I was reading that California has declared political affiliation to be a protected class with regards to anti-discrimination legislation. Seems kind of crazy to me. What do you all think?
No. Political affiliation should not, IMO, be a protected class. It should not be so because all it takes to have a political affiliation is ticking a box on a form. That's about as durable as a hairstyle.
Can I assume you feel the same way about religion as a protected class?
No, you cannot assume that, but you didn't; you asked, so I'll respect than and answer what I suspect is your implied question.
I don't construe religion and politics to be verisimilar enough to accord to politics the same protected status that I accord to religion. I don't because of the religions I studied in school -- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and a smattering animism -- at their sociological core they all embrace the same notion that drives temporal interactions among men: charity.
Charity is at the core of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is expected that people share their wealth with those who are disadvantaged. In addition to contributing financially, all three faiths call upon their followers to be socially responsible to one another. Stewardship and care of the earth is also highly valued by all three faiths. To display charity is more than an act of good will; it is an attitude, or way of life, that embodies compassion and a love for humanity. These concepts are deeply rooted in all three religions.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam have charitable mechanisms to collect donations from their followers and to redistribute that money for those in need. In Islam, zakat is the name of one of the obligatory duties that Muslims must follow. It refers to the mandatory giving of one’s wealth to the poor. Interpretations about the amount that must be given varies; some believe it should be 2.5% of a person’s annual wealth, while others believe it is 10% of an individual’s income. In Judaism, tzedakah is the Hebrew word for the obligatory act of charity. Generally, Jews must give one-tenth of their income to the poor. In Christianity there is a similar concept known as the tithe. This is when followers give one-tenth of their gross income to support the Church and its beneficiaries, which include the disadvantaged and needy.
To keep this short, I'll merely point you to a few links on the role of charity in Buddhism and Hinduism:
I think one can readily see notions of charity in how Native Americans at least attempted to welcome Europeans upon first meeting them.
Because of the sociological universality of religions' core tenets, there's nothing that need be protected; all of them profess the same basic notion about how humans should interact. I need not be protected from you when at some core we agree. So on that level, politics and religion are much the same. At their core, most political doctrines profess to want the same things.
The big thing that distinguishes religion from politics is that religion has indivisible temporal and spiritual dimensions, whereas politics is wholly temporal. Because of its spiritual, theistic, dogmatic dimension, and unproven (perhaps unprovable) nature of that dimension, to be fair, at least on an intellectual level, one must accord religion protected status. It's sort of like this:
If I believe in a deity that I can't prove unequivocally exists, and you believe in a different one -- or maybe the same one, but neither of us is aware that it's the same one -- that is no more unequivocally provable, it stands to reason that one of us is wrong, or both of us are wrong, or both of us are right. Since the abstract and absolute accuracy of neither of positions is testable/provable, both our positions should be protected so that in the interest of charity toward one another, we look beyond our differences on the matter. Protected status, then, is nothing other than a codification requiring us to do so because there's simply no way to discern which of our propositions is correct, or at least more or less accurate, which understanding is better.
With public policy propositions, it's possible to determine which one is indeed more or less accurate, which one is better. A society can try one set of propositions and then try another. Doing exactly that is how, for example, we've figured out that for all democracy's ills, it's still, at least for reasonably well educated and informed polities, better than the alternatives, at least if economic growth be the bar by which such a thing is measured. It's also how we've figured out that in a poorly educated and poorly informed society, democracy is not at all the best system. One need only compare and contrast India and China's advancement since about 1950 to see as much. Within six months of one another, India became a democracy and Mao instituted central control of China. Using the economic bar, which is today ahead? One doesn't even need a lab so vast and complex as two nation states. Who having a house full of kids lets their kids' "voting superiority" drive the direction of the household? Nobody. It's because democracy doesn't at all produce better outcomes when the people having a vote in matters haven't a clue of what's what as goes the matters on which they are called to vote.
Just as we have "petri dishes" whereby we can evaluate the adequacy of political systems, we can create "petri dishes" whereby we test and analyze the sufficiency of public policies, policy dogma, if you will. And, lo and behold, we have done so. Pick a given political goal, the means implemented to achieve it and the ends it aims(-ed) to achieve, and one'll be able to find some place where it's been tried. It's rare that the sought ends are perfectly achieved; however, perfection isn't often the goal, so perfect outcomes not being achieved isn't a rational basis for assessing the means. That said, if one's comprehensive in one's analysis, one'll find that either the preponderance of the ends were achieved or they weren't.
Can one do that with regard to theistic ends, say, determining whether one's eternal soul has been by one's faith saved? Or whether one's soul is in heaven, hell, purgatory, paradise, or wherever? Or whether one's soul formed the stuff of a star in the sky? Or whether dead "Fido" has come back as some other creature? Regardless of how preposterous any of those things may seem, I don't think so, but neither can I eliminate them as ends that may have been achieved.
Now as goes the notion of religion as a protected status and on a practical level considering an employees' expression of his/her religious views, I am of the same mind as I am re: their expressing their political positions. If one's expression/practice of one's religious beliefs results in one's being a source of discord, disunity, diminished profitability, or some other detriment to the firm at which one works, one needs to work elsewhere. I don't much care that one adheres to the religion or political stances one does; I care that one doesn't express them in a way that compromises my business operations. For example,
- If one is going to tell me, one's employer/manager, that one cannot/won't perform a lawful task I ask one to perform as part of one's job, it's possible I'd consider letting one go. Not because one holds/embraces the belief one does, but because one cannot/won't perform the work I am paying one to perform. Why one won't do the work really doesn't matter to me. I need the work done, and if one won't do it, well, one just won't, but I need an employee who will. In such a situation, it can be "you" or it can be someone else.
- If one's religious or political stance requires one to get on one's "soapbox" about it and one's doing so compromises the productivity, profitability, etc. of my firm, I might first tell one that one needs to cease and desist with that expression or take it to a different employer. If one persists, yes, I'm going to fire the person. I'm not going to fire them for having whatever be their stance; I'm going to fire them for disrupting my workplace.
Lastly, as goes politics and religion and "durability," yes, I see them as the same. Hopefully, however, the above explains how I differentiate, and where I don't do so, the two.
Certainly LaVey Satanism does not. I would also argue that tithing and charity are not the same, even if one would expect a church to be involved in charitable work; it seems possible to me that a church might not be able to do charity work if the income it receives through tithes is only enough to pay for the expenses to keep that church running, for example.
