Back it down. This is really doing nothing to promote a serious discussion.
In fact, nearly everyone needs to tone it down. Personal remarks are not constructive.
[ /Moderating ]
Because you’re forcing them into an involuntary transaction. They’re not actively harming anybody that they need to be forced into stopping. Should they face societal pressure and shame for their bigotry? Absolutely. Should they be forced by law into serving people they don’t want to? I think the use of force where it is not necessary is a poor way of going about things.
You yourself state that it’s the debate over gay rights legislation keeping the issue in public consciousness. I agree that keeping the issue in public consciousness is what is important. As gay rights also encompass rights that are denied to them by legislation, rather than just services by private individuals, we are not at odds here.
As for gay rights protection having made it easier for gays to come out, I argue that the gay rights protection only came about because society was already becoming increasingly accepting of gay people. The protection in law is a follower, not a leader of public mores.
I’m searching, but unable to find dates for the protections that states have instituted for gay people. Could you lead me to a convenient source? Thanks.
But of course it is the worst form of discrimination because the government is doing it. How can that even be in doubt? There is no recourse there, no option. (note that being arrested is also the government doing it).
All the other situations have a recourse - Any violence you face you can approach the law, if you get fired, you can look for another job, any shops refuse to serve you, you can find others. Any discrimination that is enshrined in law cannot be worked around.
It’s both a good thing and useful. The fact is that people need products and services to function in society, and they shouldn’t have to walk a minefield where they are refused or worse if they guess wrong about the bigotry of a particular person or company. Nor should people be forced out of entire towns because no one there will provide products or services to them.
Of course it has been. The increased willingness of the government to prosecute people for using violence against homosexuals has helped a great deal.
Nonsense, the worst form of discrimination against homosexuals is violence and murder, and stopping those is most certainly the job of the government.
It’s not a switch. The most effective tool against bigotry has always been coercion by the government. It was the govenrment that ended decades of Jim Crow, not the free market. It was military force that ended slavery, not the free market. It’s the threat of police action that has reduced the amount of violent suppression against homosexuals, not the free market.
The free market is *at best *neutral when it comes to civil rights, not a solution.
“You can look for another job” is not a serious recourse any caring people would give, especially as we’ve seen that plenty of people are perfectly willing to let LGBT people suffer. Not being allowed to be legally married is bad, but shrugging off not being able to eat or being dead is a fuck of a lot worse. The things my close friends who are LGBT worry about sure as fuck isn’t getting married - it’s the constant homophobic jokes and bigotry that have to suffer through at their job, and the constant fear of getting fired and becoming homeless if they get discovered.
Again, you make many unfounded assumptions. You assume they will “face societal pressure and shame” for their actions, instead of acclaim and profits. Again, there is the example of Chick-a-fil, which in return for openly supporting bigotry was treated to a massive show of support from those who supported its bigotry against homosexuals, as well as showered it with money.
And of course they are harming people. Keeping people from buying what they need and forcing them to avoid or leave towns is most certainly harming them. And that’s assuming they don’t go the extra step of sabotaging or otherwise screwing over the people they hate, which they are going to be more willing and able to do when society gives them its stamp of approval for their bigotry by protecting their “right” to harass people.
Nonsense; consistently, increased tolerance follows increased legal protection. When people can speak their mind, openly be what they are and go where they please then tolerance for them increases; when they are forced to hide then it’s easy to demonize them. Again, there is the example of Jim Crow, which went on and on for decades without the increase of tolerance you are speaking of. Only when the government used force to break Jim Crow did racial tolerance begin to increase.
Because it isn’t true. Being killed by bigoted thugs is a lot worse than the government not letting you get married.
Of course there is. You can vote, you can protest, you can run for office. Companies on the hand are undemocratic, authoritarian organizations; they can and will ignore public protests, and clamp down on their workers. You have a much, much larger chance of getting the government to change its polices than you do of changing those of your employer.
No it is not. The fact is that people provide goods and services because they get value from doing so. When they do not participate in a voluntary transaction, it means that they are not getting value from that voluntary transaction. When we force them into a transaction with someone, we are at best being neutral. We have left one person better off, and one person worse off. (If they were both going to be better off, we would not need to force the trade, it would happen anway). I argue that the use of force to achieve that result makes us worse off as a society.
We have no disagreement that stopping violence and murder is the job of government. This is why government discrimination is worse than discrimination by private citizens. Because violence and murder can be stopped by government. Discrimination by government cannot be.
This is strange. Jim Crow laws WERE government legislation. The only method to fight discrimination enshrined in legislation is legislation. You have no argument from me there. I’m arguing that discrimination in voluntary transactions practised by private individuals is better fought through debate, education and outreach. Use of force in these situations makes us worse as a society.
