Discrimination or Not

Wellington youth worker Joe Nieddu, claimed in The Dominion Post (April 8, 2016) that a woman taxi driver had “discriminated” against him “for being gay”.

Now, one might think she had refused to take him as a fare or made him get out of the cab as soon as she found out his sexual orientation. She did neither. She treated him like any other service-seeking passenger and delivered him to his destination (doubtless at a standard fare).

What she did do, when she found out he was gay, was politely tell him her personal opinion of homosexuality.

That dialogue directly resulted from Nieddu chatting with taxi driver. He could have exercised his right not to answer her questions about his “partner.”

I find no discrimation, just a secular fuss about the right of the cabbie to speak her Christian views. It didn’t justify a photo and big headlines on page 5 of the newspaper

Congratulations to Capital Taxis for the way they handled the complainst against their driver, and to managing director, Tim Lau, for saying publicly that the driver’s comments “were not discrimination”.