Leo_Bloom:
A problem more pronounced now, however, is when a customer comes in being a total dick and you, as an individual, corporate or not, decide that, fuck him, go find another establishment to be a total dick in. And then, Lo and behold, he’s asking for a service, or be himself, is in “a protected class” and the law, when misdirected, forces you not to serve all intermarriage services–or whatever–but when that total dick, just to 1) bust your balls, 2) win a lawsuit, or, as in the pressing need for gay wedding pizza catering–which was not even asked for, but a hypothetical not even thought of by the pizza guy before bing asked–3) advance and goad others in a hyperactive social cause for some people.
[Obviously it exists all over as a general social stiletto. I was accused of “racism” by a black secretary I worked with (in Orwell land, My crime was using the word “Yowza,” which I had never even heard of), the same secretary who I heard discussing quite openly her path to early retirement by looking for a good racism case.]*
My one experience more in line with the discussion is when I was front-desking a cafe where a woman with a “Gaza=Auschwitz” button came up. Swallowing my disgust and, not to put too fine a point in it, hatred, I placed her take-out order. Later I told the owner, who was furious and said I should have told him, and he would have thrown her the fuck out of there.
*ETA: Neither I nor the human-resource director interrogating my thoughts on the Good Society and why I had thrown a wrench into it was aware even what the word meant, let alone my accuser.
Well, any laws can theoretically be abused by dishonest plaintiffs. Sorry that it happened to you, but on balance I feel that the social benefits of having anti-discrimination laws outweigh the costs.
AFAIK political expression is not protected anywhere, so I don’t think this woman would have had any legal recourse had she been thrown the fuck out of there.
bump
April 9, 2015, 6:04pm
62
Which, I think it bears noting, is about the whitest possible thing you can say.