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Access but No Acceptance By Teek |
“Come on, Jessica, let’s get you a pretty new dress for doing well on that math test today. I’m so proud of you.”
Beaming, Jessica looked up at her mom, “It was a really hard test, Mom. I can’t believe I got the best score in the class.”
“Jessica, you got the best score out of all the third-grade classrooms, the best in the school. You’re a smart little girl, Jessica. Nothing is going to stop you from soaring to the stars.”
“I’d love to fly around the stars. Do you think I’ll be able to do that someday?”
As the two of them walked across the parking lot, Mom replied, “Sweetie, that Elon Musk guy we talked about the other day . . .”
“That rich guy with Autism,” Jessica asked?
“Yeah, him. He makes spaceships really fast, almost as fast as he makes electric cars. I am sure by the time you are a grown-up, regular people like you and me will be able to fly around in space.”
“That would be really cool.”
“So, what color dress do you want?”
“I was thinking of a nice yellow sundress, but let’s see what they have.”
Mom looked around as they entered the department store before heading for the girls' department.
“Excuse me, Ma’am,” a man in a security uniform said, approaching the two of them.
“Yes,” Mom questioned?
“I’m sorry, but your daughter is not allowed in the store.”
Mom quizzically looked at the man and then down at Jessica, “Why not?”
“We don’t serve her kind here.”
Mom looked around the store, seeing many parents with children, “You what?”
“You will have to leave, Ma’am. Your daughter is not welcome here. You can come back and shop yourself, but not with your daughter.”
“You want me to leave my nine-year-old daughter in the car while I shop? Are you nuts?”
“No, Ma’am,” the security guard explained. “She isn’t even welcome to be in the parking lot. If you want to shop here, you must take her home and return without her.”
“And why, may I ask, is my nine-year-old not allowed on your premises?”
“She has a disability, Ma’am. We refuse to serve individuals with disabilities.”
“You what?”
“It is store policy that we do not serve individuals with disabilities. Now either leave, or I will have to call the police.”
Mom looked down at her daughter, leaning on her hand crutches, “We walked up a ramp to get into the building, but you don’t serve people with disabilities?”
“Yes, Ma’am. The building code requires all buildings to be handicap accessible, so a ramp was required when the store was built. The US Supreme Court, however, says we don’t have to serve any person that would impede upon our religious beliefs. Some of our employees have religious beliefs that people with disabilities should not be out in public. Because of them, we have made it store policy to refuse service to people with disabilities, so we don’t offend our employees.”
“What in the world?” Mom looked down at Jessica and then at the security guard.
“Please just leave, Ma’am. You don’t want to make a scene in front of your daughter there.”
“Make a scene,” Mom said very loudly. “Make a scene? You refuse to let my nine-year-old in your store because she has a disability, and you don’t want me to MAKE A SCENE?”
The security guard pressed a button on his walkie-talkie, “Mike, call the police.”
“Mom,” Jessica got out while holding back a tear. “It’s okay, Mommy. I don’t need a new dress. It was only a dumb math test. Let’s just go.”
“See what you are doing to my daughter?” Mom practically shouted. “She was so proud of her accomplishments. Now she just called it a dumb math test. How dare you devalue my little girl for getting the best score on the end-of-the-year third-grade math test. How dare you discriminate against individuals with disabilities and try to teach my daughter that she is less than others.”
Jessica looked around at the crowd collecting around them, “Mommy, it’s okay.”
Mom got down to Jessica’s eye level, “No, it is not okay, Princess. What they are doing here is wrong.”
“But, Mommy, everyone is looking.”
Mom stood up and looked around at the assembled people, “How would you like it if they told you that you couldn’t shop here because your daughter has a unicorn and rainbow on her shirt or you because you have a beard? Is it right for them to turn my daughter away because she is disabled?”
“Ma’am,” the security guard interrupted. “It is store policy. We do not serve people with disabilities. Now please just leave.”
“Why should I? Your store policy is wrong,” Mom said while looking around at the crowd who were mostly nodding their heads in agreement.
“Mommy, he’s just being a bully. Let’s just go.”
“Sometimes it is important to stand up to a bully,” Mom stated.
“But other times, it is better to walk away, calm down, and confront them with your brain, not your anger. You taught me that.”
Mom looked at Jessica and then at the security guard, “I did teach her that. Fine, we will go, but this isn’t over.”
The mom of the little girl with the unicorn shirt commented, “You’re really not going to let this lady shop just because her daughter has a disability? My son is Learning Disabled. Does that mean you won’t let me shop here?”
“Your son isn’t with you, Ma’am,” The security guard stated. “You can shop here without your son.”
As Jessica and her mom turned and headed for the door, a few other customers left their carts or chosen products and walked out with them. Most just went back to shopping.
