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Jobcentre Apologizes For Anti-Jedi Discrimination
An anonymous reader writes "Chris Jarvis, 31, is described as a Star Wars fan and member of the International Church of Jediism. Said church's intergalactic hoodie uniform is at odds with the strict doctrine of the Department for Work and Pensions, which may require Jobcentre 'customers' to remove crash helmets or hoods for 'security reasons.' Following his ejection, Jarvis filled out a complaint form and within three days got a written apology from branch boss Wendy Flewers. She said: 'We are committed to provide a customer service which embraces diversity and respects customers' religion.'"
Neeeeerrrrrrrrdddd
"These are not the dorks you are looking for."
Not only that, only nerds would get excited about a STOCK response from HR about discrimination, and then post it on slashdot. Not trying to troll here, but HR folks aren't lawyers, and are trained to be extremely careful when it comes to possible litigation. In short, even the bad publicity makes it worthwhile for HR to apologize to this "Jedi" instead of saying something like "we only recognize jedis on active duty, with working light sabers".
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
What's the point of having an Idle section if you never use it?
For some reason in the UK we have exceptions for certain laws if you are a member of a religion. For instance, if you are a Sikh you are allowed to use a motorbike without a helmet since you have a turban in the way (although to be honest, in that case your violation doesn't harm anyone else). In a more outrageous exception, churches are allowed, when choosing a candidate for a job, to discriminate against gays and in the Catholic church's case women. It's one rule for us, and another for them. As the gentleman in the article has demonstrated this is extremely silly. Who defines what a religion is?
No wonder people like this get the crap kicked out of them in school.
I'm by no means even close to being so dedicated a fan, but I'm pretty sure a Jedi would remove his hood when asked to after entering a building, specifically one run by the local government. All the Jedi characters I remember were pretty polite. Also, I don't recall many complaint forms being filled out.
Still, kudos to Ms. Flewers for coming through, even if it's only on a customer service front. If being accommodating is possible, why not formally apologise if someone was upset enough to complain.
Since when do Jedi have to wear hoodies with the hood up? There are numerous points in the movies where Jedi do not wear their hoods up, and numerous occasions where they even wearing a garment that has a hood at all. Clearly, mandatory hoodies is not one of the precepts of Jediism as it existed in the Galactic Republic/Empire.
This reminds me of all the rituals and requirements Catholics make up that was never mentioned in the Bible. But at least they can point at a section in the Bible that can be read to say that the church leaders are allowed to make this stuff up.. As far as I know, not only is there no such statement in Star Wars, Lucas is quite serious about restricting who is allowed to expand upon Star Wars. Is there some Expanded Universe novel in which the Hoodie Requirement is created?
So dude, I mean Mr. Jedi, put your hood down. You don't need it up to be a Jedi. Insisting on putting it up isn't holding fast to your religion, it's playing dress-up.
The enemies of Democracy are
You turn Star Wars terms into acronyms and play with toys, and he's a little extreme?
Had he been a real Jedi, he would have just waved his hand and said "You don't have to remove your hood", to which security would have said "You don't have to remove your hood" and waved him on through.
Because it admits fault where there is none, sets a precedent, and generally encourages this sort of behavior.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
This strikes me as an HR employee seeing some one being a complete Idiot and deserving to get several books thrown at him, and instead thinking "I'm just going to say I'm sorry and let this whole thing go, it's not worth shouting over, even though I'm right." If more people were this mature the world would have a lot fewer needless arguments in it. Just letting things go, too bad more people don't do it.
We are the Borg...
Too far? How about we invent a couple hundred more and all start asking for special exceptions to be made for us.
Maybe that way we can stop treating the "old" religions as though they're somehow special with regards to taxes, government etc.
Long live full separation of church and state.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Most of the time, these things will be singular events.
Do you honestly expect this to lead to a whole bunch of Jedi trying to keep their hoods up in this place?
Sometimes the best response to a one-off like this is to just ignore it and move on. See previous post on letting things go.
Sure, the guy's religion is silly. But no sillier than any other, really.
