According to this report:
Jason Carruthers, the president of Mad Wax on Walker Road, said he was surprised at the legal move since he had explained to the complainant that the spa did not offer Brazilian wax services on male body parts.
“I have no male wax staff,” Carruthers said Friday. “We are not able to provide that service.”A local transgender woman claims she was denied services based on her gender identity and gender expression and is seeking $50,000 for “immense harm to my dignity.” …
“I once again reiterate and state my position and the position of Mad Wax Windsor Inc. that all clients, regardless of sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, are welcome,” he said in a statement. “However, we also welcome and support all of our staff members and respect their religious beliefs and feelings of safety and dignity in regards to the right to perform waxing services on males or male genitals.”
At instapundit.com, David Bernstein writes:
The good news, such as it is, is that this is Canada, and the hierarchy of intersectional harm is a bit fuzzy in this case: “the female employee working that day was a practising Muslim who refrains from physical contact with males outside of her family.” And in an age of Me Too!, are we really arguing about whether a woman should be forced to groom the male genital area?
18 Comments for “Another Legal Action Against an Unwilling Service Provider, with a Twist”
posted by Kosh III on
https://www.thedailybeast.com/oklahoma-governor-signs-anti-lgbt-adoption-law
putting this here since Miller & co insist on posting trivialities instead of serious issues such as how the GOP/Trumpettes continue to attack gay people.
Funny that: a few years back they were soooooo insistent that the Grand Ole Posterior party had changed it’s tune. Nope!
posted by Jorge on
putting this here since Miller & co insist on posting trivialities instead of serious issues such as how the GOP/Trumpettes continue to attack gay people.
I respectfully disagree. The very idea that a man feels entitled to have a wax service specific to women on male body parts, by a female staff, immediately, even after being told of a staff shortage of staff qualified to perform male waxing (quite reasonable for a service almost no men actually seek), is a powerful sign of just how off kilter and treatening western culture has become with respect to LGBT issues and the rights of other members of the public. Damn right that complaintant wants to remain anonymous. Shameless.
I see no problem with the law you highlight so long as the state ensures that there are public or secular adoption agencies that are available to the rest of the public. It does not interfere with anyone’s rights.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Kansas joined the anti-adoption parade today, too, allowing government-funded adoption agencies acting as agents of the state to discriminate against gay and lesbian parents.
posted by Jorge on
Eww! Gross!
(And the great MAN has been manipulated into elevating disgust at LGBT people to a legal principle.)
Isn’t it the transgender activists themselves who say it’s not about the body parts but what’s in their heads? Maybe they should follow that example.
It’ll undoubtedly require some bloodshed before transgender men–>women get accepted at non-transgender men establishments (and after). That’s a choice other people can make–the right for a free civilian to have professional grooming doesn’t strike me as important to the right to have medical care, to live safe in one’s home (especially if one is incarcerated), and many other things you hear transgender people worry about.
posted by Lori Heine on
And yet, we’re being told that this is “attacking gay people.”
They’ve got nothing real anymore. They’re done.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I see no problem with the law you highlight so long as the state ensures that there are public or secular adoption agencies that are available to the rest of the public. It does not interfere with anyone’s rights.
I see no reason why a state government should license/pay a service provider acting on behalf of the government to discriminate against gay and lesbian parents.
We wouldn’t put up with it for a New York minute if a state-licensed adoption agency refused to place children in a home with mixed-race parents or refused to place children of one race with parents of a different race.
We shouldn’t put up with it in the case of discrimination against gay or lesbian parents, either.
posted by Jorge on
I see no reason why a state government should license/pay a service provider acting on behalf of the government to discriminate against gay and lesbian parents.
I see no reason why a state government should say anything at all. To borrow a line from the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell debate, I do not think adoption is an area where it is practical to engage in social experimentation of the sort where we require agencies to twist their religious doctrines or fold up shop entirely. I think it would be best to have some sort of risk assessment study about what the effects of restrictive legislation could be. Until then, if gay people want to adopt, they can open up or patronize the agencies of their choice.
We wouldn’t put up with it for a New York minute if a state-licensed adoption agency refused to place children in a home with mixed-race parents or refused to place children of one race with parents of a different race.
We shouldn’t put up with it in the case of discrimination against gay or lesbian parents, either.
