FlamingText

Conscience-Driven

The House held holding hearings Tuesday to discuss the effects of new laws passed in several states that require

taxi drivers, bus drivers and other transportation professionals to deliver passengers to their requested destinations regardless of the drivers' personal moral or spiritual objections.

  The House Transportation Committee heard from speakers on both sides of this contentious issue today, including a testimonial from Cicero, Illinois bus driver Lowell Vaughn, whose story prompted a statewide furor when he refused to drop off commuter Ben Bontrager at his workplace, PanGenTech, after overhearing a conversation where he told a fellow passenger that he worked in the research department there.

  "I think he was trying to impress the lady sitting next to him, but I wasn't impressed, I was horrified. I know about the stem cell research they're doing at PanGenTech, and that goes against my beliefs. It's murder, plain and simple."

  Over Bontrager's protests, Vaughn refused to stop the bus, instead proceeding on for an additional ten blocks before allowing Bontrager to exit.

  "I would've gone farther, but other passengers started stacking up behind him, and I had to do my job. He was standing there pitching a fit the whole time, but I wasn't about to let his religious intolerance stop me from doing what had to be done."

  Vaughn considers himself a devout Christian, and feels that the government should not force him to transport people to destinations that his religion considers "wicked." He says laws like those passed in Illinois make it impossible for a person with deep moral convictions concerning stem cell research to be a bus driver.

  Lawmakers heard another perspective from Chicago resident Tomas Rodriguez, who filed a complaint with the Chicago Department of Consumer Services after a taxi driver refused service to him upon learning that his destination was the popular Dance Club Secrets, widely known as a gay bar. The driver, Ali Ihsan Abdul Ghani of Chicago Yellow Cab, "castigated" and "humiliated" Rodriguez for asking to go to "that place where the men dance with other men," Rodriguez told the committee.

"I felt judged and discriminated against." said Rodriguez. "Since when does a cab driver get to tell me how to live? Why couldn't he just do his job?"

"Who died and left him pope?", Rodriguez then asked, rhetorically.

  Illinois is one of several states to pass similar measures recently in response to cases where drivers have refused service to passengers for reasons of conscience. In other states, laws have been drafted to guarantee that transportation workers can not be fired or prosecuted for refusal to transport passengers on moral or religious grounds.

The issue has become a hot-button issue in the ongoing Culture Wars , with support divided along party lines. Chairman of the House Transportation Committee, South Carolina Republican Don Conrad, began his hearing by saying that those who work in the field of transportation should not be forced to choose between their jobs and their beliefs.

  "Nobody, regardless of their position, should be required to violate his or her conscience by dropping a passenger off on the doorstep of an establishment where he has reason to believe that the passenger might engage in action that the driver deems wrong. The government should never force anyone to choose between his business or his beliefs."

  Jill Gordiosky, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee, was an outspoken critic of the "conscience laws" proposed by legislators like Conrad. She said that due to the rise of such incidents in her own state, some counsellors have been advising female clients to wear "decoy" wedding rings if they intend to take a bus to one of the two Tennessee Planned Parenthood locations.

  "They also tell them it might also be a good idea to get off one stop early. There's a liquor store a block up -- a lot of our clients act like they're going into the liquor store until the bus pulls away. That way, if they have to come back, say, three days later, and they get the same bus driver, they'll be able to keep their appointment."

"I know it sounds silly," she said, "but it works, and it isn't technically illegal. Yet."

Note: none of this really happened.

Posted by flamingbanjo at July 26, 2005 09:21 AM