Religious vs disability accommodations
April 14, 2015 at 3:59 am
(This post was last modified: April 14, 2015 at 4:18 am by Razzle.)
I was listening to the three episodes of The Nonprophets in which they discussed the story of a Muslim supermarket worker who refused to serve pork and alcohol to a customer, instead suggesting she use the self-checkout machine, which broadened into a discussion about legal and moral requirements for employers to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities and people with religious beliefs. Jeff, Dennis and Russell, as well as many listeners, were against the fact that religion is covered by reasonable accommodation laws in some countries. Among the arguments made were that they should not protect things that "are in people's imaginations" (Jeff), and that the Muslim was using the self-cbeckout to avoid doing something, whereas disabled people use machines to enable them to do something (a listener, agreed with by the hosts).
The problem with these arguments is that there are in fact disabilities that cause people to refuse to do things due to figments of their imagination, and which would probably be accommodated in much the same way, i.e. directing customers to another worker or to self-checkout for certain items, and the accommodation would just as much be allowing someone to avoid doing something. For example, some people with PTSD avoid items, smells and even certain types of people, such as men in military uniform, because they cause them to remember and even have vivid and incapacitating flashbacks of traumatic events. Flashbacks and memories are phenomena that come from the imagination. For another example, some people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder experience irrational terror at the thought of touching certain objects for various reasons including bacterial, chemical or radioactive contamination fears, and less famous OCD obsessions like what psychiatrists call 'magical thinking' obsessions. Examples of clinically diagnosed magical thinking include feeling that because the thought "what if eating or touching a certain type of food causes bad things to happen to my mother?" has randomly popped up in the mind and caused fear, the possibility of it being true cannot responsibly be dismissed. Although most of them know intellectually that this is irrational, the faulty brain wiring of OCD causes intense fear over the slim chance that it's true not to subside just by attempting to push the imaginary threats from the mind. They might run away crying, shake or vomit with fear if forced to do something their OCD tells them is dangerous.
So what's the difference between imaginary threats caused by a disability and imaginary threats caused by religious indoctrination? Or would they want to exclude mental illnesses too?
The problem with these arguments is that there are in fact disabilities that cause people to refuse to do things due to figments of their imagination, and which would probably be accommodated in much the same way, i.e. directing customers to another worker or to self-checkout for certain items, and the accommodation would just as much be allowing someone to avoid doing something. For example, some people with PTSD avoid items, smells and even certain types of people, such as men in military uniform, because they cause them to remember and even have vivid and incapacitating flashbacks of traumatic events. Flashbacks and memories are phenomena that come from the imagination. For another example, some people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder experience irrational terror at the thought of touching certain objects for various reasons including bacterial, chemical or radioactive contamination fears, and less famous OCD obsessions like what psychiatrists call 'magical thinking' obsessions. Examples of clinically diagnosed magical thinking include feeling that because the thought "what if eating or touching a certain type of food causes bad things to happen to my mother?" has randomly popped up in the mind and caused fear, the possibility of it being true cannot responsibly be dismissed. Although most of them know intellectually that this is irrational, the faulty brain wiring of OCD causes intense fear over the slim chance that it's true not to subside just by attempting to push the imaginary threats from the mind. They might run away crying, shake or vomit with fear if forced to do something their OCD tells them is dangerous.
So what's the difference between imaginary threats caused by a disability and imaginary threats caused by religious indoctrination? Or would they want to exclude mental illnesses too?
