quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHungryTiger

quote:

Tough. You might have the right to decide whether or not I can join your club, but you should not have the right to decide whether I can do a job based on anything other than my ability.

Just out of curiosity, would you consider the reverse to be true also?

Say there was applying for a job as a bartender at a gay bar, or a lab tech at an AIDS clinic, or whatever LGBT orgnization have you. In the interview it came out that the applicant was a fundamentalist born again christian. Would the LGBT organization have the right to say 'thanks but no thanks' or would the government have to step in and through use of force and intimidation require the LGBT organization to go againt its principals?

quote:

Not everyone has the luxury of finding work that suits them and their lifestyle, often, in fact, very often in places where work is scarce, one has to take what is on offer, usually the highest paid work is the target, if not that, anything that pays a a wage that enables a person to do better than welfare. Just do the job that is required of them, take home the pay and live. Sometimes despite what our personal belief is, we just have to swallow it, if we want to move forward.

quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHungryTiger

quote:

Tough. You might have the right to decide whether or not I can join your club, but you should not have the right to decide whether I can do a job based on anything other than my ability.

Just out of curiosity, would you consider the reverse to be true also?

Say there was applying for a job as a bartender at a gay bar, or a lab tech at an AIDS clinic, or whatever LGBT orgnization have you. In the interview it came out that the applicant was a fundamentalist born again christian. Would the LGBT organization have the right to say 'thanks but no thanks' or would the government have to step in and through use of force and intimidation require the LGBT organization to go againt its principals?

quote:

ORIGINAL: pahunkboy

What about blow back?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marc2b

quote:

Not everyone has the luxury of finding work that suits them and their lifestyle, often, in fact, very often in places where work is scarce, one has to take what is on offer, usually the highest paid work is the target, if not that, anything that pays a a wage that enables a person to do better than welfare. Just do the job that is required of them, take home the pay and live. Sometimes despite what our personal belief is, we just have to swallow it, if we want to move forward.

It is true that many, if not most, people have to settle for less than their dream job but let’s not overstate the case here. How often are we going to have a situation where a person is desperate for any job and the only one available is at a place where someone of "their kind" (whatever their kind may be) is not welcome?

It is never easy when we have to balance different rights, in this case the right not to be discriminated against versus freedom of religion (and, to an extent, freedom of association). Where do we find the balance?

quote:

Regarding your first paragraph, it has happened, I know of animal lovers having to work in an abbatoir, because they were the only jobs going in the town, that was mid eighties in Liverpool where there was officially recorded 25% unemployment. The political slogan at the time, was get on yer bike and find work, fine, on my push Iron I used to cycle 15 miles to work every day, for peanut pay, ( which was £20 a week more than the then YOP ( so called youth opportunities programme, basically paying an absolute minimum pay for unemployed youths to sweep the park) scheme, if some remember those), no one had cars. I had a succession of crap jobs I didn't want, but hey, it was a job and we learned to grab what was going, whatever it was, swallow your pride and work if you could find work before I got fed up and joined the mob, which led onto better things, one of them being getting out of the area in which I had lived all my life, an area I still won't go back to, even visiting my family is a problem.

So, that is why I said what I said, some people sometimes do not have the luxury of picking and choosing what they want to do and where, a job is a job when there are bugger all jobs around, I am sure the people who are unfortunate enough to be unemployed at this moment, might see where I am coming from on this.

quote:

In the United States, the United Church of Christ has a long tradition of being open and affirming to LGBT members.

http://www.ucccoalition.org/programs/ona/

quote:

And the church, whatever brand, has homosexual and others in it's own ranks, they might call it a weakness and a sin, but as long as they have representatives of the very people they despise in their own ranks, they have no complaint.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marc2b
True, but that's not my point.  My point is that many of us tend to equate words like "church" and "religion" with being anti-gay, anti-semite, etc.  In truth there are a great many denominations that do no such thing but they don't usually get noticed by the media.  Instead it the Fred Phelps' of the world that get the attention and as a result, give a bad name to many good people.

quote:

think our American friends may be missing the point here somewhat in that here the Church Of England is a state organisation, intimately tied in to the whole in a way quite alien to US thinking… etc.

quote:

There are many thousands of denominations out there and for all I know a majority of them could very well be tolerant. However, the majority of Christians belong to just a few of these denominations and considering which denominations those are I suspect that the stereotype that Christianity in America is anti-gay has a lot more to do with the reality of the situation than anything the Phelps had to say.

quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/uk/8476862.stm

The Equality Bill would prevent churches from discriminating against LGBT candidates for employment other than as ministers/priests, where they already have an exemption.

They reason that LGBT lifestyles go against church teaching.

Tough. You might have the right to decide whether or not I can join your club, but you should not have the right to decide whether I can do a job based on anything other than my ability.

E