Walking out of the store, many commented on how wrong it was to discriminate against people with disabilities or questioned how they could turn away someone as pretty and beautiful as Jessica.
When Mom and Jessica got to the car, Mom sat in the driver's seat and took several deep breaths, “I can’t believe it is legal to discriminate like that. It can’t be. Is it?”
“Mommy, lots of people call me names, don’t let me play with them, or are mean to me. It’s okay. I’m getting used to it.”
“I wish I could make it all stop, Princess. It is wrong,” Mom looked at Jessica. “You know that fancy dress shop in the city? Let’s go get you a dress there.”
Jessica smiled as they pulled out of the parking spot.
Turning onto the highway, Mom was thinking about what she could do to combat the department store turning away people with disabilities.
Comments
This story is so wrong.....
I work with people with disabilities everyday. I am glad I don't have the job of taking my clients shopping because I would not be able to hold back if my people were harassed. My hubby worked in activities for a few months and would tell me stories of normies making disparaging remarks about our clients when he took them out shopping. My clients all have intellectual and developmental disabilities, I have a mild one myself being on the autism spectrum. This story may become reality in the near future we already have states passing Don't Say Gay laws and banning drag performances and that is very scary for people like me that are not only in a gay marriage but are also a gender fluid crossdresser. Thanks for the story it was a good quick read but as my blood pressure is already up I better not read it again.
EllieJo Jayne
Ouch
Not quite there yet, but too close for comfort.
Reminds me of the proverb:
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Clearly a violation of the US constitution, that grants the freedom from [state] imposed religion. Meaning you have the right to hold your own religious beliefs, but at the same time forbids you to impose your own beliefs on others!!
Unless you are a christian.
For some reason they are permitted to shove their god down everyone's throat with no consequences.
ShadowCat
I think the muslims started it
Back in 1981 we spent one year in the USA. Growing up in a religious community and attending private school, I was accustomed to starting the school day with a short devotional and a prayer. It was a total shock to me that there was not even a Bible available in the class room in public school!
Later I learned that the USA government had been sued back in 1969 for violating the constitution when the Apollo 8 astronauts reads the creation story from Genesis during the live telecast from moon orbit. Later even the wearing of "christian" symbols as jewellery (crucifix on a necklace or earrings) was apparently outlawed in public schools.
And if I remember correctly, the Muslims insisted on them using their own religious symbols in public schools in the 1990s as part of their "freedom of religion", while Christians and Jews were forbidden to display their own religious affiliation.
I can totally see the positions get progressively more extreme, as each group gives the pendulum an extra push as it swings towards them.
Tolerance is actually accepting that my freedom ends exactly where it meets the freedom of my neighbor.
Very strong impact
I just wish I had been in a better mood before reading it .
Most returned to their shopping
On their heads.
Emma
An odd take
on how a Supreme court ruling could pan out.
I was furious with the ruling
When I thought about writing this story, I was furious with the ruling and trying to figure out the best way to express that. My initial thoughts were to use a transgender kid, but figured there was a huge group of people who would not read one word after I said trans. So, I went with disability. I grew up in the disability community and being discriminated against. Laws came into place making some of it illegal, but that did not stop people. The ruling out of the court basically legalized discrimination. All someone has to do is say it goes against their religious beliefs. Pick any minority group you want to discriminate against, and you can twist the court's ruling to apply. I fear our future.
Keep Smiling, Keep Writing
Teek
We're Not There Yet...
The ruling only applies to a person or business's creative expression -- if a gay couple walks into that bakery and wants a couple of donuts that are on display there, they still have to sell them to them.
Eric
define creative expression
The problem is that it is hard to define creative expression. A dressmaker who sells the dresses she makes. Can they refuse to make a dress for a black, gay, or trans individual? Their dress designs are their creative expression. And from experience, judges in the lower courts are famous for seeing an opening and expanding it to other areas.
Yes, at the moment, it does not cover big stores or disabilities, but it opened the door for businesses to discriminate against anyone based on a person's "religious beliefs." That is a dangerous door to open, especially with it being so vague on certain points.
Keep Smiling, Keep Writing
Teek
What has a lot of folks up in
What has a lot of folks up in arms is that the Supreme Cort shouldn't have ruled on the case *at all*.
That's because there *was* no case. It was all hypotheticals. The woman isn't actually doing business as a web designer. The state hasn't tried to apply the law to her. And her so-called "request" from a gay couple turns out to be an utter fabrication as well.
It'd been rejected by all the lower courts on those grounds. The SC should have rejected it as well, for the same reason. Which is exactly what all 3 dissenting justices noted.
They 6 how ruled in favor didn't follow their own rules. Which may be grounds for Congress to do something. Which is, alas, what it will take, since there isn't any way to sue the SC or individual justices.
Brooke brooke at shadowgard dot com
http://brooke.shadowgard.com/
Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world
"Lola", the Kinks
Except they don't.
