A worker has been fired over a pin

Keep in mind, Ted, the gentleman was working for a private company and not the United States Government.

-Matt

 

I am quite well aware that the First Amendment applies as against the Federal government (and possibly to the states, via what was known as the incorporationist doctrine). But if the Founders believed that the only power we need fear was the arbitrary power of government, they were wrong. Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to realize that we need protection from the arbitrary power of corporations. (Saw that on The History Channel today.)

 

That's the minimum you give up when working retail. Reason #47 why I work for clients instead of a corporate job. I've yet to have a client tell me to wear an ugly poloshirt with a name tag.

 

Good heavens, if that only rates #47 on your list, I would love to see which 46 reasons are even more important than not losing one's free speech rights.

 

Come to Texas Ted; it’s an “at-will” employment State. The employer can terminate any employee and a reason isn’t even necessary. As long as there’s no discrimination towards ones age, race, religion or sex…

 

My opinion is that when one is working, the employer is buying that time from the employee. If the employee doesn't want to follow reasonable rules like what they can and cannot wear then they can find another job. Freedom of speech is not a relevant issue while at work on the job.

 

The key words and phrases here are "my (Mr. Huffman's) opinion" and "reasonable rules." I'm quite well aware that the law as it now reads supports your position that employees should have no rights whatsoever. But, then again, the law is not always right; for example, once upon a time, the law thought slavery was right.

 

#45 is people telling me to shove a christmas tree up my urethra (true story).

I agree that it is (or can be) a big deal, but compared to other headaches of the job, uniforms are kind of no big deal to me. Most people just tolerate it before changing fields / moving on to something better. I'd love it if everyone could just be individuals without so much drama, but retail thrives on it.

@major56: I lived in OK when everyone managed to get convinced that "Right to Work" was a good thing. Arg. The gripe-fest after people started getting fired was endless.

 

Griffin,

And of course Texas is also a “right-to-work” state.

 

Oh boy...

This reminds me of certain cases where students have sued their schools over not letting them excercise their "free speech" in the school newspaper. Err... the newspaper doesn't BELONG to the students, so they DON'T have the right to write whatever they want in it. They can, however, make their own newspaper and write what they want.

Simmilar situation here- the employer isn't taking away anyone's free speech. If you don't like it, you have the right to work somewhere else, just as they have the right to terminate you if you don't follow their procedure.

Consider this: what if it was a pin in the shape of a pot leaf? an IV needle? a sex organ? or that said "I HATE N******S" or "F*** ME, PLEASE" would you then decry the company for stepping in? Or should we only allow "free speech" when you agree with the message?

 

I'll jump in here, albeit late.

1) Muslims believe in Allah, not God. There is a difference.
2) According to the CIA World Factbook web site:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html
-- Muslims comprise appx. .6% of the U.S. population (2007 estimate). Thus if you figure our current numbers to be around 305,000,000, there are about 1,830,000 Muslims. The exact figure is impossible to determine because the U.S. Census does not inquire about religious affiliation, and estimates on the number of followers of Islam tend to be subject to the current wave of political correctness.

 

But the word God means different things to different people. So one can say they do worship God in the broader sense.

Abner

 

Yes, quite true when referring to the monotheistic religions, but I believe the original poster was attempting to "instruct" instead of converse. When "instructing" one must be precise and actually know something about their subject. If you're referring to Muslim beliefs then their term for God is Allah. Jews refer to G-d or G0d but never "God," which is considered irreverent and blasphemous. Yes, they are all one and the same God but they aren't given the same name.

Think of it this way -- can you imagine a Jew or Christian invoking the name of Allah? Have you ever seen a Muslim writer designate G-d instead of God or Allah? To me that would indicate the importance of name within each belief system.

Just a thought ........

 

It may be ignorant of me, but to me "god" is a title that can be applied to any religion, Yahweh or Alah is just more specific and a Christians tendency to use "God" as opposed to "Yahweh" is probably just tradition or it could be leftovers from Jewish reluctance to use His actual name. I also believe my television can be my "god" so I wouldn't necessarily say that it's inappropriate to say that Muslims believe in "God" as the title is very versatile.
Does that make sense? I don't really believe it works the opposite way (you suggested it would be odd for a Christian to invoke the name of Alah to make a point) because the name is specific as opposed to broad.

