This Week in God

January 6, 2007

Kicking off the first “This Week in God” of 2007, it seems appropriate to consider Americans’ expectations for the year with regards to matters of faith. As it turns out, a stunningly large amount of people expect 2007 to be remarkably noteworthy.

[A]n Associated Press-AOL News poll that asked Americans to gaze into their crystal balls and contemplate what 2007 holds for the country. […]

Among other predictions for the U.S. in 2007: One in four, 25 percent, anticipates the second coming of Jesus Christ.

This wasn’t one of those dubious online polls; this was an actual telephone survey with a legitimate random sample of Americans.

Now, I can appreciate a large number of people hoping for the second coming; for Christians, it’s a fairly big deal. But one in four Americans actually expects JC to come back in ’07? Is it me or does that seem really, really high?

Next up is an update on an item from a few months ago, about Muslim cab drives in Minneapolis who refuse service on religious grounds to passengers carrying alcohol or with service dogs. As of this week, officials at Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport are proposing stiffer penalties, including suspension of an airport taxi license

Officials on Jan. 3 asked the Metropolitan Airport Commission for permission to hold public hearings on a proposal that would suspend the airport licenses of cab drivers who refuse service for reasons other than safety concerns. The penalties would also apply to drivers who refuse a fare because a trip is too short.

Drivers would have their airport licenses suspended 30 days for the first offense and revoked for two years after the second offense, according to the proposal.

“Our expectation is that if you’re going to be driving a taxi at the airport, you need to provide service to anybody who wants it,” commission spokesman Patrick Hogan said.

The Minnesota chapter of the Muslim American Society told airport officials last year that “Islamic jurisprudence” prohibits taxi drivers from carrying passengers with alcohol, “because it involves cooperating in sin according to Islam.” Since then, about 100 people a month are denied cab service because of a driver’s religious objections.

The new rules, with the stiffer penalties, will be effective in May — giving drivers time to find a new job if they refuse to work under these conditions.

And finally this week, because of inexplicable interest from some religious conservatives in which books lawmakers use for their ceremonial swearing-in photo-ops, reader SKNM reminded me that Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) wasn’t the only lawmaker to choose an untraditional path this week.

While a new, Muslim member of Congress sparked a controversy for taking his oath of office with a Quran instead of a Bible on Thursday, another new member who is Buddhist was sworn in with no book at all.

Rep. Mazie Hirono, a Hawaii Democrat who was raised in the Buddhist tradition but doesn’t actively practice the religion, said, “I don’t have a book. … But I certainly believe in the precepts of Buddhism and that of tolerance of other religions and integrity and honesty.” […]

Of the controversy, Hirono said, “It’s about time that we have people of other backgrounds and faiths in Congress. I think Keith Ellison really handled things well. I think that whole discussion, if you want to call it that, is good for our country.

“What happened to separation of church and state and religious tolerance? I believe in those things.”

And if more people agreed with you, Congresswoman Hirono, Congress would be a stronger institution.

January 6, 2007 at 10:24 am

As regards those Somali cab drivers in Minneapolis, they need a little education in the concept of “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” which they and their Taliban-loving co-religionists enforce on non-Muslims who are unfortunate enough to have to travel to thse countries. If they don’t like it, then cancel their visas and send them back to Somalia. I bet if you give them that choice, they’ll get “educated” real fast.

It’s things like this that give ammunition to those who think of Islam as a primitive religion.

Sorry, in America, when you perform a public service, you do so for all of the public or you enter another line of work. Having my life choices enforced by some 7th century peasant who is here by our charity is not what I accept.

I agree, Tom. It’s akin to pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions because certain drugs offend their religious beliefs. Don’t these people get it? If you don’t want to be exposed to people who might be different then don’t enter a line of work that exposes you to people who might be different!

Arbitrary is as arbitrary does.

But one in four Americans actually expects JC to come back in ‘07? Is it me or does that seem really, really high?

