Discrimination

             http://www.employees-lawyer.com/practice-areas/discrimination/

The other day I posted a comment on Facebook saying, “I find it interesting to watch the lineup of corporations and other entities saying they will not do more business with North Carolina. Twenty years, maybe even ten years, ago this would not have been the response.” This was in response to “Religious Freedom” law passed by the North Carolina state legislature. The “religious freedom” laws being passed in various states allow for discrimination on the basis of one’s religious beliefs. It has been said that “religious freedom” is code language for being able to discriminate on the basis of sexual identification.

If one owns a store and a same gender couple comes in to make a purchase, the store owner, on the basis of their religious conviction, may refuse to sell to the couple. The real sticking point is the requirement that a person use the restroom for the anatomical designation on one’s birth certificate. Therefore, a person who has gone through anatomical reorientation cannot use the restroom of their present sexual identity. A man who has gone through sexual reorientation, emotionally and physically, to become a woman could not use the women’s restroom, but would have to use the men’s room. What would one have to do, carry their birth certificate around and show it to the restroom police?

Some significant business and organizations have either decided not to expand their business operations in North Carolina, or not to open an operation there. Some media production companies have decided not to make films in North Carolina. These decisions are being made on the basis of supporting non-discrimination. Where were these companies during the civil rights days? Where were/are they when it comes to equal pay for equal work?

Let’s face it discrimination still is alive and flourishing in this country on the basis of religion, sex, race and any other factor which makes you different from me. There are those who would close our borders to the south with huge walls. Some want to ban the immigration of those who come from predominantly Muslim countries. In the past, Africans, Italians, Irish, Chinese and Japanese were the targets of our nationality discrimination. It still exists and we cannot close our eyes to it, and pretend we are all happy together in the melting pot.

Even though I know there are some discrimination tendencies in my own life, I find it ironic that we who worship the God who because one of us and pitched tent among us use our scriptures and religious beliefs to say that God did not include you. Either God is for all of us, or God is for none of us. There is not a white god and a black god. There is not a male god and a female god. There is not a straight god and a gay/lesbian god. There is not a Jewish god, and a Muslim god, and a Christian god. Until we can wrap our hearts and minds around that, we are guilty of making God in our own image rather than we being the imago dei. Whatever we use to discriminate and to separate us from one another keeps us from seeing the image of God in the other.

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