Posted on 09/08/2013 6:40:16 AM PDT by Kaslin
“We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”
Not a sign of the times.
Oh, sure, you see the sign posted, here and there. But one is not allowed to really mean it. Contra those signs, the right to refuse service to anyone has not been retained by the people. It has been nullified by government.
Civil rights cases are on the rise again regarding gay weddings and civil union ceremonies. Businesses, in these United States, may not discriminate against people on the basis of race, religion . . . and now, in nearly half of the states, because of sexual orientation.
This came up in New Mexico, recently. Elane Photography had refused to visually record the civil union ceremonies of a gay couple. The couple sued, and a court ruled in their favor: “[A] commercial photography business that offers its services to the public, thereby increasing its visibility to potential clients, is subject to the anti-discrimination provisions” of New Mexico’s Human Rights Act, and “must serve same-sex couples on the same basis that it serves opposite-sex couples.”
This ruling expresses today’s dominant and quite trendy notion of “free” association. The moment you set up a business open to the public your right to freely avoid this person or that, either by trade or mere “hanging out,” goes out the window. The modern idea forces inclusion and demonizes exclusion. Anyone who excludes someone else on racial, sexual, or religious grounds is a bad person. And bad behavior like that is not allowed in government and schools and businesses.
Soon it will not be allowed in churches, either.
The more classical idea was that governments alone were not to discriminate against this person or that, because all are owed justice. But businesses do not sell justice, and, since no one is owed a particular service, private persons and groups, including businesses, were allowed to discriminate in ways forbidden to governments.
This changed with 1964’s Civil Rights Act. Not only did it repeal the tyrannical Jim Crow era public mandates for discrimination (which were further enforced by organized private violence, i.e. the KKK), but the Act forbade private business discrimination, enforcing open access . . . leaving us with what B.K. Marcus calls “the right to say ‘I do’” but without any “right to say ‘I don’t.’”
Yes, we’ve gotten to the place where forced social inclusion is the rule, and free association something of a myth. Right now, businesses must accept all potential clients. Potential clients who feel they’ve been excluded can easily sue, if they can impute to the non-compliant business some racial or sexual agenda leading to the unlawful discrimination.
Now, it’s true that the vast majority of cases go unprosecuted, either because the excluded customer doesn’t care to sue — after all, customers usually can go elsewhere — or because the motive for lack of service is often murky and hard to prove. But the murkiness allows for a lot of lawyerly nonsense, and the whole regime of inclusionary association is perfectly set up for lawyers to get rich on, and activist customers to work themselves into an ideological lather.
The ominous end game, though, is what worries me.
It cannot be a good thing that businesses people must worry about the clients they reject. And it would be a disastrous thing to have churches forced to conform to open access requirements. Thankfully, in America, we have the First Amendment, putting a limit on the intrusion of law into the free association of religious practice.
I don’t wish to be delphic in any way, here. I support gay marriage on grounds of freedom of contract and equal protection. I’m glad to have friends and family who are gay and can be legally married. But I do not favor forcing others to associate themselves with gay couples. If your religious beliefs preclude accepting homosexuals, you should be allowed to act accordingly in your churches and even in your business.
What about race? The 1964 Civil Rights Act was a response to many decades of widespread private and public discrimination against blacks. In the South. Would the classical idea of republican freedom, which allows for private discrimination of nearly any type, allow businesses to send black customers to separate bathrooms, and seat them at separate tables?
This is not just a theoretical issue. It’s a live political one — as anyone who has followed the rise of Rand Paul knows. Rand Paul appears to be in favor of classical republican liberty, and that means he, like I, am officially tolerant (legally speaking) of even some quite ugly private discrimination.
Well, the problem in the South, prior to the Civil Rights Act, was not just one of private discrimination. Governments affirmatively mandated racial discrimination. In Mississippi, a department of state government was formed to promote segregation. It secretly funded the private and notorious White Citizens’ Council, and investigated and spied on citizens working in favor of equal rights.
Mob action and government worked together to enforce business discrimination. It seems to me that extensive anti-discrimination rules were required to break the evil alliance between government by white bigots and terror by white-robed criminals.
One of the things not often addressed in discussions of racial and other discrimination is that it costs businesses to discriminate. They lose clients and money. And they are open to further losses by non-discriminating competition. There’s a vast literature on this, and not just from economists. That’s why the South needed both law and mob to keep the system going. The market, if allowed to be free, based on the idea of free association, tends to erode such disputatious nonsense.
It’s not good for business.
Indeed, this is the old conservative and modern progressive case against markets: they erode community values.
Racism, like sexism, has long very much been a “community value.” Markets, based on free association, put a huge limit on the ubiquity and power of those values. They open up society. Make it free.
It still allows us to find our community niches — religious, racial, sexual, whatever — but it allows those who feel oppressed by community values — religious, racial, sexual, whatever — a way out.
And that’s good. That’s the classic small-government case for individual freedom.
It allows diversity, it encourages community, but within the confines of a rule of law and the basic norms of an open society.
The New Mexico case features a small business, not a large one. The photographers appear to have made their decision based on their personal beliefs, not to encourage public rejection of same-sex couples. They know it will cost them customers.
Taking pictures is also an artistic enterprise — at least, more so than running a lunch counter. Forcing the business to comply with non-discrimination rules seems a bit totalitarian. To me. Could a gay photographer be forced by law to snap pictures at an event where gays were disparaged?
