Frank Turner is a news anchor WXYZ-TV, a Detroit-based ABC affiliate station. He is also a born-again Christian who regularly preaches and makes no effort to hide his evangelical bias. He asked to host a Christian radio show on a station owned by a different company and his bosses said no. Now, he's suing, claiming that his religious rights have been violated.

Beliefnet reports:

Turner filed a complaint March 17 with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming discrimination for the station’s denial of what he called “a reasonable accommodation for religious practice.” Turner contends his employers are violating his rights under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids religious discrimination.

“I can no more stop being an evangelist than I can change the color of my skin,” Turner said in an interview. “I’m doing what the Lord is calling me to do.”

Frank Turner is making two comparisons. First, he says that taking as second job at another media company is a “religious practice,” implicitly comparing it to going to religious services, eating kosher, and that sort of thing. Second, he compares “evangelizing” in this second job to being a racial minority — it’s something he can’t change and needing to do it is something he can’t change, so it should be treated as an immutable characteristic that should be accommodated.

Both comparisons are absurd. Hosting a radio program is not a “religious practice” like wearing a yarmulke and not something that needs be accommodated under federal civil rights laws. What’s next, handing out Bibles on the job? Will Frank Turner demand the ability to evangelize during the news? Being an evangelist also isn’t comparable to being a racial minority — however much he believes his god wants him to do it, it’s not an immutable characteristic.

I don’t think that Frank Turner will be successful in his lawsuit because the station has very, very good reasons for their decision:

Grace Gilchrist, the station’s vice president and general manager, told The Detroit News that “we spend millions of dollars a year promoting our on-air talent and we want to have them working exclusively for Channel 7.”

The radio program may not be a direct competitor, but all the marketing WXYZ does for their on-air talent would become free advertising for the radio show, and thus also for another media company. Furthermore, because of how closely they seek to associate themselves with their anchors, they will implicitly be associated with whatever Frank Turner says on the radio show — a place where they have no editorial or technical control.

Of course the TV station doesn’t want to do this. It might have been generous for them to allow it, but I suspect that this is a standard policy that applies to everyone. Why does Frank Turner think that he shouldn’t be held to the same standards as everyone else? Does he imagine that because he’s a Christian, he should be allowed to do anything he wants?

It’s not like the station is trying to stop him from preaching in area churches, or from writing a book about his religious beliefs. Right now, Frank Turner is a news anchor known for occasionally doing some evangelizing; they don’t want him to become a Christian evangelist who occasionally does some news anchoring. That’s fair. If Frank Turner doesn’t like it, he can switch careers. He is, after all, saying that being an evangelist is what Jesus has called him to do. So, why not just quit the TV station and do it?

 

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