I would guess that’s one of those things people say because they feel they’re supposed to, like “I’m open to voting for the black candidate”, even if in their heart of hearts they know it’s not true.

Here are two cases of refusal service in MN analogous to the cabbie case.

May 2005, Glencoe MN: A woman tried to fill a birth control prescription at a drugstore in Glencoe. The pharmacist refused to help her, claiming she would not fill the prescription for moral reasons. The pharmacist told the woman to come back in a few days when a different pharmacist was working. The woman eventually had to go elsewhere to fill the prescription.

Winter 2005, Richfield, MN: A customer called a Snyders pharmacy in Richfield to check the status of her birth control prescription, she had been a customer there for about two years. The pharmacist on duty told her that he opposed birth control and refused to help her. The pharmacist also refused to transfer the prescription. The woman called back and someone else apologized for the incident and told her that the pharmacist she had spoken with was still in training.

Now of course one might think that the Minnesota legislature would want to take action as a result of this and you’d be right.

Two states – South Dakota and Arkansas – already have laws protecting pharmacists who refuse to fill birth-control prescriptions on moral or religious grounds. Ten other states, including Wisconsin, are considering such legislation – Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

If you are Muslim and have a moral objection to providing a service you’re SOL. If you’re a Christian and you have a moral objection to providing a service help is on the way. Welcome to America the home of religious freedom.

To be clear, I believe that it wrong in either case to refuse to provide service on moral grounds.

I think the Muslims should be able to deny service to customers on those grounds. I think the case of the Muslim cab driver is a little bit different than the fundamentalist pharmacist because running a cab is a little bit more like running your own business. You’re picking someone up to sit in a little room with you (essentially, that’s what the passenger compartment of a car is). If cab drivers don’t have to be subject to smoking in the cab then why should they be subject to something that offends them religiously.

I think it’s a close case. Where there are emergency circumstances, for example where a cab driver should know that the person seeking a cab may be put in danger if the cab driver doesn’t pick them up (say a woman alone in a crime ridden neighborhood at night) the cab driver shouldn’t get any kind of legal exception or excuse from a lawsuit on some kind of grounds, but I don’t know what would be more appropriate- religious discrimination or negligence. It might be the case that you really can’t sue a cabbie or a cab company for not picking you up even when the cabbie sees a mugger walking toward you from 30 feet away and about to mug you, judging from what I’ve learned in tort law more generally. If there’s a really good reason for not imposing liability for cabbies who don’t pick up people who might be in danger I might be persuaded.

I think it’s close and I just don’t think it’s as clear that a cabbie is doing something wrong in these circumstances as it is with the pharmacist. When a cabbie doesn’t want to pick up dangerous people, and the cabbie decides that to avoid dangerous fares he or she is not going to pick up any black people, the cabbie is doing something wrong. But when a cabbie doesn’t want to pick up someone he or she believes is dangerous, and has a lot better reasons to believe they’re dangerous than the color of their skin, it’s different. The moral question here is whether the person who’s being picked up’s interests- maybe even against being mugged- outweigh the cabbie’s religious interests. When those are the interests to be weighed, the cabbie doesn’t owe as much a duty as if he or she was a public servant (and that’s why we have things like separation of church and state). There are probably circumstances where we’d all say a business owner doesn’t have to do something that offends his religious sensibilities. A Kosher business man doesn’t have to sell non-Kosher food products just because there are people who would want them. I just think this is more like one of those cases than it seems.

A similar problem is hospitals operated by the Catholic church which refuse to perform abortions and even refuse to give rape victims the day after pill.

I agree with Tom. Otherwise the next step is that businesses can refuse to sell to minorities of their chosing.

But 1 in 4 believe Jesus is returning in 2007? I guess it isn’t really out of line – it accounts for all but the other 9% still supporting Bush.

