This is sort of like loud music, fast driving, or degree of nudity, which are quid pro quo issues. One's public deportment is free and personal until it inflicts a disruption of enjoyment of the same space by others. Then it becomes political and an issue that touches on the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of others who can and may well inflict their dissatisfaction on the personal interests of a perpetrator.
So we tolerate the habits of others, and modify, adjust, or refrain from our own social behaviors lest others retaliate. I was a smoker for a long time, but now the effects are unacceptable if I cannot move away from the source of irritation. Same for body smell that is simply not tolerable.
What's your particular sensitivity? That you don't like to have your beliefs or deportment criticized or limited?
Just pondering on gray-area behaviors.
“One’s public deportment is free and personal until it inflicts a disruption of enjoyment of the same space by others.”
Just wow! What a society of soap bubbles we have become. Now we can not tollerate any “disruption of enjoyment.” I see that the movie “Demolition Man” was much more prophetic than I could have imagined at the time.
The fact of the matter is that in order for you to have your “enjoyment disrupted” by cigarette smoking in a restaurant or bar, you must voluntarily enter onto property owned by another. You have no expectation of any particular enjoyment, except what the property owner is willing to offer you, or by extension me. If that property owner wants to offer you a completely smoke free environment by banning tobacco use, then he is free to do so. If he wants to offer me a venue to enjoy the use of tobacco while I imbibe on his other offerings, he should be free to do so.
“What’s your particular sensitivity?” I have a very hard time tollerating tyranny.
“That you don’t like to have your beliefs or deportment criticized or limited?”
I am more than willing to succomb to the beliefs of the owner of the property. Other than that, I am not very sensitive at all. I am a strong defender of a business owner not being forced to participate in a gay wedding, I am also a strong defender of them being able to set their own tobacco policy.
Freedom goes both ways.