The Customer is Always Right (Except When Your Employee Hates Them and Can't Be Fired)

Hate Jews? Or is it Christians or Muslims you can't stand? How about Democrats? Or Republicans? Or smokers? Or fat people? Or skinny people? Or people with freckles?

Don't feel like resuscitating a gay ER admittee... or operating to save the life of the child of an unmarried couple?

As the Washington Post notes, even if you're working for a company that vows to treat everyone equally, your on-the-job biases may no longer pose a problem for you in at least a dozen U.S. states, which...

...are considering new laws to protect health workers who do not want to provide care that conflicts with their personal beliefs, a surge of legislation that reflects the intensifying tension between asserting individual religious values and defending patients' rights.

No, it doesn't. The Post misses the real tension here. And that's not surprising, given that the Post has entirely missed the exact same boat in the smoking-ban debate. The real tension here -- the only tension -- is between the arrangement known as employment-at-will (by which employers and employees are free to enter into and exit from their voluntary arrangement without penalty) and the nanny state enacting law after law after law that chip away at that imperative, uniquely just arrangement.

But the Post isn't alone in the dark.

"This goes to the core of what it means to be an American," said David Stevens, executive director of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations. "Conscience is the most sacred of all property. Doctors, dentists, nurses and other health care workers should not be forced to violate their consciences."

Small problem with Dave's line of reasoning, too: Since no one is "forced" to work in this country, those who exercise such a "choice" not to follow company policy should be fired if their employers so wish, not accomodated by law.

Onward Christian dentists!