A lawsuit against Jeed Blue involving Abraham Lunger, an Orthodox Jewish passenger, sheds
lights on a disturbing display of closed mindedness. Lunger's refusal to sit next to
a woman solely based on his religious beliefs resulted in his expulsion from the flight.
His uncompromising stance highlights a rigid adherence to outdated principles at the expensive common
decency. This incident underscores the challenges airlines face when passengers prioritize their beliefs over
the convenience and comfort of fellow travelers, and it serves as a stark reminder
of the intolerance that still persists today in society, even in seemingly trivial situations
like airplane seating arrangements. This story is from Business Insider by Grace Dean on
March twelfth, twenty twenty four. And I'm sure my fellow panelists are going
to have plenty to say about this. This is just like a this is
the low hanging fruit, proverbiably so. But before we do, I just
want to point out a few things here. There is more to the lawsuit
than just that particular part of it. They're also alleging that the airline was
mistreating them both during the incident and afterwards. So there was some other claims
made by the accuser. They were told they're according to them, they were
told that they could ask around to see if anyone would switch. The flight
attendant apparently yelled at them to return to their seat and then wouldn't let them
switch, even though other passengers were saying that they would be willing to switch.
And then the pilot came out and said that they was refusing to let
them switch and that they would have to get off the plane, And so
they got off the plane. Apparently they weren't allowed to collect their luggage,
and then they had to pay for the price difference for a flight for the
next day, and they even had they were charged a ticket change fee,
So there was more than just the just the seating arrangement. Obviously, that's
a ridiculous expectation, clearly sexist and really actually kind of creepy. But there's
good ways to deal with those kind of things, and there's bad ways to
deal with those kind of things. So if we're assuming that all of those
details from the story were correct, because really we're only hearing one side of
the story. The airline itself didn't didn't have any lengthy statement about this,
probably because you know, it's an on it's an ongoing case. But I
don't know, I'm kind of leaning towards the passenger should probably wins. It
sounds like they were kind of mistreated after the fact, and but it wouldn't
be necessarily because of religious intolerance. It was just because of the way they
were treated afterwards. Having said that, Having said that, I do have
to say that I think it can make a good business sense for for airlines
and businesses in generals to have certain a certain level of accommodation if it can
be done fairly and consistently. For example, I'm a teacher. In the
school that I work at, we generally go go out of our way or
put it put some effort into to accommodate students that have religious holidays and things
like that, and we're asked to work with the students and so forth.
And my approach, being an atheist, my approach to this in the past
has been to I kind of work a little flexibility into the system, okay,
instead of instead of saying, well, you can take this holiday,
because you know, because you have a religious holiday, I just give everybody
you know you can, you can have one flex day or things like that.
There are certain things that you can do to to accommodate, not to
kind of accommodate what I like to call preference requests, okay, And I
think that's really the way to approach these kind of things. I don't like
the idea of going out of your way to accommodate a religious request, but
I do think that that falls within a category of types of requests. Maybe
somebody wanted to sit by the window, or maybe, you know, somebody
needed to sit near the bathroom because they're not feeling well, or maybe somebody
didn't want to sit next to a particular person because of their you know,
because of their religious well because of their religious bigotry basically. But you know,
I would categorize all those into kind of like a preference style requests,
and I think that they can be addressed and they can be treated fairly and
consistently. You can already in many airlines you can specify where you know where
you want when you buy your ticket, you can say where you want to
sit, and so there is some of that flexibility worked in infidel. What
are your thoughts on that? How do you what was your take here?
It's funny you mentioned that because a while back my son flew Jet Blue and
said he would never do it again because they nickeled and dimed everything. And
one of those things that they do nickel and dime, though, is the
fact, if you want to choose what seat you sit in, you can
pay the fee. So at the end of the day, this guy had
every opportunity to avoid sitting next to some dangerous worldly woman who could have tempted
him into something by just choosing to pay the extra money and sitting next to
his wife who was actually on the flight, or the other gentleman that was
with him as well. So for that, I feel that their expectation of
accommodation seems more of an idea of privilege than actual need, because it's a
fabricated need. They could have avoided this by paying the money. I also
found it interesting though that it's Jet Blue, because one of the heirs of
Beneficiarias of Jet Blue is one of these tad wife people, So I would
expect the company to look rather positive towards these closed minded behaviors, you know,
they promote something, and that's pretty much akin to this idea, you
know, along with people like Mike Pence, who you know, can't go
to a dinner with a woman unless his wife's there or someone else is there
to chaperon him. But really, for me, what I find most disgusting
about it is it really feels like a build in excuse for bad behavior for
men, because if you can't control yourself sitting on a plane sitting next to
some woman, then then that's a problem you have, not the airline and
not a woman. You know, we mentioned not too long ago, we
discussed a story about a pastor who excused rape because of a woman wearing shorts.
