Is this discrimination?

Mark Absher

10-21-10

9:00AM

Oregon passed a Domestic Partnership Law in 2007. This law was designed to accommodate homosexual couples. This court case is based on a county employee, Kathy Slater, who asked to be excused from doing the filing of these partnerships. She works in the clerk of court’s office, along with several others. The court case revolves around her asking to not have to file these partnership based on her religious convictions that those types of relationships are wrong. Her case is that since each filing only takes ten minutes she could have easily handled other types of partnerships and clerical duties while the others in the office handled the homosexual partnerships. So far the court has concluded that the counties effort to relocate her to another department was not sufficient enough.
This is where states, local governments, and corporations make ridiculous mistakes. All they had to do was break up the duties to accommodate this lady and the problem is solved. Instead, this lady loses her job and now they are embroiled in a lawsuit that costs, the taxpayers in this instance, lots of money and time. If we truly advocate for freedom of religion, why can we not just make this small accommodation and have this lady stay true to her beliefs, as constricting as they may seem, and allow those who are not offended by this simple statute handle these cases. The downside to this type of issue is it further divides people; it pits citizens against citizens, over small mundane issues. I’m flabbergasted at the inability for groups of people, even with very different belief structures, to hash things out instead of tying up the already over-burdened court system with trivial pursuits.








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