Religious vs disability accommodations

[Cato]

So if a worker had an allergy or phobia and couldn't handle two particular items for that reason, would it still be unreasonable for him to be allowed to direct customers to other staff or to self-checkout, because it should be a 'basic requirement' that they physically check out every item?

Yes. Imagine the turmoil created if you employed 10 such cashiers each with two separate phobias. Sorting through the combinations to get your customers checked through becomes a nightmare.

Now consider it from the shopper's perspective. Instead of full service lanes and those with some maximum items criteria, the shopper must now ensure that they don't have certain items before approaching the register. If the argument then becomes a matter of an employer only having to wrestle with a minimum number of special needs employees in order not to constrain them with an undue burden, who decides the number? A bureaucrat?

Again, I don't understand why someone with a phobia, allergy, or religiously based prohibition would actively seek employment where conflicting work conditions are known. Why all of a sudden should this become the employer's issue?

[Aroura]

First, people with PTSD and anxiety disorders aren't just imagining things, nor is it "all in their head". People with mental disabilities have been fighting that particularly stubborn bit of stigma for ages.
There is, in most cases, either a chemical or physical (damage) reason for these sorts of disorders. For instance, recent studies show that people suffering PTSD have a smaller region of their brain regulating fear responses.

Comparing people's religious beliefs to someone who suffered severe trauma and has a mental disorder is seriously just insulting to people with mental disorders.

So no, we cannot make the same types of allowances for things that really are made up (and differ from person to person BTW, not just religion to religion), as we do for people who are suffering from a LEGITIMATE ILLNESS!

[Razzle]

I suppose we should look on theists with these issues as victims. If they have been pretty much forced into believing this stuff and literally can't stop, and are too scared to analyse them, that's not their fault.

Exactly. I think people from religiously dominated cultures (which I'm not) are so used to having to focus on religious people getting their own way unfairly and claiming to be victimised when they're not, and trying to convince them that they're not, that they often forget these people are indeed victims when requesting irrational things - just not of the things they think they're victims of.

I think this is interesting. Who would agree that legally equating religious "issues" with actual mental disorders is pretty much saying indoctrination is psychologically damaging? It seems to me that the next logical step after making this law would be to crack down on indoctrination, as it has been legally equated to abuse. That is probably just me pipe dreaming again. Probably not practical, unfortunately.

Not necessarily. Irrational religious beliefs don't always cause distress or functional impairment (some actually improve mood and daily functioning, arguably), but whenever workplace accommodations have to be in place before a person can get or keep a particular job, it would suggest they are causing them functional impairment, and therefore do represent psychological damage for that person.

Also, it's not the case that when laws cover more than one demographic factor, like religious belief and disability, they are admitting any particular commonality between them. They are admitting there is at least one commonality between them that makes them eligible on some principle for protection under the same law, but exactly what that commonality and principle was deemed to be by the law makers at the time is a question that could only be answered by looking at what the decisive arguments were.

The fact that religion, race, sexual orientation and disability are all covered by several different types of anti-discrimination laws, and in that sense are legally equated, doesn't mean there was underlying their passing a view that religions are kinds of disability, or that sexual orientation is a kind of disability, or that sexual orientation is a kind of religion, for that matter. The real reason they're legally equated in those cases is something that even some of the people passing those laws often disagree about - e.g. some think that whether the demographic factor is a choice or not is crucial, others think it's irrelevant.

[robvalue]

Interesting, thank you.

My comment about them being legalized as "the same" is just referring to how they manifest. They could both produce the exact same restriction in reality, that a person "can't" do a certain thing. If their religious belief is so strong and ingrained that deeply that it's virtually physically impossible for them to do that certain thing, then in real terms it's no different from a mental condition making the exact same thing virtually impossible. And at that point, I don't know what else I would call this religious "belief" than a disability, of sorts. It's just been artificially forced onto them rather than developed as a condition.

If instead the person simply refuses to do something, that is different. That's not a disability, that's being unwilling to properly do the job you have been employed to do. This is going to be a lesser level of indoctrination, and harder to address. A "conflict of beliefs" does not seem adequate to me; unless it has been openly disclosed at time of employment anyway.