I have not argued that the ‘free market’ is necessarily a solution. I argue that interfering with what should be voluntary transactions between two parties by trying to force a certain outcome on one of them is not a good route for us as society to take. Convincing people that ours is the better way will make us better as a society. Even so, the market is better than neutral. It imposes a monetary cost on the baker. He has lost business through his bigotry. I accept that this may not be enough to end bigotry and that we need to supplement it. I reject the notion that we need to use the force of law to do it.
Why is societal shame and pressure a preferable method over legal pressure? Particularly considering that legal pressure is actually effective?
I agree, gay rights protections could not have come about without increased acceptance of gay rights in society. That’s obvious enough to be a tautology. However, that does not change the fact that, even in places with a high acceptance of gay rights, without legal protections against discrimination, a lot of people absolutely would not come out. Even out here in California, there are plenty of people who have no compunction about discriminating against gays - Prop. 8 is proof enough of that. I can tell you for a fact that I, personally, would not be out at work, or in any circumstance that could connect me to my work, if I did not have solid legal protections against discrimination. And I am *far *from unique in that regard.
Try Wikipedia.
Also, I’d like to state, for the record, that the idea that the worst possible discrimination faced by gay people in America is DOMA is so ridiculous, I damn near shit myself from laughing so hard.
The gays in military thing is again an example of government practising discrimination, and I am entirely against discrimination by the government. It is also another example of government response being an extreme laggard, not a leader. It happened what, two years ago?
bldysabba, what all do you think should be allowed to be refused to people that are found “distasteful”. You’ve mentioned you’re OK with them being denied work. Housing? Food, from a grocery store? Emergency medical care from a hospital? Medication from a pharmacist? What if those are the only ones in town, or the only ones available to the person in question? Should they just find a way to do without? At what point does denying these services deny the ability the person to live come into your consideration?
Because it doesn’t involve force, and it leaves out an instrument that is blunt, slow to change and distortionary. And Legal pressure is actually effective and social pressure is not? How did you bring the legal pressure into place at all? My contention, which you agree with, is that increased acceptance of gay people will have to come first anyway. The actual problem - acceptance of gay people - is being solved without legislation, or the legislation wouldn’t happen, and you say legal pressure is the one that is actually effective? We cannot be good and moral and non bigoted people without laws to force us into it? I differ.
I did. Information is scarce on the LGBT rights legislation page. It talks mostly about DOMA and on protection it mentions that 140 cities or counties have protections but does not speak about dates.
It’s the worst because it is discrimination being practised by the government. There may be worse discrimination in degree, but discrimination practised by the government leaves you with no recourse.
Okay, agreed. This is not a “good thing” in itself. Compelling anyone to obey any law is not an “end good,” an ideal as an intrinsic thing. Speed limit laws are not good; copyright laws are not good; laws against dumping mercury into the nearest river are not good.
They are, however, absolutely necessary!
Yes, they are. They’re harming the people they disenfranchise, and they also harm our entire society as a whole, by dividing it into parts with different levels of acceptance and access.
I posit you’re taking an absurd position to try and force me into a false dilemma of sorts. If everybody finds a category of people ‘distasteful’, you will not be able to find support to protect them legally in the first place. If there is enough critical mass of people to support legal protection for this ‘distasteful’ category of people, then they will have enough people to provide the services that the bigots deny to them.
The point therefore, is that it is necessary to build a critical mass of people who do not view the ‘distasteful’ people through the lenses of bigotry, who see ‘them’ as ‘us’. This must necessarily, and has always, involved extra-legal means of building acceptance.
I say that we cannot and should not achieve this by forcing people to merely treat ‘them’ as ‘us’. Far better that we keep trying to remove the bigotry itself as we have been doing and succeeding.
A ridiculous argument, they are getting money. And money is valuable.
Nonsense. Forcing a bigot to not inflict his bigotry on others doesn’t harm him; and even if it did so what? It makes society work more smoothly, and makes someone unhappy who deserves to be unhappy.
Of course it can be, and is. Both by elections and by appealing to a higher portion of the government.
No, it makes us better by reducing the effects of bigotry upon society. And you don’t reduce bigotry by “education and outreach”, you do so by forcing the bigots to act civilized while you wait for them to die off. “Funeral by funeral society advances”, to paraphrase a line about science.
You keep assuming that, when it’s not necessarily so; he may well gain business. You also assume that he cares.