Of course, she could have simply pointed out that nothing in the Jedi code requires one to keep their hood on at all times, and, in fact, we have counter-examples in every movie...
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Not everything is a slippery slope. You never know, the HR person might just have thought it was funny.
What hospitable bill? I cleaned up after people who thought helmets are optional. Trust me. There is no hospital bill. The turban is a good thing however, it will keep the mess in. Makes it a bit easier for the person collecting the bits.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
... people like me who have to work for a living in order to pay taxes so that shirkers like him can stay on the dole indefinitely without needing to make any effort to make themselves good prospects for employment.
Personally, I'd stop his unemployment benefit there and then because he's quite clearly not using it as stop-gap while he seriously looks for work... and wasting the time of Job Centre staff when there are more deserving people out there who are *DESPERATE* to get a job.
Sometimes I despair at people these days...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Because it admits fault where there is none, sets a precedent, and generally encourages this sort of behavior.
I don't have any mod points, someone give this post some credit. We Americans need to stop letting the loonies think they are on even footing with the rest of society. We're only doing ourselves a disservice. First we let the Scientologists think they are legits, then creationists, then the Tea Baggers, now Jedis? Ugh.
Hey, if we have to take one religion created by a science fiction writer as serious, we have to take them all as serious. Of course, if Jediism had as visible a spokesman as Tom Cruise, there'd be no question.
Why does a special exception for freedom in the context of religion serve this purpose better than freedom just 'cuz? In other words, if the freedom is good in the religious context why is it not good in another context?
-Dave
"You don't get rich writing science-fiction. If you want to get rich, you found a religion." * L. Ron Hubbard, Nov. 11, 1948
-Z
Yes, GP is discriminating against the fantasy authors who wrote Genesis, the Quran, the Vedas...
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
They were also roundly denounced in churches, at times when those views were unpopular - just like homosexuality in the modern era. It's almost like the people giving sermons in church are people with varying opinions, and not particularly special in any way!
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good resume.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Why, it's almost as if they were acting like immature twerps and that Jedi is not actually a real religion.
There's a "real" religion?
My first choice for career was theology, and I have a Ph.D. in New Testament. So I've given this a bit of thought.
...and you're extremely biased.
The problem is that, without these exceptions, you end up setting the disastrous precedent of the state defining what is an acceptable religious belief to hold.
Nope. Bzzt. Wrong. We are talking about exceptions to the law that everyone else must abide by due to your religion. We are not talking about being told what you may or may not believe.
However, allowing freedom of religion--allowing religious groups the freedom to have mixed services, or women in the pulpit, or roller-skating as a religious service, or damned near anything so long as you can make some sort of argument that it serves a religious function--becomes the place where unpopular viewpoints can be expressed.
You certainly don't need religion to express unpopular views or beliefs. I don't think your argument is terribly logical.
It's worth remembering that all the humanist values that you hold dear... the rights of man, civil liberty, universal suffrage, the civil rights movement... were first nurtured in churches, at a time when these views were very unpopular.
Now you're being dishonest. Religion in general and churches in particular are responsible for setting science back centuries or even millennia. If you held an unpopular view as defined by the state religion you could be excommunicated, tortured, killed. The Galileo incident is the standard one brought up but it is tip of the iceberg and had other political components (You don't call those in power simpletons!!!)
So, my point is that granting special privileges to religious belief serves a useful social purpose. Yes, it's good for religious people (although I might argue how good it really is... religions tend to thrive on persecution.) But it's also good for society as a whole. Simply put, kill religious freedom is like eating your seed-corn.
No it doesn't. It grants groups special privileges based on irrational views. You haven't demonstrated your point AT ALL.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
the only similarity between them i can see is the first chapters often contridict the later chapters.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
In fact most of us take religions non-seriously, so this kind of turn of events is most welcomed to expose the overall silliness of all this. "I don't get fish on friday !" "I am proposed pork at lunch !" well, "I can't grow padawan braid" makes one able to enter in this kind of discussion, obviously showing how silly their superstition are but with a good foot to take offense when they say that your religion is silly.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.