In my opinion, religion and mental illness share a lot of the same results, even if the processes are not the same. Such times as they don't share the same results is the point at which the religious person is professing beliefs they would like to have, rather than actual beliefs. If someone says, "I see god" and they literally mean it, they think they are seeing god, they are (almost certainly) either mentally deluded to the point of mental illness symptoms, or making shit up.

[Razzle]

First, people with PTSD and anxiety disorders aren't just imagining things, nor is it "all in their head".  People with mental disabilities have been fighting that particularly stubborn bit of stigma for ages.
There is, in most cases, either a chemical or physical (damage) reason for these sorts of disorders.  For instance, recent studies show that people suffering PTSD have a smaller region of their brain regulating fear responses.

Comparing people's religious beliefs to someone who suffered severe trauma and has a mental disorder is seriously just insulting to people with mental disorders.

So no, we cannot make the same types of allowances for things that really are made up (and differ from person to person BTW, not just religion to religion), as we do for people who are suffering from a LEGITIMATE ILLNESS!

Hi Aroura,

I very much want to address your points as soon as possible because as some will have guessed from my other threads, I share your passion for mental health advocacy - in fact what prompted me to make this thread was primarily concern that the Nonprophets' arguments could also be used against accommodations for certain mental disabilities, and no one would be more opposed to the exclusion of mental disabilities from such protections than I would - and because you've interpreted my words "from the imagination" in exactly the way I feared they would be interpreted.

Unfortunately I'm currently both bandaged up and drugged up (I mean, more drugged up than usual), and temporarily vision impaired, so forum posts are taking a great deal of time, effort and Red Bull. I don't feel able to clarify my case with the care and detail your objections deserve right now, but I hope to be back to normal (as Monk says, "it's a kind of normal") within the next four days. I might respond later today or it might take longer before I'm thinking clearly enough to give it a go, I just wanted to let you know that I do intend to respond to you point-by-point,  and that I consider us ultimately on the same page about mental illness, as I will explain.

[vorlon13]

LOL, and I'm going to take issue with Christers working at these places that DON'T have issues with handling verboten book of Leviticus items.

And Fig Newtons.


Heh, heh, they just can't FUCKING WIN, EVER !!

[RobbyPants]

One primary difference: Mental disorders are recognized as actual disabilities and people are trying to cure it. Religious indoctrination is not recognized as a disability nor acknowledged as wilful-ignorance.

On a somewhat related note: a guy made a role-playing game, and one of the parts of it is you can choose advantages offset by disadvantages. I loved his treatment of the "delusional" disadvantage:

"Delusional: The character is absolutely certain of something that does not appear to be true and will not be swayed by any evidence to the contrary. This would include most religious beliefs, but the character is not awarded Disadvantages for believing ridiculous things that are believed by a large portion of the population, because such delusions do not negatively impact the character. So if you believe that there are important messages from aliens coded in dog howls, that's a disadvantage; but if you believe that there are important messages from Jesus coded in cheese sandwiches, this is not a disadvantage. Not because it isn't counter-factual and immune to contrary evidence, but because society at large has accepted people with such delusions and made accommodations for them."

I particularly like that last line. Society does go out of it's way to protect the crazy things people believe, even if they go against what the vast majority of society believes.

[Razzle]

First, people with PTSD and anxiety disorders aren't just imagining things, nor is it "all in their head".  People with mental disabilities have been fighting that particularly stubborn bit of stigma for ages. There is, in most cases, either a chemical or physical (damage) reason for these sorts of disorders.  For instance, recent studies show that people suffering PTSD have a smaller region of their brain regulating fear responses. Comparing people's religious beliefs to someone who suffered severe trauma and has a mental disorder is seriously just insulting to people with mental disorders. So no, we cannot make the same types of allowances for things that really are made up (and differ from person to person BTW, not just religion to religion), as we do for people who are suffering from a LEGITIMATE ILLNESS!

Here's where I think the misunderstanding lies: to say somebody's problem is "in the imagination" is usually done in a trivialising or dismissive way. That's also the spirit in which Jeff Dee meant it. However, I was not saying the problem is in anyone's imagination and therefore not real - people with an anxiety disorder or any other mental disorder are not imagining that they have a problem. If that were what I meant or what I believe, how do you explain my agreeing to take a cocktail of three different classes of psychiatric medication at once? I was saying that the aversion to otherwise harmless stimuli (which can be driven not just by anxiety or fear but also disgust, tension, discomfort or guilt) results from mental sensations (images, abstract concepts, narratives etc.) that in turn are caused by the underlying problem. The problem is not imaginary, but it causes disturbing things to arise in the imagination.

