That’s right: the ends do not justify the means. Do you hold the converse, that the means justify the ends?
I think you are missing the point. Some of us think you should be able to hang either sign on the door of your restaurant. We don’t think it’s a good thing, but we don’t think it’s the government’s business to tell us what to do in that arena.
Your other examples have to do with public safety, and aren’t the same thing. No one is going to die or face any physical harm because they can’t eat in my restaurant. And although we’d like to live in a society where discrimination doesn’t exist, we also want to live in a society where the government is less intrusive in our lives.
But this all comes down to what you think the role of government is. There is really no point in arguing about these particular issues when we have a different set of assumptions we are starting with. You want the government to intrude in that area. That is a philosophical difference that isn’t going to be resolved on single issues.
Yes, that is my rebuttal to your argument that only those with wealth and power get to have freedom, everyone else gets to do whatever the elite allow them to.
Well, I’d like to think eventual race riots and open animosity between various socio-ethnic groups is a matter of public safety, yes 
I think it depends on the difficulty of finding a service. If a service is easily available to a particular group of people (blacks, gays, asians, anything you can think of), but a few particular businesses are discriminating against them, I don’t see why the government should step in to force those businesses to deal with them. There is no compelling need to infringe on the business’s freedom of association, because the group of people in question are not being significantly harmed by one or a few businesses discriminating against them.
On the other hand, if discrimination is so ubiquitous that people are having difficulty gaining access to a particular service, then it seems reasonable for the government to step in, since at that point, people being discriminated against have no other option. At this point, there’s a compelling reason to infringe on the businesses’ freedom of association, because the group of people in question is now being significantly harmed by the discrimination, in that they are unable to access markets that are commonly available to those outside their particular group.
I don’t understand the logic that says that if you’re black or Hispanic or Asian or female or gay or transgender or atheist or Jewish or Wiccan or Muslim then you should just tough it out and accept any hardships that are thrown at you. But if you’re a bigot, society is supposed to accept you for what you are and protect you from any consequences.
Why can’t we just decide we’d rather be anti-bigot than anti-gay? Sorry, wedding photo company, we took a vote and decided you’re more offensive than the gay couple you find offensive.
That’s still open door to segregation, innit ? If all the shops in the West, South and North districts discriminate, the people being discriminated against are de facto corralled into the East quarter.
Besides, this “compromise” solution would necessarily require the creation of monitoring agencies to assess whether each town respects the proper quotas for each service, with all the monetary overhead that comes with that, wouldn’t it ? And what would you propose should be done if the town doesn’t ?
- Force discriminating businesses to stop ? Might have done that from the start, saved some trouble. And which ones get to be forced while the others aren’t ? Or do you just tell them all to cut the shit ? In that case, might have *really *done that from the get go
- Force non-discriminating businesses to move in ? That’s even worse - not even sure it’s doable. Maybe the State would open Public Shops providing each missing service or something ?
- Provide monetary incentives to non-discriminating shops ? That’s even more onerous than maintaining the agency itself was ! Who’s going to pay for it, especially when the local majority self-demonstrably stands against the whole idea ?
I don’t see how this follows. Suppose I run a restaurant in the 1950’s south in a town that is 75% middle class white and 25% poor black. Further I am aware that allowing blacks into my establishment would turn away all whites. Clearly it is in my best interest to only serve white patrons.
Now it may be that as the market place gets crowded with white only establishments some establishments that cater to blacks would began to appear. But this will only occur if the market forces are such that it is equally profitable to run a defacto black only rather than white only establishment. Given the reduced size and wealth of the clientele this is likely to be the case only if you charge more, and/or reduce costs (and likely quality) relative to the white only establishment. End result, it sucks to be black.
Well, that’s not an unreasonable argument to make.
I’m not sure it would actually happen, but I guess you being French makes you pretty familiar with such riots.
So your rebuttal is to laugh and then to throw up a strawman. I see nothing to be gained from further debate with you on this topic.
Piss poor article.
It’s not clear if the studio was sued or prosecuted. Either way, the point of the exercise was to make clear to bigoted businesses that their attitudes are odious to the point of being illegal. Their attitudes are unacceptable to that community, and they need to understand that.
No one is going to use this ruling to force this studio to do a gay wedding. Obviously.
In my small town no bar was nonsmoking though the majority of patrons in all didn’t smoke. All bars thought if they alienated smokers they’d lose more business than they’d gain.
State law changed so all indoor areas of bars had to be non smoking. It’s been a few years now and they’re all still in business and I’m not getting lung cancer.
