Government is required to accommodate religious beliefs when reasonable, but at what point does it become unreasonable? Recently, Canada Border Services Agency managers at Toronto's Pearson airport allowed a small group of Hindu priests to avoid screening by female border guards to comply with their religious beliefs. If these had been Muslims, would they have received the same deference? If they had asked not to be screened by blacks, would Canadian Border Services have obliged? http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toron...ers-to-avoid-female-guards-1.2730402?cmp=fbtl
I'm a woman and for reasons of personal prudishness rather than religious reasons I prefer to be screened by women. Do you think that is asking for too much accomodation? Anyway: What I'd be much more interested in is whether the Sadhus were allowed to bring their Marihuana. That would be accomodation worth speaking of.
Religious accomodation should end with the freedom of belief and expression. No religion has the right to ignore societal law or try to force itself on anyone else. You can knock on my door and talk....but you cannot come in uninvited.
Well, there is a difference between not allowing screening by blacks vs. not allowing screening by women. I wouldn't mind either, but I do understand how conservative men (or women) wouldn't want to be intimately searched by members of the opposite sex. Screeners at such places should always have both males and females.
This wasn't a type of physical screening/search or pat down in the OP. It was an interview( what is the nature of your trip, how long are you staying etc). They didn't want to interface with a female because they said it was against their religion. Shouldn't have been accommodated.
What would that difference be? Do women have a different idea of professionalism than the population at large, or is it blacks you feel to be inferior?
Should Rastas be allowed to smoke marijuana as a religious expression, or should that be disallowed? What about Santeria and ritual animal sacrifice? Native American beliefs and peyote? What if suttee is voluntary? Should it be stopped, or is it legitimate religious expression?
I think it can only really be taken on a case-by-case basis. As a secularist atheist but very much not an anti-theist, I'm personally torn on a lot of these incidents. I'm not entirely sure what the "right" answer was in this case, or even if there was one at all. Ultimately, some group of people were going to feel insulted.
Sort of how I feel. "Reasonable accomodations"- subjective but probably most reasonable people could agree on them. Bypassing a security screening deemed necessary for everyone would not be a 'reasonable accommodation' Asking for only women screeners to search a woman would seem like a reasonable accommodation.
If this case involved a physical search, I would probably agree with you, but this was about checking passports and asking a few simple questions. Sex should not have been an issue.
there should be precisely the same amount of accommodation as that extended to those who believe in leprechauns, alien abductees, delusion psychotics, stamp collectors, duck shooters, people who don't like Brussels sprouts, and magicians. in other words, your personal peccadillos do not require 'accommodation' in the broader social/official setting.
it's they who brings sex into a situation which has nothing to do with same. such people insist on sexualising EVERYTHING (sex obsession anyone? dave?).
