“It’s an abomination to God. Rainbow is not meant to be displayed as a sign for sexual gender.”
That’s what Daniel Snyder wrote on the electronic bulletin board of his employer, Arconic. According to the Des Moines Register and Snyder’s recently filed lawsuit, it’s also what got him fired.
Last June, Snyder received an email from Arconic CEO Tim Myers, which invited employees to respond to an anonymous “engagement survey” for ideas on how the company could improve. Instead of clicking the link for the survey, however, Snyder clicked a link taking him page on the company’s electronic employee bulletin board promoting Gay Pride Month. Seeing the rainbow flag, and thinking he was offering his anonymous input on how his employer could improve, Snyder wrote his comment about the rainbow flag being an “abomination.”
Employees have the right to believe what they believe, privately. Whether it’s LGBTQ+ rights, or a Black Lives Matter button, or a MAGA hat, employees have the right to their own belief structures, and employers should not force, under threat of termination or otherwise, employees to support something with which they do not agree or that offends them.
Yet, covering this ideal under the broad shroud of “religious liberty” is dangerous. It’s a slippery slope between the religious freedom to be personally offended by the rainbow flag, to firing an LGBTQ+ employee, to firing an African-American employee, all in the name of “it’s against my religious beliefs.”
Title VII does not require complete harmony in the workplace. Indeed, in the words of the Supreme Court, “The skills needed in today’s increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints.” Diversity, however, cannot mean that an employer must permit employees to express bigoted views, even if those bigoted views are grounded in the employee’s religious beliefs.