Also a cabbie has to buy an expensive license (at least in NY) and I’m not sure whether they have to renew it every year. I don’t think a pharmacist has to pay for a license, or at least if they do it’s not nearly as expensive. A NY cabbie license is like paying for a business.

In my comment above, I’m not saying what the law is. I’m just giving an opinion on what the law might be and what the moral duty might be.

I was was going to point out the pharmacists as well but Tom and Hankster beat me to it. Certain jobs have certain requirements, if you can’t handle that do something else.

It will be interesting to see if those demanding religious protection for pharmacists will stand up for the taxi drivers. I doubt they will though as it’s the “wrong religion”
I believe there was an eleventh commandment “thou shalt not hold thy breath”

What’s wrong with the system? I got the “oops” message quite a few times

my comment at 7-

Moral as in non-legal. The law doesn’t require us to do everything we say you might have a moral obligation to do, of course.

does that seem really, really high? — In a civilized society that would be really, really high. But in a TeeVee dominated one like ours, which gives air time to the lidiotic con men like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and apparently takes its ideas about life from bigots such as James Dobson, it’s not surprising at all. Americans seem to be hopelessly illogical: Constitutional separation of Church and State along with chaplains and official prayers opening legislative sessions, theistic mottoes on our money, and a drug-addled president who repeatedly intones “God bless”. Maybe the reason we’re so superstitious is because we’re so ignorant of history, geography and anthropology.

about Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis — Anyone who refuses to offer public service because of their own religious “faith” (i.e., unprovable, superstitious beliefs) has no business being in public service.

Maybe when a religion like Scientology starts foisting its standards on the rest of society, folks will wake up to the fact that saying you’re religious doesn’t give you the right to discriminate against others from a position of power. If Tom Cuise becomes an OB/Gyn and tells mothers in childbirth they can’t have an epidural and stuffs a sock in their mouths so they can’t scream and “traumatize” the baby, maybe we’ll start to say you can’t impose your religious beliefs on others through your profession.

If you can’t adequately peform your work duties because of religious beliefs, get out of the profession.

Thanks rege. The legislators from the Land o’ Lakes gave those cab drivers all the legal ammunition they need. There is no way to argue that the ability to get a prescription filled is less important than the ability to get a damn cab. Go to another pharmacy? Fine, catch another cab.

I predict this thing winds up in the courts and the pharmacy law will be Exhibit A.

Unless Jesus comes back first…

I think the reason our society is not prepared to face challenges like this is because Christianity does not have such strong taboos, or as many. What if we were living under some kind of war conditions and because many doctors had to be sent overseas we had a shortage of doctors and people had to be assigned to service providers based on geographic location, to make sure everyone was dealt with fairly, and the situation arose where the only gynecologist a woman was allowed to see by the law was her brother? If the brother, a Catholic, objected that even though this was a medical procedure and not a sexual event, the prohibition in his religion against incest was so strong that he did not want to perform the procedure just because of the overtones of it, how would we look at that? I think that is a little closer to the case of the Muslim refusing cab service. With a pharmacist, it’s medical service and it’s probably a lot more likely that you could be left a lot worse off if someone won’t give you medicine based on religious grounds- and you don’t even know whether to expect that- than if you can’t see a doctor for a diagnostic procedure, or can’t get a cabbie, and can probably get a different doctor or a different cabbie.

With the medicine, you might need it right away.

But one in four Americans actually expects JC to come back in ‘07? Is it me or does that seem really, really high?

Seems like THEY’RE really high.

The Math of Crazy F*ckers
If you’re sitting in the doctor’s office and there are three other patients waiting…you’re in the room with a crazy f*cker.

If you’re taking a pee at the football stadium and it’s crowded then you are peeing with at least one crazy f*cker.

If you’re at the shooting range with three other shooters, there’s an armed crazy f*cker near you.

If George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Tony Snow are in a meeting, somewhere else there are 12 non-crazy f*ckers.

