discriminate.....

Storytime:

All names, descriptions, adjectives associated with the story have been removed for your protection. :-)

A person is looking for a particular service. This person finds a company who provides a service almost like the one they want, but not exactly. Person gets upset that company will not meet his needs and provide this service. Person sues company for them to change their business plan (which in of itself is not illegal in any way) to meet his needs. The Attorney General where this person lives agrees with them, and also sues company to change their business ways. Not to lose in court, company agrees to change their ways to accommodate person.

Moral of story is that a person can make a company change its business practice, if that person does not want to look for alternative businesses that will accommodate his needs/wants.

End of story:

Outraged? Think I am making this up?

I wish I was, but I am not. As a matter of fact, this same exact scenario happened this week. On Tuesday eHarmony, after a three year court battle, agreed to start an "alternative" website to their own that will match up people looking for a same-sex companion.

Let me start by saying that this has absolutely nothing to do with gay or straight. If you think this rant does, please go back and re-read "the story". There is a reason I made it "vanilla" and did not include the actual events. The reason is because they do not matter.

Substitute "person" with "vegetarian", and "company" with "McDonald's", and it is the same story.

How can this be? How in this country have we come to where a business can be forced to change its business practices to accommodate a service that they did not want to provide?

It is not like eHarmony is a monopoly and the only online dating service available in the world. (In fact, besides the many other heterosexual dating sites, there are a numerous amount of gay/lesbian sites.) If that were the case, and eHarmony was a monopoly, I would agree with the ruling, but there were other options available to this man, and he chose not to pursue them, but to instead shoehorned his way into having a company change by bringing them to court.

The State of New Jersey, who also sued eHarmony, claims this was discrimination. No, discrimination would have been if he applied for a job, and was turned down because he was gay. Discrimination was and still would be defined as myself and a black person going to a restaurant, and me being served a hamburger, while they were told they could not eat there. That is discrimination. This was the fact that the company he went to did not sell the service/product he was looking for.

Again, strip away the "descriptions". Could a "little person" sue a Big & Tall shop for not having clothes in his size? Could an obese person sue a "Petite Boutique" for not carrying XXL clothing? These are people who could be legitimately discriminated against, and quite possibly are because of their physical appearance.

Could I sue a Jewish book store for not carrying a Bible, or vice versa if a Jewish person came into a Christian store looking for a Torah? Would that be religious discrimination?

This ruling, if allowed to stand (which it seems it will because eHarmony settled), and if not challenged, opens the door to many other possible combinations. Over-reacting? Sounds crazy?

I don't prepare foreign tax returns. Could a Arab or Muslim, legal alien, demand that I prepare those type of returns, or call me for discriminating against them?

Discrimination is out in the world, and it is a terrible thing. It has a long and disgusting history as part of this country. True discrimination has no place in this world. This is not discrimination.

My fear is that stories like this one will "water down" true discrimination that happens, and eventually we will turn our back on those truly in help against it.

Again. A person went to a store, did not find what he was looking for, so he sued store to carry the item. Think about it the next time you go to Best Buy looking to purchase that John Deere Lawnmower.

Until the next time.....