That business’ unwillingness to engage in commerce with you doesn’t restrict your ability to live your life the way you want. You never had a right to engage in commerce with that business. Commerce is based on a meeting of the minds between two willing parties. In fact, you’re not allowing “everyone to choose to live the life they want” because you’re saying you can’t choose to run a business and still comply with your moral convictions about who to do business with. You’re making a choice for those business owners on how they must live their lives, ensuring that it’s compliant with your personal set of morals. (Now, I share your morals, but - again - don’t feel that I have any moral authority to force my values on them).
Absolutely I think they should be forced to evaluate whether or not turning them away is a good or bad business decision. But – it’s their decision to make, not yours or mine.
It may not have happened as quickly, there’s no denying it, but we would have got there eventually (the tide was already turning), and we’d have liberty intact.
Liberty. You mean like the liberty to be hauled off of buses, beaten up for no reason, have to “hold it” because there’s no bathroom of the appropriate color available…or lynched?
Liberty to maintain prejudice isn’t vitally important to protect.
How many lives were saved because civil rights became a legal requirement a few decades before you think it would have happened through social osmosis? Here’s a hint: we’d tried it the other way for a few centuries, and even fighting a civil war over it wasn’t enough to turn the tide.
You have a greater faith in peoples’ willingness to change than I do. Then again, as I said previously, you consider food and shopping options to be just as important as being able to expect the same treatment as everyone else. You also seem to still be laboring under the belief that it’s easy for everyone to set priorities and move if the place where they live doesn’t suit them.
However I think I see the problem. I had no idea that we lost liberty as a result of civil rights legislation. Clearly in the interests of freedom we should repeal those laws, because things have changed so much that it’s unlikely most people will be discriminated against. And for the ones who are, well, they’ll just have to evaluate their priorities and decide whether living in such a free country is worth it.
I’m rounding to the nearest hundredth. You see, in actuality the ability to live where you want and with who you want, without having to worry about whether you will be able to actually get what you need in the face of bigotry, makes up a large part of being able to live the life you want.
In contrast a shopkeeper being able to turn away minorities at their door makes up a negligible part of being able to live the life they want. And yet you are treating these two things as if they were comparable, or worse, treating the shopkeeper’s right to do so as sacred and expecting everyone to leave their life behind if they don’t like it.
A tiny freedom at the expense of the greater one. Is it because you don’t understand the vast difference in the scale here, or because you refuse to worry about limits to freedom unless law is the cause, or what?
“You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.”
“… We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’”
No, it’s because I don’t believe private actors are capable of infringing on freedom. Nobody has a right to force other to associate with them, so private actors’ refusal to do so is not - by definition - a loss of freedom for the ones they won’t associate with because they never had that freedom in the first place.
I wonder if they similarly refuse to sell any dresses made with fabric blends. Do they ask their potential customers whether shellfish will be served at the wedding reception? What if a potential customer has a tattoo?
For those of you who are old enough, remember Flip Wilson’s “The devil made me do it” catchphrase? Well, it seems like the scapegoat of choice these days is God.
All of those (and an infinite list of other reasons including “I don’t like you”, or “you remind me of my ex-spouse”) are all in the “should be legally allowed but you’re stupid if you do it” category.
Ah, well, there we go. You could have saved some trouble saying so up front, when freedom-from and freedom-to were first mentioned.
I take it then you’re arguing for the libertarian utopia. You might find people forced out of town because nobody will serve someone with their skin color or sexual orientation, or wasting their whole lives in sweatshops unable to afford a move to somewhere better, or trapped in debt because they need some vital service taken over by a predatory oligarch. But that’s all still freedom because it’s the result of private actors.
Needless to say that’s not how I take the word; I think it’s a caricature of the concept that manages to exclude nearly everything that makes it actually worthwhile. Sure, anti-discrimination laws do abridge this narrow conception of “freedom”. But why would I ever care more about that than all the ability and opportunity they create for people to do what they want and live how they please?
ok , i am a PAGAN minister , not one of the majority faith ~ under my roots , i studied mainly the first 5 books of the bible , and yet , i do have some comparative religion studies under my hat ~ and so , my issue or question could be stated thus " Where , oh where does it say , or was it decreed " thou shalt not do business in the bazaar or otherwise in the coin of the realm with those whom you believe to be living in sin , or as sinners , or those who have been adjudged as being in transgression whether amenable to penance by sacrifice in the temple or not " or some such ?? " ?? ehy ??? where does this bizzare-o mixture of commerce and religion COME from ??
