[The_Reader_David]

I remind both of you that segregated seating on railways was not a choice of racist railway owners, but on enforced on all railway owners by government edict.

(See Thomas Sowell's discussion of the matter in a 2005 townhall.com column.)

For my own part in the legislation defining "public accomodations" I would draw a distinction between bed-and-breakfast accommodations in which the owners are renting parts of their own home (or its grounds for receptions) and those in which the area rented to the public is not part of their residence or its grounds, applying non-discrimination laws to the latter, and offering maximum latitude to the proprietors' freedom of association in the former. (Similarly for church owned halls -- if the hall is on the same property as the parish and used for religious purposes at all, freedom of association should apply, while if it's down the block and only used for rentals, it's a public accommodation.)

[allmendream]

thanks! and I agree.

[allmendream]

from Up From Slavery.....

“At one time Mr. (Frederick) Douglass was travelling in the state of Pennsylvania, and was forced, on account of his colour, to ride in the baggage-car, in spite of the fact that he had paid the same price for his passage that the other passengers had paid. When some of the white passengers went into the baggage-car to console Mr. Douglass, and one of them said to him: “I am sorry, Mr. Douglass, that you have been degraded in this manner,”

Mr. Douglass straightened himself up on the box upon which he was sitting and replied: “They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass. The soul that is in me no man can degrade. I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me.””