The Somali cab drivers do have a right to refuse service to infidels. They just have to pay extra for it through penalties when they get caught. Life is like basketball. You play like you want and deal with the penalties.

I think the time for pharmicists to make moral decisions is before they become pharmicists.

Sorry for Swan diving back in so many times:

If we don’t like Somali cab drivers denying us service on religious grounds, imagine how much we would hate for the Government to do the same thing.

A similar problem is hospitals operated by the Catholic church which refuse to perform abortions and even refuse to give rape victims the day after pill.

As someone who’s been friends with quite a few pro-lifers, I can assure you that refusing to perform abortions (on a hospital level) is not at all similar as far as they’re concerned. They actually think it’s murder, and there’s a world of difference between that and a traveler carrying a bottle of wine. I can’t imagine forcing a Catholic doctor to perform an abortion. (And most of them really do sincerely believe that the pill destroys human life, although there are certainly too many theocons who want to ban birth control solely for prudish reasons.) Remember, there’s a difference between refusing to do perform a service because it violates your religion, and refusing because of someone else’s religion. The latter has always been illegal.

Personally, I think it should be left to the business to decide what policy it adopts with regard to moral/religious issues. Therefore, if a Catholic hospital says it won’t perform abortions, it shouldn’t have to, but if Walgreens says it will distribute the morning-after pill, individual pharmacists working for Walgreens shouldn’t be able to demand an exemption. It isn’t clear to me whether the cab drivers are employed by a company or are self-employed. It is worth pointing out, however, that the article mentions that refusing to take passengers with guide dogs violates the ADA and is already subject to penalties.

I certainly do agree that the attitude of the drivers is the pinnacle of arrogance. But I’d like to believe that the market will take care of the problem. I think it would be amusing to hand out fake bottles of wine to everyone waiting for a cab. That stupid little fatwa won’t last long once all of their business disappears.

As Fats used to say, hello it’s me and I’m in love again.

I especially like that Rep. Mazie Hirono was sworn in with no book. Every hotel room in Hawaii has a “Buddhist bible” so he could have used that, but Buddhism isn’t a religion. It’s a system of meditation or Way (with an unfortunate cosmology tacked on.)

Ellsion seems pretty cool and has acted with class throughout the controversy. I don’t have any problem with a person’s religion unless they try to impose it on others through guns, government or social structures.

An interesting thing about the Somali cabdrivers and the pharmacists is that Judeo-Christian beliefs are limiting our choices every day like that without it being so much up in our faces like these individuals are acting.

Juday’o. Judaaaay’o. Daylight come and me want go home.

Dale wrote:

If we don’t like Somali cab drivers denying us service on religious grounds, imagine how much we would hate for the Government to do the same thing.

That was the point I meant to make by mentioning separation of church and state. But these are Somalian Americans, right? We don’t want the government to require people to do things that offends their religion, but we have to draw a line somewhere- the government couldn’t protect you from anything you want to do or don’t want to because of your religion, and it’s just a question of where to draw the line.

In paragraph 3 of my comment at 5, I’m not arguing from the example of African Americans denied service by cabbies, I’m just explaining how the interests and issues there are different from this question, in case anybody else was going to bring it up. I know how people like to argue from non-analogous situations so I wanted to head that off.

I think 25% is a little low. I told the polster that I was absolutely certain myself.

25% believe that they will meet JC in 2007 because they have faith that our misleader will bring them the Armageddon they believe is necessary before the second coming of JC. Worst of all, I believe, our bubble bound Presidunce, if he were polled, would have been in the 25% too.

Dale’s point at # 16 isn’t a good argument because you could apply it to anything. You could pass any unjust law and say life is like basketball, you can do what’s prohibited just not without consequences.

