)

I think the person you're replying to is arguing all exemptions of conscience should be ubiquitous.

That we shouldn't have to rely on religion to fight that proxy battle for us.

For military service the term conscientious objector comes to mind which Wikipedia defines as “ [refusal] on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion” which seems appropriate to me.

"Refusal on the ground of freedom of thought" is enough to convey exactly the same without loss of meaning. No need to mention religion, no need for religion-specific exemptions.

Thinking about it practically… should we need to rely on it? Ideally no. But the reality seems to be, religion is getting us something we otherwise wouldn’t get. So why get rid of the good thing? If anything this is evidence of religion’s value.

> If anything this is evidence of religion’s value.

that's an odd take. a bit like saying "our founders loved X, so they carved out favorable laws for X, which is evidence that X is good."

If religion isn’t necessary to the well functioning of our system, we should expect to see just as many irreligious court challenges to this requirement that succeed. That said, we don’t. Regardless of whether it’s “inherently valuable,” it seems to be valuable here and now, in this system we live in.

Think of a religion more like a union

My point would still stand. Nobody should be given additional rights and protections under the law by virtue of being a member of a union (or political party or corporation or anything else).

Because democracy is not a tyranny of the majority, this will likely not happen, since life has so many shades of gray.

Corrupt and thoroughly outdated?

Even if you don't personally believe in any religion, it's useful for a society to formally acknowledge an authority that's greater than the individuals to whom it gives political power.

> it's useful for a society to formally acknowledge an authority that's greater than the individuals to whom it gives political power.

yes, as you noted...that higher authority is society not god. The concept of god is an attempt to impute one's/a group's morals on a society

But societies that deny God end up with a god anyway, and impute their morals on society anyway. I'd much rather have the higher authority be explicitly contemptuous of the head of state.

The problem is, you can’t poll society every time you need to decide the correct moral that applies. So you have to use your judgment, or in other words, ask yourself (aka be creative, effectively what asking God would accomplish assuming God doesn’t really exist).

So is voting

That just gives political power to people who purport to speak on behalf of this 'authority', some of whose motives or reasoning are highly questionable.

People with highly-questionable motives and reasoning inevitably show up anyway. If they have to concede that God is somebody besides themselves, then their armor has instant cracks.

I think you need to watch more televangelists cause they seem to be doing great :-/

Doesn't seem to really work that way.

Instead, they claim that <whatever they actually want to do next> is what their $deity has revealed must be done.

> The idea of a religious exemption isn't just some pastafarian variation

Anyone’s assumptions or thoughts can qualify as a religion. At least for any consistent and useful definition of religion.

And in the united states it does. A religion is any deeply held belief. That's the only standard.

> A religion is any deeply held belief.

I deeply believe in the existence of gravity. I guess that makes me a Scientitian.

And if a civic action depended on your belief in gravity, which was a belief the government did not share, then this would be relevant.

But where do you draw the line? What if I have a deeply held religious belief that human sacrifice is required by god? Can I then go around killing people? There’s got to be some kind of limit.

You draw the line at taxes.

> Members of certain religious groups (including the Amish and Mennonites) may be exempt from paying Social Security taxes. To become exempt, they must:

> Be a member of a religious sect that makes a reasonable provision of food, shelter and medical care for its dependent members and has done so continuously since December 31, 1950;

https://faq.ssa.gov/en-us/Topic/article/KA-02411

There is endless jurisprudence on this topic. Basically the government draws the line at where your beliefs affect others and there are different levels of urgency the government must show to trample on religious rights depending on the risk to the counterparty.

This. If my beliefs/“religion” say I can’t be fingerprinted, that’s fine. But if my beliefs say I need to sacrifice newborn babies on an altar, that’s not ok, and I will be charged with murder.

> Basically the government draws the line at where your beliefs affect others

Circumcision shows that this is not even the case.

There are plenty of lines around what rights a genuinely held belief entitles you to. What the parent is saying is that there is no line between religious and other deeply-held beliefs.

And they rarely do in countries that award special privileges to “religions”.

It all comes down to whether some court, quite arbitrarily, rules whether one's convictions are a “religion” or not, and if they be, one may derive special privileges from it.

It's actually not great, although I agree with you on several points. to be sure, people are not livestock.

But first, I'm not a member of any organized religion, so even though I might find something acceptable I can't invoke a religious exception since my unique spiritual outlook is unlikely to meet any court's threshold of acceptability.