This is why I kept specifying ‘voluntary’ transactions. I am not making an argument for anarchism, or not force being employed at all by government. Force is required where someone’s unilateral actions impinge upon someone else. Why are speed limit laws ok? Because going over the speed limit is a voluntary action on your part, but it is not for whoever you end up injuring in an accident. Mercury dumping? Voluntary on your part, but not on the part of the people that you actively cause damage to as a result.
Buying a cake? Getting photographs for your wedding? Not in the same category. You approach someone for a transaction that only affects the two of you. They decide they will not be better off by participating in that transaction. If you get someone to force them for you, they are worse off, you are better off, how is society as a whole better off?
There is no false dilemma. I just want you to confront the actual results of your own positions.
You immediately jump into “everybody” - are you aware that when I go to purchase food, I do not have every source of food everywhere available to me, like your words are claiming? “Everybody” doesn’t have to deny someone something based on bigotry for there to be strong effects. Not everyone can get to many grocery stores (or any “grocery stores” at all for some people). Not everyone can instantly find a new place to work - in fact, pretty much nobody can. If a hospital or a doctor turns someone down, they may not have time, or access to find another provider.
In addition, you have an amazingly skewed view of what actual demographics in some areas are like. Even if a majority of people are against bigotry, most of the time that majority tends to be heavily concentrated in smaller areas, creating what can basically feel like seas of hate. Here in Pennsylvania, for instance, there’s enough support for protections in Philadelphia (12.1% of the PA population, and 3x the next largest city)… but that doesn’t help anyone outside of that one major city, and it isn’t easy to move.
These aren’t legal means of “building acceptance” so much as they’re legal means of protecting people from bigotry and hate.
Am I correct in assuming that you support the right to refuse to rent a place to live to non-whites, a practice that’s still (illegally) widely in practice? If not, what do you view as the difference?
The result of not having anti-discriminatory laws did result in force repeatedly during the civil rights movement. Due to appropriate acts of civil disobedience our government was put in the position of using force for the benefit of the bigots time and time again. When African Americans waited in line at restaurants that refused to serve them the police were forced to disperse or arrest them. Should we have left the laws the same and continued to arrest people for wanting to buy a sandwich at the shop closest to where they live?
Can we apply your same beliefs on gas stations? ‘Oh sorry we don’t sell gas to gay people, sure sucks the next station is 20 miles away, you’ll have to walk your faggoty ass down there and hope they’re willing to fill your gas can’ I’ll rest easy knowing someday the free market will correct the problem or maybe it won’t, we’ll just wait and see right?
In the meantime, I better plan my trips better, because as you know it’s more reasonable to force the minority that is being discriminated against to suffer further than it is to force a bigoted majority to treat people equally. I really hope the local shoe store will sell shoes to gay people because I’m seeing a lot of walking in my future.
If the money were more important to them than the bigotry, they wouldn’t need to be forced into the transaction, they would do it themselves. It is a basic axiom that is essential for defining voluntary transactions. If they’re refusing a transaction absent any external compulsion, they must necessarily be getting negative value from it.
If the bigot was going around inflicting his bigotry on others, say showing up at the wedding and chanting slogans, or otherwise inflicting his bigotry upon others, I would agree with you entirely. He is running his shop, he is approached for a transaction, and he has refused it.
Deserves to burn in eternal hell? 
I am again struck by how closely you and your arguments parallel religious fundamentalists. It’s striking. You are that which you profess to hate.
Elections are an exceedingly imperfect tool, to say the least. At any point in time, myriad issues face the electorate and people running for elections. Discrimination that is enshrined in law has to become extremely unacceptable to a very large portion of society before it can be successfully rooted out. Support for gay marriage is at greater than 50% among the American populace and it still hasn’t come to pass.
Really? How are you getting the young to not be bigots? How are you getting support for the laws to reduce the effect of bigots on society?
I don’t assume that he cares about the monetary loss. In fact, in my model, he is willing to take the hit, but he has to pay money to be a bigot. It just imposes a cost on him that he has to bear for that bigotry. The market is not neutral. We have to work to reduce bigotry itself, forcing bigots to ‘act civilised’ does not improve us as a society.
It certainly makes it better for those faced with discrimination.
No, because money is valuable while bigotry isn’t. And again; why should I care? A bigot is unhappy that he’s not allowed to persecute someone? That’s a win/win scenario as far as I’m concerned.
It is fascinating how often these days the Right complains that they are being persecuted when they are prevented from persecuting someone else.
And he is inflicting his bigotry on others.
They are certainly better than the “free market”.
By clamping down on the bigots and preventing them from terrorizing the targets of their bigotry into hiding themselves.
So what? I’m far more concerned that he not harm others.
True; as a rule it’s negative.