Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The Right to Discriminate

In no insdustry in the United Kingdom are you allowed to say, "Find me a boss with a penis, i refuse to be supervised by a woman," except one: the Church of England.

The C of E began ordaining women as priests in 1994. Now the debate is women bishops. If a male priest excels at his job and serves the church well, he is made a bishop. Now that there are women priests, surely there will be women bishops, too. Right? Not so much.

You see, if a woman is a priest, she is only in a position of authority over parishners, and they don't count. But if she is a bishop, she has authority over other clergy. Male clergy. Ooooh, scary.

The church is already operating under an exception to national anti-discrimination laws, otherwise they wouldn't have a choice in the matter of whether to make women bishops or not. This situation brings to light 2 compelling questions on discrimination:

1. Should any organization, even a church, be exempt from national anti-discrimination laws?
2. Should individuals within that organization be allowed to refuse to work for someone on the basis of that person's gender?


Also, the debate on reproduction still rages below. Feel free to continue to comment on older posts.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Responsibilty

So far it seems that we all agree that Guppy-Woman is behaving incredibly irresponsibly. That's no surprise. Let me re-phrase my original question:

Do people have a personal right to behave irresponsibly when it comes to reproduction?
If not, what kind of system do we implement to enforce responsible reproduction?