This is tricky for me to get right on the street. Take one hypothetical example, in which the owner has a bike shop where most of the clients are friends and sex/gender dissidents from various diversity activist groups. And they get applications from individuals who list evangelical missionary work from religions known to fervently renounce homosexuality. Now, maybe the applicant doesn’t know it’s a dyke bike shop, but is it OK to file 9 that application without an interview? I ask sincerely because neither answer sits right with me- exposing the religious youngster to a work environment sure to lead to quitting or being let go due to conflicts over valuing gender rebellion; or denying them the chance to get the job and therefore discriminating against certain religions in a way I wouldn’t stand for were the religion a less dominant one.
Or another hypothetical example where the owner of a booth which sold rare books to regular customers at antiques shows had a long term bdsm leather family, and the person hired (formally or just given some bucks to watch a different table) was a strident ‘all power imbalances reinforce the patriarchy and degrade the feminized participants’ believer. The owner could feel genuinely threatened that via the proximity of working together, the ‘employee’ would learn of the bdsm relationships and out them to regular customers, causing a potential socially awkward situation and/or loss of income. But then could a kinkster discriminate against a non-kinky feminist? (I am a feminist, FWIW) Readers, please take these on good faith that I’m not throwing out wacky and wild examples to try to play the devil’s advocate, this is shit that comes up in my work and these are subtleties I haven’t resolved within my ‘as a person who pertains to various socially disadvantaged demographics, I am opposed to discrimination and in favor of diversity’ modus operandi.
In some cases, you just don’t know who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed. Money makes a big difference, and in another reply above Gilbert Wham made a great point about offering paid work with stipulations can be a form a coercion. But what happens when the boss has less wealth than the college kids s/he hires? And what happens when the religious group functions as the clear oppressor of the owner’s demographic?
Real life example: I live in a South American country where abortion is illegal and the girl/woman who aborts and gets caught can be jailed (though the law says it should be non-punishable, in practice we recently had a teenager bleeding out in a jail cell after the gyno at a hospital called the cops on her suspecting she had tried to end her pregnancy). So, in light of this there are thousands of reproductive rights groups operating everywhere from someone’s living room to a funded area of the government trying to get abortion rights written into law. A common tactic of Catholic, Mormon, Evangelical and MRA groups is to force their way onto these committees to block all productive debate. So, in cases like the National Women’s Conference brainstorming workshops on how to achieve abortion rights, they just bounce the groups who go to break up debate. However, these groups are 100% sure that they are the victims of religious discrimination. And in that specific situation, they are the minority, because most people who would travel to a Women’s Conference are pro-choice. But in the society as a whole, the power dynamic is harder to call.
