Morality and amorality of businesses

Published 10:58 am Friday, April 24, 2015

Regarding J.M. Olsen’s letter (“Freedom of Religion is sacred, and it’s the law,” KingstonCommunityNews.com), I find it hard to believe that a business can have any deeply held religious beliefs at all.

I have yet to see a business sitting in a pew, perhaps taking Communion, or walking down the aisle. Though some may judge an enterprise as having a certain morality, I think the best that can be hoped for is recognizing the fact that any given business is amoral.  It has no beliefs of its own.

Business owners, on the other hand, may well have deeply held religious beliefs. They are also certainly and properly guaranteed every right to hold and act on them in the privacy of their clubhouse, church, or home, where they can display God’s unconditional love in whatever manner they see fit. But a business, in the public realm, serving the public, needs to treat the entirety of that public impartially, unless doing so can demonstrably show harm to the business.

Religious persecution against minorities is very much alive in some areas of the world, a fact that we as a whole find repugnant. I would like to think that here the doors have been closed on using religion as an excuse for treating certain segments of the population differently. That’s something the Klan was good at not that long ago and it’s a door that needs to be shut forever.

Perhaps if these owners are so disgusted with the public as it is, that God has so graciously given them to serve and upon which they make their living, they should sell the business and find a lofty rock to sit on. Thusly situated, they can contemplate just how their actions will never change anyone’s behavior anyway, with the possible exception, of course, being those good people who are offended by discriminatory actions wherever they are found and choose to no longer patronize that business.

Norm Nielsen
Kingston