In Dale’s comment at #17, if Dale’s saying that the government is enforcing the cabbie’s religious beliefs on people if the cabbie legally can not give rides to people with alcohol or with dogs, I think you have to explain why that’s a case of government enforcing religious beliefs and why it’s not just protecting his right not to be discriminated against in his religion (if the law isn’t allowing him to refuse passengers on these bases, is it saying that if you’re a Muslim and you really believe these things you effectively can’t drive a cab- a penalty the law doesn’t impose of other religions). Again it’s a case of where do you draw the line between one thing and another. I certainly can argee that there may be circumstances where what some would call protection against religious discrimination is effectively government endorsement of religion. But I see the issue as whether this case presents such circumstances.

Doesn’t that mean that more people believe in the imminent Second Coming than believe that Bush has a plan for Iraq?

Well, you know, now that I say it, it seems more believable to me, too.

Hmmmn.

I just realized that if Islamic drivers get to reject people for carrying alcohol, we’re on the slippery slope to rejecting to transport people because of their religion. Because surely it’s cooperating in sin to aid people who are not of the true faith?

And surely women who go about without veils are sinful?

I can’t imagine forcing a Catholic doctor to perform an abortion. (And most of them really do sincerely believe that the pill destroys human life
.
So, if a woman is denied healthcare options and dies while giving birth (still a reality today) would that doctor still feel he did the right thing? Or does a woman’ life mean less than a fetus’? And any doctor who thinks the pill destroys human life needs to go back to medical school. Religious belief is not science.
It would be nice if everyone in the public sector would just stay off their moral high horse and do their jobs whether a cabbie, doctor, pharmacist, or grocery store clerk.

Aren’t there religions that view all health care as sinful? Wouldn’t it be funny if they opened a hospital?

Or at least it would point up the stupidity of refusing to offer medical services based on relgious beliefs. There is a case in California (I think) of a fertility clinic refusing to offer services to a lesbian. I’ve heard individual cases of nurses not wanting to treat gay patients. To this I say: What the fuck?

Medical professionals must either offer the full range of services they are trained to offer or find other jobs. Period, no excuses, no exceptions, no, we don’t care what Book you read. However, as rege has pointed out, since Minnesota agrees that religious beliefs allow you to refuse services, they don’t have a leg to stand on where the cab drivers are concerned. They’ll either have to drop the fines, drop the pharmacy exception or lawyer up.

“One in four, 25 percent, anticipates the second coming of Jesus Christ.”

I think what really happened was that people were asked the question by a stranger on the phone and shouted, “Jesus Christ!”

Which was shorthand for, “Jesus Christ, not another f***ing phone survey!!”

Just a simple misunderstanding on the part of the surveyors. Nothing to get excited about. 😉

The cab driver situation really is different from the doctor situation. The services the doctor is providing are a lot more important to put it plainly. Same with the pharmacist. The law should consider allowing a religious exception for cabbies when there is no emergency.

In both cases, the refusal to provide service is based on religious discrimination. That is to say, the religious person is discriminating against the other person because the evidence before their eyes (birth control, a bottle of moonshine and a dog) indicates the person is not of the same faith as the pharmacist and cab-driver. The right to discriminate should be limited to reason, not religion, and that is what public policy should be based on. For instance, safety issues. Any person working in a service job can and should refuse service if he/she feels his/her safety is threatened. That is a right no one would question because it is reasonable. If the cabbie is afraid of dogs, he should refuse to allow one in the car. Fair enough. But if his rationale is religious then it is fundamentally arbitrary (blunt but true) and therefore not worthy of defending, in my opinion. Yes, yes, there is inherent difficulty in exposing or proving a person’s true motivation, no question about that.

The lesson here: Get your birth control from Canada and keep your moonshine and your dog in your suitcase until you get home.

A problem in our society is that we are too unwilling to criticize religious beliefs to the point where we are held hostage with respect.

