People, it’s really getting unsafe out there. As Why Evolution Is True informed me today:
Restaurant gives discounts to customers praying in public
A while back, some restaurant, probably in the U.S. South, offered meal discounts to customers coming in on Sunday with a leaflet or bulletin from their church. (I’ve just Googled this and found it was a branch of Denny’s, a national chain, located in Texas.) As I recall, the ACLU or some other civil-rights organization threatened to sue Denny’s for religious discrimination, and the restaurant caved. After all, it’s a violation of federal law to discriminate in public facilities on the basis of religion.
And that should have been the end of that. But, like the Laernean Hydra, when you cut off one religious head, another replaces it. And so, in the last two weeks, many people have called my attention to stories in several places (including the Inquisitr, The Raw Story, and Christian Today about a restaurant in Winston-Salem, North Carolina—Mary’s Gourmet Diner—that was doing something worse: giving customers a 15% discount on their food if they prayed in public in the restaurant!
UPDATE 8/7/2014. Now lookie here! North Carolina diner drops religious discount « Why Evolution Is True. Seems that when the Freedom From Religion Foundation pointed out to Mary’s Gourmet Diner that in offering discounts to people who would pray (in the restaurant), they were discriminating against people who wouldn’t pray, so they’d better give that 15% discount to everyone!
Mary’s decided not to offer the 15% discount to anyone. Good move, Mary.