Okay. So the next time I’m on a flight with some fundamentalist Christians, should the airline make sure in advance that they’re okay with their kid being sat next to a lesbian who might speak openly and positively about her partner? Or her atheism, or liberal politics, or whatever? Or hell, even just put a movie on…

Uh it’s super easy...you don’t have the right to decide who your seatmate is on an airline. If you don’t like that reality, then don’t fly. Sorry, but you don’t get to decide who is on a bus or a street car or the subway etc...etc...

Who cares if the beliefs are based on religion? Why does that make them more deserving of respect? I mean, you can hate women and enslave people and base it pretty solidly on the good ol’ testament.

Religion, in the end, is a choice. Being born a woman is not. Hence, whatever was not up to the person should have precedence over whatever was a choice. I don’t give a fuck how indoctrinated these people are, your belief in a g-d does not trump my right to *exist* as a woman. Fuck him.

It’s pretty easy, really. You seat them and take off.

This isn’t about competing rights. He doesn’t have a right not to sit next to a woman on an airplane. He doesn’t have a right to be on an airplane at all. I don’t care how Genuinely his beliefs is held.

People who are strict adherents to anything to the point of making other peoples lives hell are the worst.

Of course. But this doesn’t really seem like an unsettled issue to me, though perhaps it is in Israel. In the US at least, airlines are common carriers and are already prohibited from discriminating against people because of their gender. She clearly was singled out specifically and explicitly because of her gender,…

I would kind of looooove to be put in this situation because my stubborn tantrum throwing skills are pretty epic when I’m pushed to that point. It would be a showdown for the ages.

I work in this area of law. You are incorrect. That is indeed how the law works. We are not talking about him being kicked off the flight or not allowed to use a service offered by a public company. We are talking about accommodating for religious beliefs in a way that does not infringe on other people’s rights not to…

Because religion is their choice.

But airlines already DO ask you for your gender when booking tickets. So it would be easy enough to accommodate people with a check box saying “i am Haredi and need to sit next to a man”. By no means should they ask the other person to move though. If the airline is going to accommodate it, then it’s their…

You are not ignoring a customer’s religious beliefs by making him move. You are accommodating his beliefs by accepting that he doesn’t want to sit next to the other customer. The only difference is that HE moves, not the woman.

The problem is that sometimes accommodating sincerely held religious beliefs infringes on other people’s rights. As the old adage goes, your rights end where mine begin. It’s completely unreasonable, in this day and age where we are so connected globally, to expect that everywhere you go is going to cater to your…

Do you think you’d feel the same way if it was someone else demanding the airline work to accommodate his refusal to sit next to the guy in this article because he had a problem with Jews?

Yes. And let’s ask all white passengers whether they object to sitting next to minority races too, just to be super polite!

AJ Jacobs, who wrote a book about trying to live by everything in the bible for year, said that his wife got angry at him and sat on everything in their house during her period (which makes it off limits to men), so he started carrying a folding stool around with him everywhere.

or buy the seat next to you if you have concerns about who you have to sit next to.

Is there a reason why the guy with the problem isn’t moving? If he has an issue, he should move, right?

I just don’t understand why, if these guys really can’t sit next to women, they don’t just start their own all-male airline other than the fact that I’ve already copyrighted that idea and am halfway done designing the Stewards uniforms.