If I work for Bank of America and we call our CEO just "The CEO" it would not be unacceptable for me to say Wells Fargo also has a CEO even though it may be customary to call him by name at the competing company. That said if they wanted to call OUR CEO by THEIR CEOs name that would not make sense.

So, I'm suggesting the "god" is simply a generic title for any deity.

 

I suppose if one had no religious beliefs then god, God, G-d, Allah, Yahweh, etc. would seem interchangeable. But they aren't to those of us who hold beliefs and faith in one of the mainstream monotheistic religions. Believers wouldn't call Zeus, Thor, Vishnu, Buddha or Mother Earth "God." Heck, even the Greeks had a hierarchy of gods, with "God" being the supreme number one.

 

Um, I believe in mainstream monotheistic religion. Christians, Jews and Muslims all believe in the same god.

My thinking on simply calling God, well, God is that if there is only one god and that fact is immutable, why bother with a substantially different name? God is God, whether he is Dieu (french), Dios (spanish), Jah (english), Yahweh or Allah etc. They all mean "God" (except Jah, which is Jehovah).

Interestingly, the hebrew word for God/G-d is 4 letters and can be anglicized as YHWH -- translating into Yahweh. This is partly why there is a subset of people who believe that Native Americans are descended from the lost tribes of israel.

 

Interesting points but it appears that your first idea contradicts your second! Maybe it's just me. I still believe that Christians, Jews and Muslims would be pretty disturbed if we called their respective "God" something else within their religion. The Jew and Christian would be horrified at "Allah," the Muslim would be equally disturbed at hearing Allah called Yahweh or Jehovah.

Not that I want to start any God/G-d/Allah/Jehovah/Heavenly Father wars. Maybe this is why I dropped my courses in philosophy/religion -- got really tired of Aquinas's endless discussions of "how many angels could dance on the head of a pin?" (paraphrasing him).

 

Our Degreeinfo theologians doubtless know a lot more about this than I do, but Jesus is said to have spoken Aramaic, and I understand that when the word for 'God' in Aramaic is transliterated phonetically into the Roman alphabet, it's something very similar to 'Allah'.

I believe that God is often called 'El' in Hebrew. The Arabic word 'Allah' is a contraction of the definite article 'al' (the) and 'illah' (the Arabic word cognate to 'El'). It means 'the God'. Muslims like to say it that way, with the singular article, since it rules out plural gods and excludes polytheism. But the Muslims didn't invent that usage and it predates Islam.

 

Apparently the word for God in the Syriac Peshitta is 'Alaha'.

Taking into account his Canaanite dialect, Jesus' cry from the cross is reported to have been something like --

'Alohi, Alohi, lama sabachthani?'

I think that Islam, Christianity and Judaism are agreed that there is one God who is the creator of the heavens and the earth. They all agree that this God revealed himself to the Biblical Hebrews. When members of all three religions speak of 'God' (regardless of the word they use or the language in which they do it), that's the God that they are referring to.

Of course, the three religions disagree pretty emphatically when it comes to the religious significance of Jesus. Muslims accept that he was a prophet but are convinced that the Christians misunderstood him and believe that it's a fatal error to confuse him with God. The three religions also disagree profoundly about the validity of the revelation that Mohammed is said to have been given by God.

 

Wikipedia notwithstanding, after a quick search of various scholarly web sites, I found the following ancient Aramaic words for God (the Aramaic that Jesus likely spoke):
Alaha
Elah
Eli (pronounced like daily)
Alah
Eloh
Al-ilah

I guess we won't know for sure unless divine revelation tells us something else.


You forgot to mention the Jews who are still awaiting the Messiah. Here's the ongoing dialog at our house (me the Anglican, Duh Hubby the Jew):
Jesus is the son of God.
No He isn't.
Yes He is.
No He isn't.
etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum