Do you want searing existential guilt with that?

Every now and then, there comes an article like this one that activates within me a latent paranoia that one day I'm going to wake up and find all the public sector and customer service employees around me have turned into petulant armchair ethicists.

For instance, what if my cashier at Panera turns out to be a militant vegan and PETA activist and assumes it as a moral duty to lecture me on the cruel origins of or, god forbid, deny me by Bacon Turkey Bravo, and with it one of my few consistent sources of joy in the world? By what sick and twisted ethos is that cool?

We've all heard about religious kooks withholding medication or emergency care from sinners on ethical grounds (and sorry, deitistical determinists, but there is a "choice," and it's called taking another job), but is what they're doing any more justified because it has the Bible behind it?

Take this fine homegrown "professional:"

Ultrasound technician Donald Grant of New Richmond, Wis., was fired by a Minneapolis clinic in 2002 after he prayed with a patient to try to persuade her not to get an abortion.

"I'm not a rabid pro-lifer, but I know what I believe," said Grant, also a pastor at a small Pentecostal church. "I was not condemning in any way. But I had no choice but to speak my conscience."

Oh, really? Then do I have no choice but to speak my aesthetic conscience and tell a fellow shopper she's several sizes too big to wear a particular style flatteringly and then suggest something else? Unfortunately not, because not only do I want to avoid physical assault, but it's not my place to offer my opinion.

Add unequal power relations to the mix, in many cases excepting any expert or evidentiary backing, and speaking one's conscience starts to look a lot like unjust usurpation of agency.

Operating in black and white ethics might make you a fine activist or ideologue, but it makes you a pretty piss-poor public servant.

If you sign up for a job that strives for the fabled "objectivity," you have to make internal peace with the fact that you're going to have to deal with people whose choices, ideas and lifestyles you do not personally agree with, and treat them as though they are just as valuable and worthy as anyone else.

As a journalist, quite often you're asked to write about and give exposure to people, groups and ideas you don't personally support. But guess what? You're doing a job and performing a role within a pluralistic society, in which other people exist. And like it or not, but it's the price you pay to live in a relatively free country, they matter, too.

Now, you can always argue your case, refuse the assignment, brand yourself an insolent, biased little prima donna and feel all good about yourself, but odds are the editor is just going to pass it along to someone else and it's going to get printed anyway, with any insight or good you could have passed along by performing your job with your skills and your unique perspective from then on being relegated to fluff pieces on the weather and smalltown crustacean festivals. Who possibly benefits? Not you and your professional integrity, and certainly not those who are exposed to and affected by your work.

When you sign up for the intermediary position–between doctor and patient, between editor and reader–the reality is that you usually don't get to make the grand ethical decisions. Therefore, you have to pick your battles wisely.

I'm all for standing up for your beliefs, but only when it's done pragmatically. For instance, I will never understand why people who are morally opposed to birth control or certain types of "families" choose go into medical fields like obstetrics and gynecology, in which they must realize a significant chunk of their practice will fall under the rubric of ethically untouchable.

That would be like me joining a convent and then refusing to say the prayers, participate in the rituals or wear the symbols because they go against my beliefs.

Perhaps they think they can infiltrate the infidels' den and convert them all from within, who knows. But there are far more effective and positive ways to fight for your cause if you feel that's your calling; and many, many professional positions you can take that allow you to exercise your talents without requiring you to exorcise your ethics.

The EMT in the Post article's lead who refused to transport the abortion patient seems sympathetic and on some level morally admirable if only for the strength of her conviction–until you pause to reflect that she's probably obliviously and unknowingly transported everything from rapists to neo-Nazis to TV weathermen, and thereby aided, abetted and tacitly approved of them all in their evildoing by prolonging their healthy animation.

When you work in a public service field like medicine and deal daily with ethical dilemmas over which intelligent people can't move beyond impasse, where do you draw the line, and just what gives you the omnipotence to decide precisely which members of the public deserve your services?

The double standard here is also glaring. Just imagine if some pharmacist tried to deny a prescription to a hyperactive kid with a cold on grounds that he judged it a frivolous, potentially harmful act of over-medication; or if a doctor counseled a woman in favor of abortion if it turned out she was predisposed to some horrible genetic disease and felt it unethical to risk a pregnancy. Could a health-conscious cashier at an ice cream shop deny a cone to an obese customer without courting a lawsuit? Could an environmentally minded gas station attendant refuse to fill up a Hummer without being pilloried?

And remember, birth control and abortion are still on the legal side of the glorious if battered membrane separating church and state. What if some store clerk tried to refuse selling someone a gun based on personal moral opposition–the NRA lobby would be on it in an instant shouting fundamental rights foul and any such "moral clauses" governing dispensation of firearms would be stricken in a snap.

Listening to someone, treating someone or otherwise serving someone does not mean you're thereby supporting them and everything they stand for. There's an old saying about the cream always rising to the top–ideally, that's true for the good, the right, the just and the beautiful as well, eventually.

There's also an old saying about letting people hang themselves.

I like that one. Any philosophy echoed in a Guns N' Roses song can't be wrong.