And I just find that this type of mentality is all just wound up
together. And when it comes down to the flight attendant getting upset and yelling
at them, well, I don't know how that was. We weren't there,
but I will say that the last time I was on a flight,
to think about somebody just standing there mildly in the in the middle of this
big, wide, okay not so wide aisle, saying just politely standing there
because they couldn't sit next to the woman who was in the seat next to
them. That just seems so disingenuous because it's not like we can you know
too deep. I mean, two people walking past on those aisles is tight
enough already. So just the mirror act of standing there with you know,
with your thumb up your ass and in the middle of the aisle. I
can understand why an overworked flight attendant would say, hey, come on,
sit down, let's get this going. Does it excuse bad behavior? No?
But is it I understand that, yes, because look, just sit
down and fly, fly where you want to go, or pay the fee.
But you know, I could go on with this forever, so I
should probably not. And with that in mind, Richard, what do you
think about this? Well, you said something that I that I was not
aware of. Maybe I missed it about the guy's wife was on there with
him, obviously, Yeah, they should have booked those together with with him
next to the window and her in the middle, you know, some way.
But why didn't the wife switch with him and sit next to the woman
and he go to the back to the other seat unless there was also a
woman there. That's just you know, there's a lot of facts here that
my legal background tells me I can't. I can't decide who's right or wrong
without really seeing the evidence or taking a deposition or two. I mean,
it's these are these are he said? She said, they said kind of
stories, which, you know, until you get people under oath and find
out what's really going on, you're probably not going to know exactly. But
what's at the bottom of this that bothers me that you know, this kind
of thinking is still going on. It's basically early biblical patriarchy. I mean,
that's what it is. Over two thousand years this has been going on,
and these people still think the same way. I mean, aren't they
ever going to move along with history and the advancements of science and the fact
they're on an airplane. I mean, they didn't have airplanes when those rules
were made back in four or five hundred, you know, BC or whatever.
So it just I don't know. I mean, we've got to work
toward figuring out how to change things. The problem is a lot of these
people that think that way, you know, they indoctrinate their kids to think
the same way. And the only way we're going to get our society to
be better is to get their kids and our kids to have the ability to
ask questions and investigate and you know, have an open mind and see what's
out there without you know, being you know, how would I put it
impeded with dogmatic blinders? Yeah, oh, Jason, I'm sure you've got
something to say. No, No, I do agree with you. You
know, that's one thing that really stood out to be on the fact that
you know, it does feel like a double edged sword, he said,
she said, type of thing. But you know what really made me think
about this. It's funny because half my family's Jewish, you know, so
I think about this. One of my best buddies that I trained with is
a very devout jew But you know, we spar together and we actually,
you know, we talk a lot of This is very old friend of mine,
family friend of mine. But you know, so here, here's what
I'm saying. Here's scenario. So if a person who happens to be a
member of let's say an obscure religious belief system, you know, let's say,
doesn't allow them to sit next to black people cause this type of problem
on an airplane, would they be given this type of gravitas? Would they
would anybody even really care? Would we even be having this conversation. So
I'm saying, you know, I feel like this article may even be a
little politically loaded given the current state of affairs in our world. It's just,
really, it fucking blows my mind that blatant sexism is given any form
of consideration when it is upheld by a religious belief, especially that of you
know, like what everyone said, it's like an archaic, ancient religion,
and because of the nature of it, especially being in a Christian nation,
it's given a special pass. And again I say this as a person who
has a Jewish last name. Half my family's Jewish, like I said,
very close friends are Jewish. I just but the thing is like, if
he were to act that way, if any of my familys were to act
this way, I'd be pissed and I'd actually strongly question my relationship with him.