You can leave me out of that, thanks. Continuity of community, values, religion, and language are important and it is perfectly reasonable for agencies to specialize in those areas.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The government is not permitted to conform its actions to the teaching of a particular religion, and an adoption agency, paid by the government and acting as an agent of the government, performing acts of, by and for the government, should not be permitted to do so, either.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I think it would be best to have some sort of risk assessment study about what the effects of restrictive legislation could be.
Good God. The “risk assessment” studies are in and have been for years, with the reputable studies showing that kids raised by gay/lesbian couples have outcomes as good as those raised by straight couples.
Even David Blankenhorn, the fallen darling of the “for the good of the children” crowd, has dropped that old saw, even though he clung to it with his dead, cold bigot hands until a court proceeding forced the truth out of him.
You can try to put lipstick all over this pig, Jorge, but you aren’t going to be able to eliminate the oink.
You can leave me out of that, thanks.
No problem. I’m well aware that whenever discrimination against gays and lesbians comes within three miles of racial discrimination, conservatives run away faster than the rabbits of Shiloh. But don’t expect me to stop raising the issue, though, because it is on point.
posted by David Bauler on
Again. IF the religious exemption didnt just apply to gays and lesbians, it could be argued that a religious exemption has a place.
When you only apply the exemption to sexual orientation [probably not even heterosexuals] you are not defending the First Amendment.
posted by Lori Heine on
Have we actually bothered to ask real transgenders what they think about this? Have we actually bothered to ask real gays or lesbians (off the leftist plantation) what we think about it?
The answer, of course, is–not a bit surprisingly–no.
That’s because the liars and frauds perpetuating this crap really don’t want an answer.
posted by Lori Heine on
Tonight I am attending, again, the wedding of longtime male friends. Again, there will be cake. And again, they will have been baked by people totally willing to make them.
Why? Because we are real people, living in the real world, instead of in a politically-manipulated fricking comic book.
Political writers who deliberately attempt to make the world look different than it really is are liars. Period. it is possible to write politically and tell the truth. What a concept.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Have we actually bothered to ask real gays or lesbians (off the leftist plantation) what we think about it?
So what do you think about it?
Whatever you think, it is probably irrelevant. Canada is a distinct cultural, legal and political environment. Folks from the States too often butt their nose in without any real understanding of Canada. Makes us look like fools, for the most part, in the eyes of Canadians.
posted by Lori Heine on
I defer to friends who actually are transgender. Mine all happen–as improbable as it may seem–to be either conservative or libertarian. They are few in number, and I don’t claim they are a scientific study of the issue.
All, however, are pissed off and fed up with the alphabet-soup Left. They feel they’re being lied to and exploited. They’ve done the hard work of actually making a biological and chemical transition, and a bunch of kids who are willing to do neither are going through a trendy phase and claiming the same status.
I can’t speak for them, either as an American or as a human being, because I have always been completely happy with my birth sex. But I respect them enough not to pretend they don’t exist.
posted by David Bauler on
Can an adoption agency – in the example- refuse on religious grounds for reasons other then sexual orientation? Race? Religion? Ethnicity? If not, dont tell me that its about religious liberty?
As for spa services; they dont normally offer a specific service for people with a penis. Cis or trans men are not discriminated against, unless the policy only applied to certain people with penises.
Heck, it sounds like the service could be provided, but it would need to happen when their was available staff.
This is not want most trans folk are worried about.
posted by Lori Heine on
At the most recent reception, I took too many frosting roses. I was getting a sugar headache, but I didn’t want to waste food. So I went over to a table in which there were nothing but men, and I–quite innocently–asked if anybody wanted my flower.
It turns out that this was quite hilarious. “Are you saying you want to deflower us?” one man asked. Another said, “Honey, you’ve come to the wrong table.”
Not a great idea, as it turns out.
posted by JohnInCA on
Out of idle curiosity, under current non-discrimination law in the states that includes sex as a protected class, can such a spa refuse men and/or women?
That said, and this is as someone that’s never gone to a spa for any kind of wax treatment, aren’t such things usually by appointment? Doesn’t seem like a walk-in service.
posted by David Bauler on
The article seems to imply that wax treatments for people with male genitalia are rarely requested, but the business would schedule it, it just wasn’t a ‘walk in’ thing.
So, the customer didnt want to have to wait.