Last week I noted the controversy over the Muslim cashiers at Target who refused to handle customers' pork purchases. (They have since been reassigned by the company.) I asserted that "it would be hard to discern an institutional mission that rises or falls on the requirement that cashiers handle all products."
Antonio Manetti responds:
It's actually not that hard. The act of refusing to touch pork products thus forcing the customer to scan the item herself or call another clerk to do so can be taken by the customer as annoying at best and offensive at worst implication being that contact with 'unclean' food makes one unclean). I wonder how a customer might feel when the checkout clerk effectively proclaims that repugnance to everyone within earshot.
Also, when I go to the store, I don't expect to be subjected to gratuitous moral judgments from checkout clerks. In my opinion, the desire to avoid needlessly annoying or offending customers is a legitimate part of the stores' 'institutional mission'.
I agree that a store could reasonably conclude that customer sentiment weighs in favor of not permitting the objecting Muslims to remain as cashiers. But in my view, something more than that is required if we're serious about honoring conscience. (Let's assume for the moment that there aren't other available positions in the company, so the choice is between accommodating the cashiers as cashiers or terminating them.) When I argue that employers should be empowered to maintain their own moral identities, I contemplate particular moral claims being made by the employer. I do not mean that an employer should be able to overcome the employee's own moral claims by constructing a moral identity defined only by the negation of the employee's claims. In other words, if Target wants to define itself as the anti-vegetarianism store (just as some pharmacies have defined themselves in pro-life terms), then talking about institutional mission -- in the way I mean it -- seems appropriate when dealing with these objecting cashiers. But if the employer's institutional identity consists only of a requirement that cashiers handle all products, that seems akin to identity-by-negation, rather than one grounded in any affirmative claim of moral truth. There is, of course, a moral dimension to the claim "we value our customer's ability to make their own purchase decisions," but it is so sweeping as to preclude any product-related request for accommodation by the cashier. I want a person's conscience to be taken seriously in the marketplace; I just want to make sure that institutions still have the ability to function as venues for the common articulation and pursuit of conscience. I am skeptical that customer autonomy should be sufficient to serve as a categorical trump of contrary moral claims.
Nothing that I've said suggests that employers are helpless to take action if the number of cashiers objecting to certain products becomes so high that accommodation would cause an undue hardship to the employer. Target is dealing with a relatively small number of objecting cashiers, a single product, and a large pool of non-objecting cashiers who could scan the product without significant disruption to the business. If this becomes a bigger problem, the analysis could change.
I'm still thinking my way through all this, so I welcome other perspectives on these questions.
If you're interested in an analysis of morality and the judicial role that relies on Catholic social thought to challenge the perspectives of legal luminaries like Robert Cover, Justice Scalia, and (former) Chief Justice Roy Moore, check out my new paper, Professional Identity and the Contours of Prudence. Here is the abstract:
This article was presented as part of a symposium on Catholic social thought, prudential judgment, and public policy. I use the virtue of prudence as a lens through which to analyze the relationship between conscience and professional identity, asserting that prudence requires a consideration of the context in which an actor's conscience is to be exercised. In many of our current disputes over conscience, our understanding of an actor's context will require an understanding of an actor's professional role. This article will endeavor to elucidate the relevance of prudence to professional role by comparing and contrasting the roles of judges and lawyers. In this context, at least, the contours of prudential judgment are informed by market dynamics: lawyers are market actors; judges are not. The professional's stance toward those whom they serve, and our evaluation of the way in which they serve, will turn on this distinction. The application of principles such as solidarity, subsidiarity, reciprocity, and the common good lead to sharply different conclusions regarding the prudent role of personal moral convictions in the work of a judge versus that of a lawyer.
As always, comments are welcome.
Friday, March 16, 2007
On the topic of the Prothero essay, Joe Knippenberg makes the interesting point that the student's motive matters in our approach to teaching religion. If our motivation is to become a better citizen, the outcome of the exploration is going to be much different than if our motivation is to satisfy a deeper existential longing. So can a perceived need for greater civic virtue ever be a proper ground for "authentic" religious education?
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Admirers of the Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor -- whose work on identity is essential to Catholic legal theory, in my view -- will be pleased to know that he has been announced as the recipient of this year's Templeton Prize. (HT: Open Book)
Yesterday's USA Today profiled David Blankenhorn, who has a new book coming out called The Future of Marriage. Here's an excerpt from the article:
He may sound like a conservative Christian, but Blankenhorn says he's a liberal Democrat. "I'm not condemning homosexuality. I'm not condemning committed gay relationships," he says. But "the best institutional friend that children have is marriage, and if grownups make a mess of it, the children are going to suffer."
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
For those interested in our conversation about teaching religion (see here, here, here), The Washington Post hosted an on-line debate this afternoon between Stephen Prothero and Barry Lynn over whether religion should be taught in public schools.