I don't I have to disagree with maybe disagree with Scott, And I'm
going to shoot it back to you after this, so I want to see
your take on it. I just I don't think people should be given special
accommodations when those accommodations involve xenophobia and bigotry and racism and sexism. It's like,
tough fucking luck, man, Like, this is a woman, this
is a black person, this is a white person, this is a person
from a different country. Your religion says you can't sit next to them in
a fucking airport or in a public place. Tough shit. It's like,
Richard, this is a modern world. You chose to go on the plight
flight. You didn't spend the extra fifteen dollars to get a seat next to
the woman that you choose to be with. There's a lot of things you
could do, but instead of doing those things, you fucking impose your bullshit
on other people and then blame them if anything is just it's just gaslighting or
borderline type behavior, and then it's justified by patriarchal, fucking archaic bullshit like
with Infidel brought up. I don't know, I have a big problem with
this. I don't have problem with people believing in religions, but whenever your
religion starts imposing on other people, and that's a problem, and I don't
think any accommodation should be made for that because at that point you're just accommodating
bigotry. And we're taking two steps foward and four steps backwards, Scott,
I'm gonna throw it back to you, man, I'd like for you to
maybe clarify or yeah, no, common yeah, I agree, I agree,
I agree with you and kind of disagree in the same respect. I
think that I do agree that accommodation shouldn't be given because of those particular reasons,
because they're saying, well, my religion says I can't sit next to
a woman. Clearly, that's ridiculous. I think. I think for an
for an airline to go out of it so well, let me let me
rephrase that, for there to be expectations of the other passengers to accommodate that
thing, I think is going too far. I think, up to a
point, though, airlines can accommodate for any number of requests, like I
mentioned before, like I do some of this in my teaching, and the
way I like to do it is I'll give you opportunity. Like if I
was running the airline, maybe I would say, I'll give you an opportunity
to switch your seat or to select your seat. I wasn't aware that Jet
Blue had the option to to, you know, pay the extra fee to
to choose your seat, but up to a point you can choose you.
I don't care the reason. I don't care the reason. It could be
because of your religion, that's fine, that's your decision. It could be
because you're you're not feeling well, that's your decision. It could be maybe
you just don't want to sit by your friend, you know, whatever the
reason. Up to a certain point, I think accommodation can be reasonable.
But like I said, when you start infringing on the other passengers, when
you start when you start expecting I think it was infidel you said something about
privilege, right, and so if you start expecting that people will accommodate you
just because it's your religion, then I would definitely agree that that's too far
and that's unreasonable expectation. Speaking of that, I want to ask a question
of the panel here. If you were on that plane, I want to
ask you, would you trade seats with somebody on a plane if somebody asked
you and they specified it was because of their religion. Now, you might
want to say yes because you're just showing kindness to a fellow passenger. You
might want to say no because maybe you feel it's an appropriate way for you
to protest against those religious demands and accommodations. Would you change seats? Let's
say you're traveling alone. Let's say you have no other requirements on sitting at
a particular spot. Would you do it? Infidel? What do you think
would you change seats if somebody asked you to. I'll give you the short
answer, because the long answer would not be appropriate for you to. No,
not at all. And it does go back to what I feel comes
across as a sense of smugs moral superiority because their morals are telling them,
or their profess morals is telling them that they can't sit next to this other
person. And if this was a discussion we were having of someone saying I
can't sit next to that guy over there because he's an Orthodox Jew, I'd
be slamming them too for bigotry, because that's just as unacceptable and with that
expectation, and I think that they would be offended if someone said that about
them, and rightly so. And on the flip side, I think that
they should give that same expectation to other people, whether they're women or people
of color or whatever reason of a new bigoted nuance. Me personally know I
would have absolutely no problem in life, generously laughing in their face and saying
move along. But Richard, what about you would would you change your seat
if somebody said, please change my seat? My religion requires that I can't
sit by a woman. I guess it would all depend on the circumstances,
the way the person's tone of voice was, how they looked, you know,
and if and if you know you said we're alone. I would say
if I was with my wife, I would say no, I'm staying here.
But I have done that for people on a plane. But they didn't
actually say religious. It was they needed to be next to their kids.
So I said, fine, you know, I mean, I'm I'm an
easygoing guy as long as you're not stepping on my toes, so I'm probably
you know, would say, but I might. I might have commented about
it, you know, I might. I might have said, sure,
but you know, it's pretty weird that you can't sit there. So I
don't know. It's hard to say without being there for you know what I
mean? Right right? I agree kind of, but I don't know.
This just reminds me of some back of the bush shit. It really does.
I have to agree with Infidel. This is just like this is.
You know, women sit on one side and minsit on the other back of
the bus here below me. I'm above you. I get to do this.