Second, I honestly think this guy's religious claim is bullshit. There's no Christian stricture on concealing your identity, and given that the fingerprint was sought pursuant to a background check, I can even come up with a religious argument for why he should have complied (Matthew 22:22).

So while I support this guy's desire nt to be fingerprinted as a matter of human dignity, I don't think a religious exemption is the way to do it. Those have instead become a catch-all excuse for overtly religious people to opt out of things they don't like without having to meet the same threshold of legal credibility as others.

> taking things from you under duress or coercion is not consent

This was his job. With his private sector employer. Who paid him money in exchange for services.

Someone being forced to resign because their work requirements are incompatible with their beliefs is part of having a moral code. You're not entitled to be able to work in a specific job.

Refusing to being tracked with an identifier, when you're working in a security sensitive job, is absolutely "an undue hardship" on your employer.

And the idea that alternative accommodations for a background check exist is bullshit. By definition, they all boil down to attesting to your identity + searching for a certain class of records against that identity.

(I'm all for creating equality by leveling the playing field for things outside of individual's control, but at some point, you're harming everyone else's equality by making bad-faith... faith claims)

> This was his job. With his private sector employer. Who paid him money in exchange for services.

Who then changed the agreement from not even mentioning requiring fingerprinting to absolutely requiring it. That's the most egregious bad-faith example in this story.

If a business can arbitrarily declare "You now all need to pass background checks including fingerprinting to keep your jobs", what's to stop them saying "You now need to accept getting paid half of what we'd agreed to when you were employed"?

There was an employment agreement, the employer wished to add conditions to that after the agreement was reached between the two parties. And there apparent "re negotiation" of that agreement was the company saying "OK, you're fired". And the EEOC and the court both decided that was not OK. Which seems like the right outcome to me, regardless of whether the "religious discrimination" makes any sense or not. I'd totally expect the prosecution lawyers to play whatever the strongest argument the law had available to them. I would totally let a lawyer convince me it was appropriate to claim I have a christian belief and that part of that means I do not want to be fingerprinted, if that allowed them to use the most powerful legal argument against an employer who had arbitrarily and capriciously fired me on the spot for resisting being fingerprinted to keep the job I'd had to 16 months without that requirement.

> what's to stop them saying "You now need to accept getting paid half of what we'd agreed to when you were employed"?

In most of the US, for most US jobs, absolutely nothing. The vast majority of US workers are at-will employees. Their boss can call them up at any point and say “We’ve decided that starting next pay period, we’ll be cutting your salary in half. Have a great day!” The employee’s options are to accept that or start job hunting.

Yeah - I've never quite understood that "at will" employment status you have over there.

Here in Australia, we're a fair bit more heavily unionised than you are over there, which helps keep some of the power imbalance in the employers favour in check.

Not that unionisation is perfect though either. When I was growing up it was a regular thing for unions to wield their collective power in aggressively overreaching ways - it was common for transport unions and fuel industry unions to have extended strikes over pay claims right before christmas, tand truck drivers would stop delivering to stores, oil refineries would shut down resulting in fuel rationing, and dock workers would stand down resulting in queues full of container ships full of imported goods on the horizon at the beach in summer.

The point of at will employment is that there's supposed to be a free labor market. In that employers are free to act as they desire (hire and fire) and employees are free to act as they desire (hired and quit).

The reaction to a bad job is... you quit and find another one.

Granted, there are substantial power balances between the parties, which is why even the US adds some federal protections (can't fire or decide not to hire for certain protected reasons, wage and work hour limitations) and states can add more (most relevant to HN, California's ignoring non-compete agreements).

But this particular example just smacks of entitlement, when the government worker protection departments should probably be spending more time on chicken processing factories running 18 hour shifts around band saws and paying minimum wage.

>The reaction to a bad job is... you quit and find another one.

Which is also an option in non At-Will Employment states.

Yes, but limitations on the fire and hire employer side make that a different proposition.

The harder it becomes to fire people, the harder it becomes to hire them.

> The point of privacy laws are that your consent is required, and taking things from you under duress or coercion is not consent.

This seems like your taking it a bit to the extreme. We both agree that for me to hire you to do a job I’m allowed to know who you are right? And that to identify the one person out of the world population I am allowed to keep a record with enough details that I can identify if a person is in fact you, right? Now if my bookeping of people changes from “roughly visually resembles the same person” which we both agree is a rubbish measure if any kind of security is involved to “has known fingerprint” and you refuse to comply, why then should I not be allowed to fire the person who I can no-longer identify out of the world population?