I would describe that as a situation where there is not in fact a viable market due to tiny minority - 25% of the population isn’t in itself a tiny minority, but when multiplied by the available spending power, it is.
In other words, it’s not a situation where this statement is true:
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
…you’ve got a stack of paying customers waving their cash around, needs unmet, that’s usually enough to provoke enterprising agencies to step in and serve/exploit…
[/quote]
So IMO, that’s a case where discrimination could persist indefinitely without something happening either to change attitudes, equalise earning power, etc.
On re-reading the above, I realised it may come across as a don’t-care statement, which was not my intent; just to be really clear:
I don’t mean “Oh, that’s a tiny, non-viable market that nobody needs to care about”
I mean “That’s a case where market-based solutions probably aren’t going to fix things for a discriminated minority, and it probably does require external control”
Spending power doesn’t really matter unless it’s very much lopsided in the favour of the minority.
Imagine a slightly different hypothetical: 1950s town. 50% of the population doesn’t really care either way. 25% of the population are hardline racists who will boycott a business open to blacks. 25% of the population is black. Spending power is absolutely even all across the board.
The opportunities, markets, profits and whatnot are the same for a racist business and a non-racist one, correct ? Therefore, you would think that eventually there would be about the same amount of each, correct ?
But in reality, what would happen is still close to 100% racist businesses (except for businesses owned by blacks, naturally) - because money-making operations don’t take risks unless they absolutely have to, controversies are bad for business, and the racist business model is tried and true in that time and place. Why rock the boat for, in the end, the exact same profits assuming the market estimates are true ? Why chance opening the first colour-blind business in town, risk getting Klansmen showing up to throw rocks at the windows, risk that your market estimates showing similar profits might be wrong and so forth ?
Or, in a less charged and violent environment, see** Sitnam**'s example ; which is even better because for a long time (at least here in France) the State had *already *made catering to smokers a more onerous proposition than simply telling them to smoke outside, by requiring smoker-friendly restaurants and bars to install costly aeration systems and submit to regular inspections ; separate smoking and non-smoking areas etc…
But there still were hardly any strictly non-smoking places. Bar owners still, in their hearts of hearts, believed catering to smokers was worth it because a client’s a client, they could *see *they had smoking clients, and they couldn’tsee the fervent non-smokers who simply didn’t come to bars. And when all is said and done, people opening bars don’t really hire market consultants or run large-scale demographics studies 
In the grand majority of such “balanced” cases, unless someone deliberately throws a wrench in the works the traditional way of doing things will keep on keeping on. It’s all very well to trust in people acting rationally in their best interest - problem is, humans are not in fact rational and their best interest is far from self-evident, particularly when it comes to long term issues.
Hell, if they were, there wouldn’t be such a thing as a “no homos” sign.
Yeah, I guess you’re right - in the case of the racism issue though, it looks as though the issue is the sheer scale of non-market pressures - throwing rocks through a window isn’t a market force, it’t a social disorder problem, and therefore something that should automatically qualify for external control.
The bars/smoking one is a bit more interesting and challenging though - and I concede, it seems that risk aversion was at play here, or we would already have had more nonsmoking venues, but what’s most interesting about this is: are we in fact then saying that government should be able to mandate the level of risk that businesses take? (I think the real answer is “yes, they already do”, but it’s sort of obfuscated unless explicitly examined in this way)
I’m not sure I would frame it as “mandating risk taking” as much as “enforcing non-intuitive self-interest”. At the end of the day, smokers presumably still go to bars just as much because that’s where the pussy dwells, even though they might whinge about having to smoke outside in the winter ; and strictly more non-smokers presumably frequent bars. The publican doesn’t have to respect aeration codes, makes strictly more money and takes *no risk *since all of his competition is bound to respect the new ordinances as well. And that’s on top of any real or imagined benefits from greatly reducing second hand smoke indoors obviously.
So the government didn’t really force barkeeps to take a risk they wouldn’t have chanced otherwise ; rather they eliminated risk from the equation entirely. Might have directly affected the established profitability of bar-keeping (notably that of cigar bars, or the much more regretted by me hookah bars) ; but then nobody’s guaranteed a set market share or standard of living or a fixed price at the gas pump.
Or, observed from another angle, it is simply re-shaping the economic environment, which government does simply by *existing *- governmental enforcement of contracts for example puts a serious crimp in the private “guys with baseball bats who’ll kneecap people wot go back on theys word” business model :p.
The free market won’t eliminate bigotry, because bigotry is so very highly marketable.