Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

Pointing and laughing at religious lunacy for more than half-a-century

NY man sues company that forced him to commit ‘an act of evil’ by having him work with a female colleague

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PAUL Ostapa’s New York lawsuit against air-conditioning giant Trane U.S. Inc claims that his presence alone with a woman “carries with it the appearance of evil from which he is to abstain.”

Religion News reports that, in the summer of 2022, he was working as a heating and air conditioning technician in upstate New York with a couple of colleagues when one of them left, leaving him alone with a female co-worker. For years, he’d abided by the Billy Graham Rule — vowing never to be alone with a woman who was not his wife.

The lawsuit claims that, by compelling him to work with a woman, the company violated his civil rights by failing to accommodate his religious beliefs and then fired him because of those beliefs.

image via YouTube

Kristina Heuser, above, an attorney for Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal group, said that Ostapa worked mainly on commercial projects, rather than residential ones, and that his beliefs had never caused a conflict with clients. Heuser said her client had made a verbal arrangement with his supervisor, but nothing had been put in writing.

She also alleged that the company jumped the gun in firing Ostapa and should have taken time to learn more about his accommodation request, a claim also made in the complaint.

They didn’t even engage in the interactive process that they were required to. They just said: ‘We don’t want to hear it. We’re not discussing that. And you’re fired.’

According to the complaint, Ostapa, who is Southern Baptist, came to the United States from Ukraine in 2001, in part because of concerns about religious liberty. The complaint said:

His family were devout Christians and fled their home country in pursuit of religious freedom, which they thought they would find here in the United States.

In 1948 Billy Graham, quoting from his memoir, told a clutch of evangelists that:

I did not travel, meet or eat alone with a woman other than my wife. We determined that the Apostle Paul’s mandate to the young pastor Timothy would be ours as well: ‘Flee … youthful lusts’ (2 Timothy 1:22, KJV).

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2 responses to “NY man sues company that forced him to commit ‘an act of evil’ by having him work with a female colleague”

  1. matilddaa Avatar
    matilddaa

    My hubs was a teacher and also a non-stipendary baptist minister in the 1980s. We lived in a village that joked about everyone knowing everyone else’s business. They used to say, ‘Sneeze on the edge of the village and by the time you reach the centre, everyone will know about your cold.’ So, when pastoral visiting a woman, he adhered to the rule of always having a 3rd person present. There were several known, bored ‘curtain twitchers’ in that small community! We had small children, so I couldn’t go with him in the evenings, but a couple of other church members could, and one would sit in another room with a book if the conversation was personal. He had a great deal of intergrity, and wisely, didn’t want the unneccessary risk of silly, salacious gossip to affect his teaching or his pastoral career. 30yrs later, this came up in conversation with a 20-something x-tian who almost scoffed at the idea of anyone doing that and hubs heard the phrase ‘Billy Graham rule’ for the 1st time. The young guy thought him very out of date and a ‘bit weird,’ but that action of his was absolutely right in that situation…..but I appreciate times have changed and this guy is just a laughable, pathetic, brainwashed fundy!

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  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    If non-religious employees of religious employers may not have employer-provided healthcare coverage that includes birth control, then religious employees of non-religious employers don’t get to force the employer to accommodate their private religious beliefs.
    These are hypocrites who want to force everyone else to subscribe to their personal religious beliefs, or risk getting fired/ paying them millions of dollars.

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