Toeing the Line or a Foot in t

GRAYSON, KY – SEPTEMBER 8: Kim Davis, Clerk of Courts in Rowan County, Kentucky, looks over at Mike Huckabee after she was released from six days of incarceration at the Carter County Detention Center on September 8, 2015 in Grayson, Kentucky. Davis was ordered to jail last week for contempt of court after refusing a […]

Toeing the Line or a Foot in the Face: When is enough ENOUGH?

Sometimes, being an adult sucks. However, being an adult also has its perks. So when is it fair to expect people to act like adults and where do we draw the line? I would argue that in some cases, that line should be drawn a little more definitively than in others.

Toeing the Line or a Foot in t

GRAYSON, KY – SEPTEMBER 8: Kim Davis, Clerk of Courts in Rowan County, Kentucky, looks over at Mike Huckabee after she was released from six days of incarceration at the Carter County Detention Center on September 8, 2015 in Grayson, Kentucky. Davis was ordered to jail last week for contempt of court after refusing a […]

I was reading an article the other day about a Muslim woman who is a flight attendant and took exception to the fact that she was asked to serve alcohol to passengers. The story was reported as follows: when she started the job, she was not Muslim. Her subsequent conversion meant that she no longer felt comfortable serving alcohol to passengers. As a result, the airline exempted her from doing so, until other flight attendants on the same flight routes started to complain that she was not fulfilling her duties and was causing the rest of the crew to carry her portion of the work.

The airline decided to give her an extended period of paid leave, after which, her services would no longer be required. Essentially, they decided that since she could no longer fulfil the job requirements, she would have to leave and gave her the time to look for another job. Then we turn to the beloved Kim Davis, who, much to every liberal’s shock and horror, would not give up her position but equally would not concede that it was within her duties to issue same sex marriage licenses. Her Christian faith prohibited such acts.

These are two examples of people who, for better or worse, leave us all asking the question – when is enough, ENOUGH? At what point do we favour either the individual or the community over the other? At what point should we ask adults to be ADULTS about things? When do we ask them to be grown up enough to be accountable?

I am all for religious freedoms, and in general, the freedom to choose many aspects of how you live your life. I fully believe that we need, as individuals, to express ourselves as fully as we can in order to create a healthy, balanced society. After all, variety is the spice of life, and why shouldn’t it be. Who doesn’t like a little spice now and then? However, at what point to do we draw a line in the sand and refuse to accept certain behaviours? At what point do we ask people to take responsibility for the choices they make and the effect those choices have on other people? Why should the group, however big or small, have to pay for the choices of the individual?

 It’s one thing to limit a person’s choices. It’s another to expect others to limit their choices to respect the individual.

In life, there must be space made for both scenarios. It is, however, another thing altogether when we take the responsibility to be held accountable for the choices a person makes out of the hands of the individual and make the choice a communal issue. Now, don’t misunderstand me – I fully understand that people should be entitled to have religious days off and that similar rights should be honoured.

No person should ever be compelled to act against their religious beliefs, provided those beliefs cause no harm to themselves or others. This is an important and valid expectation. However, what I do take exception to is when someone makes a choice in their personal lives that leaves them in a position where, like Kim Davis, they should seriously reassess the impact of that choice on the people around them.

In these cases, I would argue that the level of indulgence they call for is far beyond what should reasonably be expected. Instead, I would argue that society should ask these individuals to own up to their personal choices and find something more fitting to do with their lives, rather than to expect the rest of us to be accommodating and accepting, no matter the effect those choices may have on the wider society.

Let’s take a moment to ask this question differently; if I were to make a decision to be vegetarian, that’s my personal choice. If I worked in a butchery, and then decided that, as a vegetarian, I would no longer like to work with meat and support the meat industry, would it not be more logical for me to choose to work elsewhere than to declare that the butchery should still pay me, despite the fact that I was, in effect, no longer willing to do the job? What kind of insanity leads an individual to believe that a personal choice should be respected up to the point that other people should continue to pay them despite a distinct lack of respect for anyone else’s personal choice? Moreover, the basic understanding of being employed in a position is that you will be paid for services rendered.

If you can no longer fulfil those job requirements, then why should anyone be expected to keep you on in that position? With due respect, if the issue is a peripheral one, I think it’s fair that it should be assessed on a case-by-case basis, however, if a responsibility constitutes a core element of the work required, I think it should be equally fair that an employer asks you to move on.

I cannot understand why these people feel so outraged about the fact that, on the basis of their religion preventing them from doing a job, many people feel that they should leave the job altogether. If someone is a lumberjack, and subsequently loses the use of their legs and is forced out of a job, that seems a little more unfair to me. It wasn’t their choice to leave their job. Fate has, essentially, forced them to do so. These people CHOOSE to make changes that render them less useful and then mope about the public response. REALLY? I mean REALLY? Am I the only one who feels like this is a little crazy?

I can’t help but feel that this is a potential turning point in our attitude towards individual choice and the impact it has on our wider communities. I think it would be more than fair to ask individuals like these to grow up, own up, and stop making other people’s lives more difficult.

This world could be more fair, and it could be more inclusive, but one thing we definitely do not need is for it to be more indulgent of these kinds of ridiculous expectations. I would argue that, instead of sensationalising these claims as some sort of fundamental short-coming in a biased and prejudicial system, we should save those claims for when they actually apply. I think in situations like these, people should just be what they are  – ADULTS – and grow the fuck up.

Cover Photo: Getty Images,  Ty Wright / Stringer