Last week, the New York Times published an editorial complaining about a public swimming pool in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg that has designated women-only hours every week, to accommodate the mores of the area’s large ḥasidic population. The policy also provoked the ire of the New York City Human-Rights Commission. Mark Hemingway writes:
After an anonymous complaint, the Human-Rights Commission intervened and stopped the pool from offering female-only swimming hours. Those hours were later restored after city officials and the state assemblyman Dov Hikind stepped in.
This is the second high-profile attack the Human-Rights Commission has made on the city’s Orthodox Jewish population in the last couple of years. After Jewish stores in Williamsburg started putting up signs in their windows requiring that customers adhere to a dress code, the commission sprang into action and threatened fines. Again, there was a big double standard. The Four Seasons [restaurant] could require diners to wear a jacket and tie, but Jewish business owners could not.
There seems to be a troubling trend where local officials are attempting to criminalize behavior that would otherwise be acceptable—but only when it has religious motivations. The attacks on Jews by the New York City Human-Rights Commission and the New York Times are also a good reminder that religious-liberty concerns are not just limited to Christians. Accommodating a large local religious population at a public facility a few hours a week hardly seems like an injustice, but at this point it’s hard to refute the fact that a major goal of the left seems to be driving any trace of religiosity from the public square.
Read more on Weekly Standard: http://www.weeklystandard.com/new-york-city-human-rights-commission-unfairly-targets-jews/article/2002683