The R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Home, Garden City, Michigan
For people of normal conscience, the death of a loved one is a deeply painful time. For those of us who have had to make funeral arrangements for loved ones, it is a stressful time. But imagine the discomfort as you make funeral arrangements to realize that the funeral director is a male wearing female clothing. While it could make for an awkward and amusing episode of the Jamie Kennedy Experiment, but for many people such a real-life scenario could be deeply upsetting. But this was the case at a Livonia, Michigan, funeral home that required its employees to dress in a sex-specific dress code in order to be sensitive to grieving family members and friends. However, the Obama Administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) filed suit on behalf of an employee who refused to comply with the dress code of R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes. In its dress code, the funeral home required that biologically male employees wear male clothing, rather than be allowed to wear a female clothing while interacting with the public. The R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Home was founded in 1910, and is now operated in its fourth generation.
In 2007, the funeral home hired a biologically male employee as a funeral director and embalmer at its Garden City, Michigan, facility. Funeral directors and embalmers at the company interact regularly with the public, and especially with grieving family members and friends. But after informing the funeral home of his intention to dress as a female at work, the employee was dismissed for refusing to comply with the sex-specific dress code. Of course, the employee was free to dress as he/she desired outside of work, but was required to abide by the same dress policy that all employees were required to follow while on the job. But on its never-ending quest towards utopia, the Obama Administration took up the fired employee’s cause.
The majority owner of the funeral homes, Thomas Rost, is a Christian whose faith informs the way he operates his business and how he presents his funeral homes to the general public. Mr. Rost believes that he would violate his Christian faith if he were to permit his employees to dress as members of the opposite sex while at work, but the employee dress policy was also designed to be sensitive to interaction with customers at these particularly difficult times of their lives. (Have you ever wondered why these incidents never seem to occur at a Moslem-owned Mustafa’s Stairway To Paradise Funeral Home in Dearborn, Michigan? But I digress.)
Normally, of course, in these type of situations, Christians always lose. But Mr. Rost was represented by Doug Wardlow, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom (“ADF”). Mr. Wardlow argued that the funeral home did not violate Title VII, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in employment. Rather, he argued that Mr. Rost was protected by a different federal law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”), which says that the government cannot force someone like Mr. Rost to violate his faith unless it demonstrates that doing so is the “least restrictive means” of furthering a “compelling government interest.” The infamous American Civil Liberties Union and its local partner, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, also filed briefs in this case against the funeral home owner.
In a seemingly random act of justice, last Thursday, a federal court in eastern Michigan agreed with Mr. Rost that the EEOC’s actions violated RFRA. In his 56-page Opinion and Order (should it really take 56 pages for this type of case?), available here, Judge Sean F. Cox, a President George W. Bush appointee, wrote the following:
The Court finds that the Funeral Home has met its initial burden of showing that enforcement of Title VII, and the body of sex-stereotyping case law that has developed under it, would impose a substantial burden on its ability to conduct business in accordance with its sincerely-held religious beliefs . . . Rost sincerely believes that it would be violating God’s commands if he were to permit an employee who was born a biological male to dress in a traditionally female skirt-suit at the funeral home because doing so would support the idea that sex is a changeable social construct rather than an immutable God-given gift. The Supreme Court has directed that it is not this Court’s role to decide whether those ‘religious beliefs are mistaken or insubstantial….’ Instead, this Court’s ‘narrow function’ is to determine if this is ‘an honest conviction’ and, as in Hobby Lobby, there is no dispute that it is….
Wow, truly a random act of justice! Kudos to Mr. Wardlow and the ADF! And for my readers in Michigan, in a shameless, unpaid commercial plug, Preferred Funeral Directors International awarded R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes the Parker Award in 2011 for demonstrating exemplary service, and the Livonia, Michigan, location was voted the “Best Hometown Funeral Home” in March 2016. This is a big win for religious liberty, but please remember that this is another clear example that elections have consequences, even decades later.
