In 2019, Gerald Groff quit his job, then sued his employer for causing him “much anxiety and distress” by expecting him to show up for work and, after various attempts to accommodate his absenteeism (more than 24 missed shifts in two years), disciplining him when he didn’t.

If he’d sued because working on Sundays interfered with his enjoyment of a particular brunch buffet, or  his ability to keep up with the pro football season, we’d likely have never heard his name.

But his grounds for action were that a personal friend of his — an invisible friend whose very existence is hotly debated, but whose supposed opinions he values very much — doesn’t want him to work on Sundays, so his case made it all the way to the US Supreme Court.

On June 29, that court ruled that employers must provide “religious accommodations” to employees unless doing so “would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.”

The costs, substantial or otherwise, increased or not, aren’t really the problem.

The problem is the treatment of such “accommodations” as an entitlement or right at all.

While it’s a stretch to say that we live in a free society these days, we do live in a society where we at least still enjoy the freedom to choose our employers. We can refuse any job we don’t want to do. We can quit any job we don’t like.

Employers should be similarly free to hire people who are willing to do a job, and to fire people who decide that they’re no longer going to do that job — even if those people claim that their very special invisible friends don’t want them to.

The First Amendment forbids Congress to make any law “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

There was never any question that Gerald Groff was free to exercise his religion as he chose.

Yes, he had to choose between his religious beliefs and any number of jobs that weren’t consistent with those beliefs. If he’d been a Muslim or a Jew, for example, he might have avoided jobs that involved cooking pork (or, as with his version of Christianity, working on certain days of the week). As a Hindu, jobs relating to the slaughter or preparation of beef would have been a poor fit. And so on, and so forth.

But we all have to make such choices, don’t we?

Unlike Groff, most of us don’t go to court to get our religions unconstitutionally established in law as trump cards that employers must “accommodate.”

But maybe we should, since according to the Supreme Court,  Gerald Groff’s sense of entitlement supersedes the First Amendment.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

At least once a week, I come across a column by a conservative (or even supposedly “libertarian-leaning”) writer whose usual beat runs the gamut from “government is too big” to “taxes are too high” to “regulations are too onerous” to “by golly, America is turning into [insert Totalitarian Regime of the Week here] because Marxists have been running the show for decades!”

This particular column, however, is very different. It’s a paean to some miracle of the modern world — the vacuum cleaner, perhaps, or the Big Mac, or the iPad, or on-demand food delivery — and to the “free market” or “free enterprise system” which led to that miracle.

At least once a week, I come across a column by a progressive (or even supposed “socialist”) writer whose beat usually runs the gamut from “government is ineffectual” to “we need to tax the rich more” to “the corporations are running amok due to insufficient regulation and lax enforcement” to “by golly, America is turning into [insert Notorious Environmental Hellhole and Open Plutocracy of the Week here] because libertarians have been running the show for decades!”

This particular column, however, is different. it’s a paean to some miracle of the modern world — the near-disappearance of urban smog due to the Clean Air Act, perhaps, or wind and solar power coming up fast in fossil fuels’ rearview mirror due to legislation focused on climate change, or the construction of “affordable housing” using government grants — and to the decades of progressive initiatives which led to that miracle.

Well, which one is it, conservative? Do we live in an ever-worsening Marxist dystopia that stifles innovation, or in a “free market”/”free enterprise” system?

And which one is it, progressive? Do we live in an ever-worsening libertarian dystopia that destroys the environment and impoverishes the poor to satisfy the greedy rich, or in a society substantially shaped by the New Deal, the War on Poverty, and other progressive programs?

The answer to both questions is:  Both, sort of.

The present situation — all of it — is a consequence of our past actions — all of them.

Maybe we’d have come up with the vacuum cleaner, the Big Mac, the iPad, cleaner air, solar panels and wind turbines, etc. no matter what. Or not if things had gone in different directions.

All we can really know is that we DID come up with them in the real world with its real history, elements of which resemble both the dystopian low points and utopian high points of the conflicting worldviews I see in those odd “departure from form” op-eds.

The big question is: Where are we going next? Where we are and where we have been will determine that as well.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Some creators/distributors of ‘deepfake’ pornography, Nina Jankowicz writes at The Atlantic, “seem to believe that they have a right to distribute these images — that because they fed a publicly available photo of a woman into an application engineered to make pornography, they have created art or a legitimate work of parody.”

Jankowicz, who served as Executive Director of the federal government’s now-defunct “Disinformation Governance Board,” has good reason to be upset with the phenomenon of deepfake porn. She recently discovered that she’s been a subject of it. That’s presumptively both discomfiting and disgusting. I don’t blame her for not liking it one bit.

But creepy as deepfake porn — essentially using software to e.g. put a recognizable facsimile of a person’s head “on” the body of an actor in a pornographic video — may be,  it’s inescapably fiction and expression, and entitled to the same protection as other fiction and expression.

The title of Jankowicz’s piece is “I Shouldn’t Have to Accept Being in Deepfake Porn.” She DOESN’T have to. It doesn’t matter whether she does or not, because she isn’t in the porn. A photo of her — in fact,  an official US government portrait that’s in the public domain — is.

Jankowicz supports legislation that would “provide victims with somewhat easier recourse when they find themselves unwittingly starring in nonconsensual porn.”

But “nonconsensual porn” would involve abducting people and forcing them to engage in sexual acts on camera.  Jankowicz willingly sat for a photo that belongs to “the public” to do with as we wish.

Not everything disgusting violates rights, and only things which violate rights should be treated as crimes, or even actionable torts.

A 1996 Joe Klein novel and 1998 film, Primary Colors, featured  characters who were, recognizably, Bill and Hillary Clinton and members of the Clinton inner circle.  They’re portrayed as engaging in actions which may or may not have actually happened in real life, some of which arguably, to grab a Supreme Court ruling expression, “appeal to a prurient interest.”

Librarian Daria Carter-Clark, who had good reason to believe that one of the characters portrayed as having engaged in a sexual fling with the Bill Clinton character was based on her, sued for libel. She lost. Romans-a-clef — works in which real-life people and events are given fictional treatment — enjoy the same constitutional protections as other fiction.

And that’s exactly how it should be.

There are certainly some sick puppies out there, doing some sick things. We don’t have to like that, and it’s completely understandable when those targeted by such things feel wronged and damaged. But until and unless those sick puppies cross the actual line of coercion or violence, the only legitimate tool for changing their behavior is persuasion.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY