Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Donohue prefers employment discrimination to basic decency

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Bill Donohue (President, Catholic League)
Bill Donohue

Catholic League blowhard Bill Donohue reacts to a Business Review Europe piece about fostering harmony in multicultural offices during the holidays:

“If one of your colleagues wants to put up a picture of Jesus, but he works next to a Buddhist,” [Richard] Fausta advises, “there may be some sensitivities involved to deal with.” We can’t relate to that [Catholic League VP Bernadette] Brady said. “We don’t hire Buddhists.”

“One survey found 85 percent of companies that decorate their offices have had to adjust policies as a result of complaints about the decorations,” Fausta said. “We can’t relate to that Brady said. “We only hire Catholics.”

In other words, to avoid complaints of discrimination in the workplace, be sure to discriminate when hiring. Either that or tell the whiners to get a life.

So, because the Catholic League hires from an exclusively homogeneous religious subset, the solution is thus for all employers everywhere to select only candidates of a common societal category to make sure they’d never risk exposure to other traditions or beliefs. Because God forbid anyone should bother to exhibit any sensitivity towards coworkers with differing cultural backgrounds. That goes directly against narrow-minded Christianists like Donohue believe in, after all.

(And by the by, while I’m often harsh on theists’ and conservatives’ sensibilities on this blog, my point is always that subjective feelings and opinions are never a good argument against treating others equally and fairly just because they feature ethnic, sexual, religious or other traits that differ from the culturally established norm. I may well think Islam is ridiculous and harmful, but I would still avoid featuring a stuffed pig centerpiece should I ever play dinner host for some Muslim guests. That’s just common decency.)