Quote: “Have you ever wondered why these incidents never seem to occur at a Moslem-owned Mustafa’s Stairway To Paradise Funeral Home in Dearborn, Michigan?”
Never wondered. Usually, this specific people group will never ask for employment there in the first place. And if one would dare to do so, they will not sue the Muslim owner because there would be three instant backlashes against them: 1. from the pious Muslims, 2. from the ACLU and other liberals because of cultural insensitivity/xenophobia/islamophobia, 3. from the politicians because they will fear unrest and violent protests in the Arab world once the news crosses the ocean.
Anti-discrimination law had degenerated into a racket wherein some malcontent straw plaintiff is an excuse for lawyers to harass and bully people. It should be seen for what it is: a conveyor of aggression. All of it needs to be repealed.
Men must wear men’s clothing ..
I wonder if the employee could have gotten away with it by simply saying they were dressing like one of the Founding Fathers.
After all, they were fond of powdered wigs, silk stockings and frilly cuffs.
Or a Scotsman who likes skirts. Er, I mean kilts.
He wasn’t hired to express himself. He was hired to perform services in an undertaker’s enterprise. Maybe he’ll understand the world does not revolve around his tuchus before he does any more damage to people (or is financed by the har de har public interest bar do do damage to people).
“No, I’m not a slave to unseemly passion, I’m a slave to unseemly fashion!”
Dress like the boss wants you to dress. Who ever said anything else, until everyone became a victim? Is the business there to please the workers, or the customers?
If the boss wants to make his business go away, that’s his lookout (cf. cake-baking Christians). But who are the workers to call the shots? We are officially insane.
Fr. Michael. It is exactly that insanity that the Russian law you dislike so much was crafted to protect against.
It is the fundamental flaw of the whole concept of individual rights which you championed against Russia while calling insane here.
Mr. Bauman: I fear you make what is called a “category error.” Employees voluntarily contract to perform their jobs to an employer’s satisfaction (assuming the business makes only lawful and ethical demands). Citizens of a country do not enter into a contract with their governments, and they have a right to have their basic human rights respected. How an employee dresses is an entirely different category of behavior than how one worships (or doesn’t, for that matter). Apples and oranges, sir.
Fr. Michael I was referring to the insanity which is quite the same. No, government is not a contract despite the secularists attempt to make it so.
The cross dresser is merely trying to use his “individual rights” That will always lead one of two places anarchy or tryanny. You are arguing against individual rights in the case of the cross dresser and for them in Russia. Now that is confusing.
BTW There is no such thing as individual rights. We are made to share our life as persons in community as God does in the Holy Trinity. We are called to be obedient to God, to recognize and worship the Creator rather than the created thing. Law should reflect that. There is only one God. One Truth. One calling not billions and billions of gods created in our own image. Freedom lies only in our obedience to God.
Individual rights as promulgated and promoted by today’s nihilist ideologies is solely focused on denying God and worshipping the created thing.
All man made law is faulty but law that invites anarchy is no law at all. The purpose of the state is to restrain evil, not to allow license.
The concept of individual rights and self determinatiin is internally inconsistent. It is impossible to object to any behavior, personal or communal because the person or persons acting are simply expressing their individual rights
It is a disguised version of Nietzsche’s Will to Power.
Such nonsense is why we have become, increasingly, a neo-facist state. One of the many inconsistencies in the IR approach is that it ALWAYS leads to greater state control because the state becomes the arbiter of whose rights are paramount. Thus “Right to Life” as a political ideology becomes “Right to Die.”
There is no end to that Hegelian dynamic once you start playing by those rules and thinking that way. It is not progress that results. Progress is a false eschatology. The Hegelian dynamic is a death spiral leading toward dissolution, i.e. sinful.
IR is he opposite of humility and love of God and others that is the substance of the Christian life.
I am an arrogant, ignorant man who is convicting myself as I write. I nevertheless write the truth.