They didn't even before the ruling, which is a big part of the issue WITH the ruling:
A business can refuse to sell to/work with anyone they want without need for a reason. It can be used for discrimination, but is also what allows folks who do work for commission to pick and choose their clientele. Even after the abolishment of Separate But Equal (due to it never being the latter,) businesses have always had the right to not serve a customer if they felt that doing so went against their business' interests.
The ruling didn't give the business any rights or allowances it didn't already have, other than overt clearance to say the quiet part out loud, and that permission is in itself dangerous, because it allows for businesses to seek validation for their discrimination.
We already lived in a world where discriminating against transfolk or disabled folk or gay folk or folk of other races was allowed legally if you were quiet about how you did it. The court's ruling, without a real case, without a real situation to rule on at all, is simply confirmation from the court that they won't help to prosecute if people stop being quiet.
After all, think about the number of businesses that already flaunted the legally required allowances for disabled folk, or go out of their way to make it clear they're hostile to LGBT or non-white folk with the imagery they feature or media they showcase.
This isn't a "We're Not There Yet" situation: it's an "We've Always Been There" one.
Melanie E.
Sad but true
The fact is you are right. I have dealt with discrimination since I was a child dealing with my disability. I have been repeatedly discriminated against in many different ways. The one I hate the most is when a new boss comes in and decides to make my life as miserable as he can make it, so I quit. I was too good at my job to actually fire me using policies and procedures.
Keep Smiling, Keep Writing
Teek
Choosing client as freelancer
There is a certain inherent need and obligation for each and every-one of us to pick and choose our clients. Otherwise we could ALL end up in jail, or the rule of law would be suspended.
This is especially important for those that offer goods and/or services on the basis of customer commission!!
Refusing a customer, because he either wants us to break the law, or provide him with the means to break the law explicitly himself, should be a no-brainer.
The same reasoning should also be applicable to the violation of an established code of ethics.
It becomes more difficult when applied to a personal "Code of Ethics" or even "Community Customs", not to mention the so-called decency laws.
Case in point: Back in the late 1990s I was approached by a business (the principal share-holder had an outstanding international search and arrest warrant against him, for tax evasion in Europe) to develop a bookkeeping/accounting system that should allow each and every transaction to be marked as to whether to include in the "official" financial reports and government audits or not. There were also persistent rumors that this business was also involved in drug smuggling.
Even though I was the only independent programmer in more than 300km around, I told them politely but emphatically to find somebody else for the job, since I was trying to be as completely conformant with the tax laws as possible.
Within four years the principal share-holder was extradited to Europe and the business liquidated by the local authorities.
Just my 2 Cents worth of opinion based on personal experience and some common sense.
This story
needs a much wider audience than just here on BCTS. I wish it wasn't quite so short, because then it could be published on Kindle, at the very least, But I think being any longer would detract from the impact. I just wish there was some way to get more people to read it.
I thought this was simply a clever story about a hypothetical
situation.
Then I read the comments.
I am becoming more and more convinced that there is something socially wrong about the American side of the duck pond. Whatever happened to "do no harm" and "live and let live" as ways of life?
Chilling effect
The chilling effect of SCOTUS recent rulings will likely be the thing most remembered about the Roberts court. The tragedy is all those who have to suffer because of it. If we want better governance it is up to us to make it happen.
The arc of history bends toward progress. But it does not happen by itself.
Organize, Protest, Lobby, Vote.
Your friend
Crash
Chilling
That the Supreme Court ruling could lead to this is just heartbreaking. It's scary to imagine what it could mean for LGBTQIAP+ people, disabled people, and people of color. All of these people have been discriminated against based on scripture, so it's absolutely possible that a situation like you described could actually happen. The far-right has been working to set our country back seventy years by erasing all of the gains that minorities have worked hard to get, and the SCOTUS ruling made discrimination easier.
This still damage from the Trump years
He weighted the Supreme Court with radical Christians and misogynists, until they are replaced with human beings then the US is no longer a democracy and if the Republicans get power again it will never be so again. Turkeys are voting for Christmas.
Angharad
But Turkey not Voting for
Sweden.
World movement
I would love to say this period of the extreme conservatives speaking out and trying to dictate their views on all of us, was limited only to fanatic Trump Cult members. Unfortunately, this type of stuff is being seen around the world. Trump is only the figure head of the USA version of this movement.
Personally, I am choosing to believe it is all part of a last ditch effort of a dying viewpoint/way of life as they try to hold onto their power and beliefs. The world's youth are moving to accept differences in people and live as one's true self, not a false image forced upon them by society. Discriminatory views are dying, and ultra conservatives are doing whatever they can to prevent that death. We will stand together and crush it into history. Just understand, it is not going to die without a fight.
Keep Smiling, Keep Writing
Teek