I hope that makes sense. 

I had two reasons for bringing this up and making the arguments I've made.

One is thinking that the unemployment rate and all the bad things that does to people at the lowest socio-economic strata, who already struggle to find work in many countries right now, would be even worse if we refused to make reasonable accommodations (e.g., one worker never doing one particular chore but taking on sole responsibility for another chore, to compensate) for people who have any kind of objection or inability to certain tasks. Whether that's a temporary or permanent disability, external commitments (e.g. caring for children or disabled/elderly people and being allowed to leave unexpectedly for them if needed and make up the time later, or being allowed to work from home if there's no reason that would be detrimental), religious, or ethical (e.g. not working in the fur department of a clothing outlet if you're against skinning animals alive for luxurious clothes). OK such places probably don't have whole departments dedicated to fur, it's just a hypothetical example, made in a rush, of a non-religious ethical objection that most people here can probably relate to and sympathise with more than the religious objections. 

Secondly, I feared that Jeff and others were expressing an attitude that is bad for people with mental illnesses, i.e. that if you're afraid of something that it's not rational to be afraid of - as is the very definition of certain mental illnesses, e.g. phobias, as well as applying to religious taboos - then accommodations shouldn't have to be made and we should have no sympathy. This was the concern that motivated me sufficiently to start the thread. I was doing the very opposite of trying to trivialise mental illness.   

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I find it telling that the Muslim worker wouldn't assist a customer purchasing pork and alcohol, you was willing to accept a paycheck from an establishment that sold  pork and alcohol.  That smacks more than a little bit of hypocrisy.

A few years ago, I was in an upscale men's clothier purchasing a Christmas gift for a friend.  The store advertised free gift wrapping.  The clerk who assisted me was very helpful.  However, when I mentioned that I'd like the gloves gift wrapped, he told me he'd have to get me another assistant, as he was a Jehovah's Witness.  I didn't have an issue with it until I got my sales receipt - the sale was credited to the first assistant, the JW.  So, effectively, the man was willing to take a sales commission on an item he knew all along was a Christmas gift, even though celebrating - or even recognizing - Christmas was against his religion.

It seems as if religious principles crumble like a week old bread crust in a high wind when money gets involved.

Boru

Personally, I'm vegan.  By your logic here, I'd be hypocritical to work for any business that bought products made from or tested on animals in ways I believe are wrong, which includes honey, wool, leather and almost all of the most popular soaps and household products. Where exactly would I work, then? Every kind of business out there buys at least soaps, detergents etc. that aren't vegan, or use vehicles with leather interiors. I can avoid the worst offenders, and I can suggest alternative products, but other than that, I simply wouldn't have a job at all if I boycotted everything. I could also be called a hypocrite for paying for any kind of drug approved as a medicine, because they're all, without exception, tested on animals. Therein lies the problem - it's the law that all medicines have to be tested on animals before they're approved, so a boycott is useless. Boycotting all medicines won't have any impact at all on how drug research is done, because it's written into the law right now, it's not up to market forces. All it would achieve is that most of the few vegans in the world would die young of treatable conditions, and then what difference could we make once dead?

People who are getting minimum wage jobs like retail, are generally in a far worse position than me, in terms of the range of jobs available to them. When I wasn't qualified for the career I have now, most of the jobs available to me in my area were retail, cleaning (again, wouldn't be vegan), and food factories. In the end I got another kind of job which was closer to being vegan but they still used non-vegan soap in the toilets. That's also true of where I work now. Those were the only ones around and I couldn't afford to move. So I don't accept the argument made by some here that if these people really cared as much as they say, they wouldn't work in such a place or accept a paycheck. Sometimes there are no alternatives, and if you're a poor Muslim trying to pay your rent, maybe with dependents to take care of, with no qualifications and already significant odds against you due to racial/cultural prejudice against the very name on your CV, it might be very hard to find a job anywhere other than the large supermarkets, in some areas, and pork and alcohol are going to be sold there.