This case will be appealed. “We believe that the First Amendment protects the right of people not to communicate messages that they disagree with,” say the photographers’ lawyers.
The ACLU declares this notion “frighteningly far-reaching.”
Well, yes. Justice is supposed to be that. Far-reaching.
But true freedom of association allows for the diversity that progressives say they want. They should be able to accept that. And live and let live.
And, when they come across a business that doesn’t approve of their life choices, take their business elsewhere. [further reading]
While this gay-marriage booster appears to be on the side of the angels here, the piece in fact makes social conservatives out as a bigots whose “religious beliefs preclude accepting homosexuals.” That is not the issue here. The photographers (and bakers and others, even ministers) currently under fire from the PC police are not refusing to accept homosexuals. They are unwilling to endorse BEHAVIOR that they consider socially harmful—namely, so-called gay marriage. The difference is enormous.
It’s funny thing - the classic movie “Giant” was on TCM last night. The climax of the movie is a titanic fist fight between Rock Hudson and the owner of a diner who won’t serve Mexicans. Rock loses the fight - in total unHollywood-like fashion, and when he’s out like a light, the owner tosses the sign “We reserve the right not to serve...” onto his chest. Sadly, today, that owner is starting to look more like a hero rather than a villain!
Article is lacking... where did ‘free association’ start of us.?
We just have to reduce the civility and openness of our discourse with these thugs. Considering the complete absence of civility in their attempts to force slavery on us, I don't see that response as a big problem. There is no situation I can imagine in which the gay fascists can trick a decent person into providing personal services against their will, not when such services have no set rates. And if they do pull a fast one: "Sorry, but I'm not feeling well. I regret that I have to cancel at the last minute." Even for a venue. "Sorry, but we have a sewage issue. I have the trucks here pumping, but it's going to be a few hours."
The ACLU: where the constitution is only applicable when politics suits.
These folks need to restructure their businesses. If they offer their services as “Photographic art by commission” of “cake art by commission” they would be able to freely refuse commissions. Wo believes a portrait painter or sculptor could be forced to accept all commissions?
I wouldn’t want to accept any service from a person I had to harass and bullyrag in order to get the service. And if I were the service provider under such a scenario, I’m damned if I’d put my heart into whatever service I was obliged to perform against my will.
Businesses are not required to be as proficient or to give special rates to pretend marriages.
I've been saying this exact same thing for years now here on FR.
"Gay weddings" are less about "civil rights" and more about attacking the Church and forcing the acceptance of deviant behavior upon those of faith.
Those of us of faith are the ultimate "enemy" of the homosexual agenda - they've been targeting us since the 70's.
Perhaps you heard Obama blow the dog whistle when he said "Ii will not force any church to perform gay weddings."
I'm sure we all know what "blowing the dog whistle" means -- Obama fully intended his homosexual supporters to hear "go out and start suing churches who don't perform gay marriage."
I personally believe the first lawsuit against a church that refuses to perform a homosexual union is imminent. The only question in my mind is "are they going to go after a large church or a small one?"
The Catholic church would be the biggest target with the thinking "once it falls, the rest will follow." Conversely going after a small church without the means to defend itself would set a precedent. The Court system in our country no longer applies law in its rulings, they look for precedent.
Best guess is that within the next 12 months the first trial case will be filed. I'm somewhat surprised a lawsuit hasn't been filed already.
BTW: Yes, I believe we're living in the end times. Everything morally and Biblically right is under attack and all sorts of deviant behavior's are being endorsed/legitimized.
In the case of a bakery the pretend bride and groom should worry about what went into the cake.
That would set the bakery up for lawsuit based on some made-up concept of "malicious performance" ... meaning they deliberately sabotaged the cake.
Now, if suddenly cakes for 'gay weddings' started to get dropped on their way into the reception, that'd be another story entirely.
"Sorry your honor -- it was an act of God!"
“Diversity” and “non-discrimination” as practiced by leftist/socialist/statists is clearly a direct attack on our constitutional rights of right to practice our religion, free speech, right to choose to whom we associate and or right to engage in lawful commerce [Hobby Lobby Christian owned must buy abortion coverage].
If we conservatives don’t get our act together and elect some honest leaders, we are cooked & eaten.
This writer is making a typical wrong assumption. The homosexual marriage crusade has never been the same as the civil rights movement. No homosexual has ever been denied the right to marry. Just not, like heterosexuals, to marry someone of the same sex.
That would have to be proven not determined by some extra judicial commission. There would be the danger of countersuit as well.
Bottom line how could the make believe marriage couple trust any product unless it was made by an LGBT bakery.
Conservatives can’t even agree on whether to vote in a Republican primary, and then they divide their vote among multiple contenders when they do. Mostly, all they know are the familiar names like McPain, Graham, McC., and Boehner.
Let us propose a contra case:
Suppose I am building an Institute to study how to improve gay conversion therapy. Could I go to a business run by openly gay people and demand that I be able to hire them as subcontractors? Under this legal theory, I could file a complaint against them if they refused.
I wonder how the legal and media establishment would react to such a case.
Who is forcing these uncivilized people upon us? Who is protecting them? Who is wrecking our society?
Live and let live is no longer possible. Also, gay activists do not see the difference. When you rebuke their behavior, they simply call you names. Why? Because it works. I am hoping that this case goes to the SCOTUS, and then, we will see if the first amendment to the Constitution is still operative. I have my doubts.
As one pundit is fond of writing: "You will be made to care".
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