Lack of Accommodation

YMedad points us to this article:

Last spring, a local YMCA in Montreal installed four frosted windows in one of its exercise rooms to accommodate a neighbouring Hasidic synagogue and religious school. Its devout members complained that their teenaged boys were being distracted by the exposed flesh of women doing their Pilates, aerobics and other activities.

But now the windows have opened up a rift over whether the institution went too far to accommodate a minority. Some Y members have circulated a petition demanding the opaque windows be removed because they not only deprive the room of light, but allow a religious group to impose its ways on the majority.

“It's like getting us to wear a veil. Since we represent temptation, we're being asked to hide,” Renée Lavaillante, who started the petition, said yesterday. “We shouldn't have to hide in order to exercise in Quebec. We're a secular state, and shouldn't hide ourselves for religious reasons.”

Oh, please. I can understand resenting an accommodation if it any way deprives the ones doing the accommodating of something tangible. But what is this small, respectful accommodation depriving the irate exercisers of? The right to exercise in full view of passers-by? I can't take their claim of the diminished sunlight very seriously - anyone who has a frosted window knows that plenty of daylight gets through. The obvious objective here is the complaint that the Orthodox community is attempting to "allow a religious group to impose its ways on the majority". Which in this case, really means "why give anything to anyone else if I don't need it myself". And in my opinion, people who find accommodating the sensitivities of another segment of the community in such a negligible manner to be such an abhorrent notion have a lot to learn about living in a community.

This reminds me of a woman I once worked with. When we worked together on a project, we had the opportunity to deal with a visibly Chassidic man. When he came to a meeting and was introduced to everyone present, my coworker, a Jewish woman who was affiliated enough to know that the last thing this man wanted to do was shake her hand, stuck her hand out, making him and everyone else present (non-Jews who somehow all knew that this man was not comfortable touching a woman) extremely uncomfortable. When I said something to her later, she was extremely indignant. She knew he preferred not to touch women, but somehow felt that his attitude was an affront to her and all womankind, and said she would continue to stick her hand out to every Orthodox and Chassidic man she met in the future. (Yes, you can imagine how unpleasant it was to work with this woman when it came to other issues as well). I ended up in a heated argument with her over the fact that I felt she was refusing to make this small accommodation to respect this man's sensitivities because she had her own ideas about the way things should be done. Nevertheless, true to her word, the next time the man came to the office, she put him in the same uncomfortable position.

Which goes to show you, I guess. Some people just can't be argued with.