Yep, same as the oppressive, freedom-hating laws that say you can’t keep a thousand head of swine in the city, can’t dump toxic chemicals (even on your own land! That you own!), can’t drive a main battle tank on the highway, can’t shoot endangered species, can’t sell candy-coated cyanide capsules (clearly labelled! No one is forcing anyone to swallow them)…
Most likely it’s Prosperity Gospel comingled with libertarianism as peddled by Koch Industries. I got to give them some credit* for figuring out how to put the musings of an atheist in a package self-identifying Christians could accept with a straight face.
*This is in no way to be construed as an endorsement of the destruction of the balanced socialist/market economy.
I think the argument they would make is that by “participating” they are “condoning” the commission of what they see as a sin. That just as a conscientious objector has the right to say “I don’t condone war, and thus cannot participate in the furtherance of such”, that they are saying “I don’t condone same-sex marriage, and thus cannot participate in the furtherance of such.”
At least that’s the view from my atheist bystander’s perspective.
Class of '02 (Computer Science). I’m from Harveys Lake, the whole area (Alabama in Carville’s words) is so beautiful. It’s such a shame they are so closed-minded and the economy (non-fracking economy) is so depressed. I got an education and got out.
Actually any business has the right to say to someone “I don’t like you”. That is, they have the right to deny business to an individual. What you’re arguing for is for businesses to have the freedom to select a specific class of people, not individuals but an abstract type of person, and make a blanket statement that “We refuse to treat [fill in the blank] like anyone else.” You think public shaming will work to correct this, but think about the message it sends when a business that employs people in a specific area begins promoting the idea that some residents are better than others.
You seem to think of this as a simple matter of two equal parties, but you miss the fact that because of economics and simple visibility the business owner has an advantage.
How does the business owner “have an advantage”? Without customers, he has no business. Without businesses, customers have no product. They are equal participants in the exchange and neither has a right to compel the other to participate.
Yep, the problem here is that the Federal Civil Rights Act doesn’t cover sexual preference. So, in Pennsylvania, where no additional state law exists, there’s no protection for homosexuals as a class.
Legalzoom has a good article on this topic. It was actually written to answer whether or not a store could refuse business based on appearance.
In California, the “Unruh Civil Rights Act makes it illegal to discriminate against individuals based on unconventional dress or sexual preference.” It was passed to protect homosexuals, police officers, Republicans and hippies (who were all discriminated against at various establishments) during the 1960s. The State Act kicks in when the Federal Act has no coverage and a question of whether or not discrimination was arbitrary arises.
That’s the big, important word: arbitrary
A store owner always has the right to turn away person, if they have a valid reason about how business is being handled. Turning away a person, just because of who they are is illegal. There are several states that have made this clear. Colorado is another one, and that’s why they had that bear bar lawsuit.
I’m with you on this. I understand the arguments, though I’m not going to recite them in detail. There are clearly times when it’s necessary for the people to act via the state and force businesses to act fairly. However that’s a stopgap solution which doesn’t fix the problem, just lessens the suffering inflicted. Creates tension and stress, and results in people lying on both sides. (They wouldn’t serve me because I’m X-protected class, when in fact I was drunk and belligerent, etc)
Conversely, these rules when put in place for issues like this. (Face it, wrong is wrong, right is right, but as a practical matter it’s trivial for these nice ladies to get bridal dresses, whether by shopping elsewhere or simply lying, one cannot get lunch at a discriminatory lunch counter by claiming to be white.) quickly produce a bunch of media stories trumpeting the cause of the oppressing group putting photogenic (to their base) bridal shop owners in the media spotlight with someone stubborn and willful enough to take such a case public or to court. (They are right, but on the news they will come off as abrasive at best most of the time.) Which does nothing to advance the cause of tolerance or human rights.
Additionally, we are punishing the bridal shop owners for their honesty. Surely they could have come up with some less honest, but equally effective strategy to run these ladies out of the store, poor service, unwillingness to haggle price, whatever. Punishing people for telling the truth is a bad strategy. Period.
The next step is members of protected classes claiming discrimination when in fact they received bad service, or the prices were not to their liking. These cases will be, and already are, VANISHINGLY rare, almost to the point of being fictional, but all it takes is one, to harden the resolve of those who are doing the discriminating, and make them feel oppressed.