I get to impede on everybody else's shit to do my shit. I'd
know, fuck them, man again, I cannot separate it from any other
form of bigotrees inophobia. Just because it's allowed and acceptable and we're used to
it, we give some kind of fucking exception for it. I just can't.
I can't deal with it. To me, it's just the same way
as treating a person of color. I don't know. I've been treated that
way. I'm covered in tattoos and it's it's it's you know, so you
know, I've definitely not Luckily nowadays people are a lot more used to it,
but fifteen years ago, you know, a little different. So I've
definitely been treated that way. And uh, you know, fuck people who
treat me that way, and fuck people who treat anybody else that way.
I don't w anything to do with them, and I'm not going to accommodate
them. Will you answer that way? Would you say that I already have
I do it all the time. I have no problem public all right,
no problem. It's it's it's you should talk to my poor part nor my
poor kid. I get strangely conversational when I feel like people are acting,
Yeah, just don't bring me around abortion protesters. I don't know, this
is one of those things. So yeah, okay, all right, cool,
great answers. Let's try another question here. So how does this compare
contrast to other situations where individuals are making requests and possibly being denied. For
example, if a gay couple wants to buy a wedding cake. Okay,
different situation, But are there any contrast there? Are we going to have
a rule of inclusiveness? What are the important differences here and fit on?
What are your thoughts on that? For me, it's rather simple. First,
as you mentioned earlier, there's no rule in the Bible about where you
sit on an airplane or where you do or don't make a cake. So
whenever they use biblical excuses to rationalize bad behavior, to me, what they're
doing is they're just retrofitting their own bigotry into a little box that they can
say, oh, this is this is why I feel this way. So
for me, I feel that when you start closing doors like that, I
think that's something that I'm not willing to tolerate. I have no interest in
being part of, and I have no interest enabling people who do. Richard,
how about you? What is it? How would this compare to the
situation with a gay couple wanting to buy a wedding cake. Well, I'll
give you a slightly different example. I mean, I think that's a real
problem. I'm very familiar with the Supreme Court case that had that happen and
found it very uncomfortable. I live about a mile and a half away from
a hobby lobby, and I drive by there all the time, and every
time I do, I not nice words go through my head. So in
any case, yeah, I mean, I just think most people live about
a mile and a half away from a hobby unfortunately. Yeah. No,
just my whole thought is, like with what Infidel and Jason and everybody's saying,
you know, we need to have a situation where you treat people as
if they're all the same equal rights. Everybody should be, you know,
unless they're doing something harming you or harming somebody else, leave them alone.
And if they want to buy a cake from you, or if they need
a wedding dress. I mean, if you're open for business, you need
to be open for business for everybody. It's just that simple. Yeah,
and I agree, I agree. I just you know, I won't take
it too much time with this, And look, I don't know, it's
a spicy take. I have no problem with assholes making private clubs where assholes
pay to be part of the asshole club and they do assholes shit and everybody
knows this is where the assholes go and do assholes shit, that's okay.
But if it's open to the public and we enable this type of bullshit and
bigotry, all we're doing is being traders to America. I mean, if
Americans who are citizens, paying taxes, putting back into the system, or
not given equal opportunity, not equal outcome, but at least equal opportunity,
equal rights, equal access to healthcare, blah blah blah, and treated fairly,
than what you're doing is being a fucking trader. Your behaviors are treesiness
and your impact and place society should be reevaluated. So that's how I feel
about that shit. All right, all right, well, any any last
words before we wrap this one up here? Infidel, Yeah, I agree,
entirely because I think that oftentimes we put a veneer of tolerance upon things,
and really what we're talking about is enabling as long as we pass a
blind eye to things. What we're doing, is this allowing these things to
be had? I agree, Yeah, yeah, that's a great way to
put it. It's like disguising bigotry and enabling in the four in the guise
of tolerance, kind of like a wolf in sheep's clothing kind of set up
there. Yeah, good point, good point, And we had a great
conversation here, and great conversation. If you would like to continue this conversation,
check out our fan run facebook groups. We also have a fan run
discord server at tiny dot c c slash A C A discord. Nope,
my mistake, Sorry, nope, that was tiny dot c c slash A
C D discord. Jason, I keep mixing up my A C A S
and my A c DS. It's all right, man, we'll forgive you
eventually. Let me repeat that, I keep mixing up my A C A
S and my A C D S c D DS. Nuts. All right,
So I was gonna do. I mean, you left some hanging out
for me, but you know, there. I understand you're even on the
show for a while. You're a little rusty, but