You have complete freedom to not want people to see your face or know your fingerprint, but you just cannot take away the freedom of a potential employer to be able to identify who you are by the means they decide.

In most states in the United States, the notion of consent in the employment context is very different than, say, European privacy law. In European law, consent from an employee is almost impossible to obtain for any significant decision because of the inherent power imbalance in an employment relationship.

However, in the United States, where most employees are employed "at will," deciding to remain an employee is often considered to be consent. The law considers that you have choice: you choose to work there and consent, or you chose to not work there.

In this story, it appears that there is a separate law considering religious freedom and not privacy that requires employers to make some accommodations when not too burdensome.

This, alone, is not the full picture. It's trivially easy to get into utter absurdity. What if an employer decides they can only identify people by surgically grafting special ID cards to their foreheads?

There is - obviously - more at play here than simply the right of the employer to identify employees by any means they wish. There is some level of reasonableness here as well.

This moves the argument into murkier grounds, as now we have to figure out how reasonable fingerprints are in any given situation.

If they decide that, then you don't have an inherent right to work there. You're allowed to quit.

It's similar to how people who are unwilling to dispense reproductive care or contraceptives have many career options available to them - but no inherent right to be pharmacists or doctors.

This seems patently ridiculous. How can there be no limits just because a perspective employee can theoretically refuse?

What if all the companies decided to have these requirements?

There's an inherent power imbalance here that isn't so simple as dismissing any issues simply because there is no literal gun being held to the head at the moment of decision.

And I'll assume even you have limits somewhere. For example, predicating employment for a cushy remote via snail-mail job on a specific person happening to die... Eventually you just get to the most threadbare excuses for soliciting illegal activity.

You don't have a right to work anywhere specific, but you do have a right as an employee that a big list of things cannot be required by your employer.

You're just arguing against the idea of employment laws as a concept. Where do you draw the line? I would have assumed "Employers don't have a right to require physical mutilation" would have been a universal belief, but apparently not.

That a completely different and silly argument. Should an employer be allowed to raise an employees wage? Yes, sure.... but no, if hey are allowed to modify the terms of employment hat must mean they’ve also should have he right to steal employees first borne!!?

You trying to argue against fingerprinting, a identification practice so damn common that’s almost everyone currently has a device in their pocket using it, by saying “but what if they then adopt something completely unacceptable!!?” That’s not an argument against the simple known technology, it’s just an absurd slippery sloop argument where you pretend everything is one giant variation of similar actions an therefore nothing must ever change for fear that this could mean over negative changes could come.

I was trying to use an absurd example to point out that it's not unreasonable to set some limits on what an employer can ask of a (possibly potential) employee.

I was not commenting on what those limits are or should be. I was only pointing out that they exist.

I don't understand how this relates to your own example. You seem to be trying to say that a contract is either completely mutable in an unlimited way or else totally immutable? I don't see how that's true at all. There are many limits on contracts already, and yet they still change frequently as situations change.

Hang on there. Allowing religious exemptions, and only religious exemptions, is a tiny fraction of the way to getting actual non-coerced consent.

That has its benefits given that anyone could otherwise just make up beliefs on the spot to suit their need. Religion requires a bit more institutionalisation and weight.

When it comes to biometrics, why is it bad if I decide on the spot I'm not okay with it, as opposed to having decided as part of an institution?

It shouldn't, but the organized religions have largely held their ground on principle, when others have given up rights for broken promises of safety, or equality, or "for the greater good," but most of all, because they think it'll only apply to others or be used in a limited scope.

And that's never the case.

How is that distinction constitutional? Privately held beliefs are illegitimate unless they are held with a registered institution?

There often (not always) is no functional way to tell the difference between a belief made up on the spot and a “religious” belief.

Could someone just start a religion that disallows taxation and stop paying taxes?

I very much doubt that any government would allow that, for obvious reasons.

There are other somewhat similar cases however.

In Finland, conscription may be avoided by being a Jehova's witness, that sole religion, on the basis of that it is a non-violent religion, ignoring that many other religions have similar tenants, and many non-religious people are also deeply pacifist who are still conscript. — That sole religion, so named, is exempted from conscription.

And one only need prove membership, not prove that one actually holds those non-violent beliefs to be exempt.

It's unfortunate that one needs to make up a god to be exempt from the some of the most awful governmental abuses like conscription, but I'd rather have such an exemption than not have it at all.

There are pop-up churches giving religious exceptions to the covid vaccine. People are clearly using using religious exemptions as a loophole for "but I don't wanna."

By "don't wanna," do you mean decline to consent?

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