Maybe it would have been better for the company that denied a Baltimore County woman the chance to become a foster mother because she refused to serve pork in her home to have kept quiet. Contemporary Family Services chief operating officer Corey Pierce said the company's issues with the woman, Tashima Crudup, were about inflexibility, not pork. The bit about not allowing the meat in the house, which Ms. Crudup objects to as a practicing Muslim, was just "a nice way of saying that the views of Ms. Crudup lacked the level of flexibility needed to work with ... children," according to Brent Jones' story in today's Sun. One wonders what the not-so-nice way would have been.
That explanation is hard to buy, given that Ms. Crudup offered that she had no objection to a foster child eating pork at a restaurant or at school. Mr. Pierce claimed not to be aware of that, which is curious since it is mentioned in the very same report his company prepared flagging the pork issue in the first place. It's also hard to accept Mr. Pierce's claim since he also said he believes that his company is allowed under law to discriminate to protect the rights of a child. Like a child's right to bacon?
It was hard before to see how this could have been anything other than religious discrimination, and the company's explanation isn't helping.