If the cab driver had a personal belief that eating carrots was morally reprehensible because they screamed as they were cut….would we allow him to ban people from carrying carrots or drinking carrot juice in his car. For some reason, as soon as a belief is widespread enough to be called a religion we refrain from commenting for fear of offending…

Imagine a scientologist refusing to perscrive any medication if given the role of a pharmascist, or imagine someone that refuses to sell cough syrup because it gets in the way with the normal body cycle of sickness…

If a single person holds such a belief, we often label him/her crazy; yet, when a whole mass of people holds them we label it faith/religion and give it defference.

Would a scientologist cab driver be permitted to refuse a ride to a passenger who wants to go to a hospital or a doctor’s office?

If a pharmacy wants to employ an asshole for whom his/her religious belief is more important than the patient (or the patient’s religious beliefs), then the pharmacy should be required to have another pahrmacist on duty, alongside the first. One who serves people according to the market forces, not religious ones. Ditto cab-driving companies. Such a requirement — paying two people for doing the job of one — would solve, nicely, the problem of keeping an employee’s religion *at home*.

If you’re self-employed (taxi or pharmacy *owner*), then you’re free to do what want, just carry a big enough sign to the effect, so that I know where not to waste my time. And you can be sure that, once I find the alternative, I’ll avoid your place of business like a plague, even if it’s only carrot juice I’m carrying or only aspirin I want to buy.

What if the Muslim cabbie refuses to pick up a priest holding a bottle of sacramental wine, who’s on his way to Mass? 🙂

As for JC in 2007, we need some context to evaluate this.

Did 25% of respondents VOLUNTEER this? If so, very very creepy.

Or, did the pollers give them a list of events that “might happen,” and the second coming was one of them?

If the latter, I suspect that some of the respondents were pulling their leg.

The problem with cabbies, doctors and drug pushers discriminating is that often there are no other options. The hospital run by the Catholic church in Eugene, OR is heavily subsidizing by the county (tax breaks). It was the only hospital in the area, most of the doctors worked out of it. What were the options? Opening clinics, another hospital – which happened. But the church hospital continues to receive government support. If you receive government support, you are no longer a religious institution.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who immediately noted the parallel to the pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions. This nonsense has to be stopped. People are entitled to their beliefs, but not to impose them on others. Here in Washington state, we had a trooper who pulled over a couple for speeding; when they explained they were on their way to a clinic for an abortion, he took them into custody and tried to talk them out of it. Fortunately, he was disciplined, and kudos to the Minneapolis authorities for doing the same here.

Hey, if JC does come back in 007 they’ll just lock him in a looney bin for running around healing the sick even if they don’t have insurance and feeding the hungry whether they have cash or not.

Wouldn’t you just love for today’s republican party to have to deal with Christ incarnate?

I would buy a ticket for that show.

(aka Global Citizen)

When the pharmacist refuses to sell you birth control pills, ask if he would sell your husband a condom. Or Viagra. Bet you the logically-challenged pill-pusher wouldn’t have a problem selling that “sex stuff” to a man. Funny, ain’t it?

The pharmacist might also claim that you won’t need that pill since JC is coming back this year and you’ll be burning in hell anyway, you hussy.

Congratulations if you’ve read the comments all the way here… even I gave up somewhere in the mid-30’s. Just wanted to weigh in on the Minn. cabbie issue.

I think it’s important to point out that the city is only revoking the MSP airport license for these cab drivers. Yes, they run their own business, but airport taxi licenses are very strictly controlled (theoretically) and should really go to those who provide the best service for visitors arriving at the airport.

The taxi driver still has the option to run their business as they see fit, they just can’t operate from the airport. I would be very opposed to a general license that restricted them from picking up passengers based on a religious belief; this seems to go against the core principal of freedom of religion, as well as the general capitalist freedoms upon which the country is now based.

Oh yeah, and it definitely annoys me when a taxi refuses you a ride because the fare is “too short” or there isn’t a good chance of a return fare from that area… I don’t know about a law against it, but if I could change one thing…

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