If Bob Eschliman was a dishwasher working at IHOP, I think people might have a different view about him being fired for making anti-gay comments on his personal blog, but he was the editor of a newspaper.
Now he’s claiming that he was fired for expressing his religious beliefs, which isn’t really the case. He was fired for writing things that hurt the reputation of his employer and undermined their reputation for objectivity. It’s as if the IHOP dishwasher peed in the pancake batter.
But that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to draw the legal lines in a case like this. Employees do deserve some legal protections against dismissal for having unpopular religious beliefs. Does every paper boy for the Newton Daily News have to refrain from objecting to gay marriage?
This is going to continue to come up. As a general matter, employers are under no obligation to employ people whose expression of personal opinions is an embarrassment to the company. But it’s not easy to balance people’s right to religious freedom with employers’ right not to have to tolerate embarrassing employees. I could easily see a case where an employer is of the opinion that anyone who is Mormon or Muslim is clearly out of their minds and an embarrassment to the company who alienates clients. These determinations cannot be left entirely to the subjective interpretation of employers. What’s to prevent me from firing anyone who goes to a Christian church because I think the story of the resurrection is embarrassingly silly?
This idea that anti-gay speech is religiously protected speech is very irritating, but it isn’t that easy to dismiss. Are newspaper editors a special case where different standards should apply? How do we define that difference?
