Comment by fennecfoxen
9 years ago
> I have a problem with this, because in effect it is saying that if you want to be in business, you have to check your principles at the entrance.
Well, welcome to the club! Other noteable groups objecting to their principles being regulated by a government office include Masterpiece Cakeshop of Lakewood, CO, and Memories Pizza of Walker, IN. (For the moment, disregard the likes of Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor, as their matters of principle-regulation are less directly relevant.)
I figure there are three-ish main options.
1. People are consistently required to suppress their principles, and do business with groups like the Daily Stormer.
2. People are consistently allowed to exercise their principles, and refuse service to gay weddings.
3. A disaster area of conflicting regulations both for and against the right of various groups to be served by various businesses, conforming to no consistent set of principles but rather to whatever is politically popular and expedient today, and hypocritical to the core.
My money's on 3.
(There's a theoretical possibility they'll actually nail down specific principles and not make it a total mess, but I don't think it's plausible.)
You're missing out on option 4: People can't discriminate on properties that the person they are doing business with can't pick or change (gender, sexual orientation, color of skin, hair, size of nose ...) but can discriminate on properties that the person in question did choose or could change (voicing the desire to kill or suppress large parts of the population, affiliation with nazis or just being an idiot in general).
Your notable groups are not required or regulated in any way that would require them to print a swastika on a cake or a Hitler face on their pizza if the customer ask so. They are, however, required to serve queer and non-queer people of all skin tones. There is indeed a difference between these kinds of discrimination.
I think this entire argument is classic "logic overreach". This is all socially constructed. There is no perfect logical algorithm for deciding what is reasonable.
The rule is more like "don't randomly screw people". Ok, we've decided to screw this Nazi website. Hmm, is that a case of randomly screwing people? Nope. OK, move along.
> People can't discriminate on properties that the person they are doing business with can't pick or change [...] but can discriminate on properties that the person in question did choose or could change
Religious beliefs seem to fall squarely in the latter category (at least to the extent that political views do). Are you really comfortable with people discriminating on that basis?
In principle I'd be fine with including religion and every (political) view in that list as long as the view infringes on the freedom of the person doing business. For example: view (a) that demands that all living people must wear black gloves and run in circles five hours a day would be on my "that's ok to discriminate against" list while view (b) that requires the follower to wear a three-pointed pirate hat and eat pasta at its religious gatherings would not be.
Basically: If your view demands anything of me or any other person I might know other than pure tolerance of your view, I can choose to discriminate against you. If your view only demands tolerance and only makes prescriptions for you, I can't. Obviously, the real world is a bit more messy since even a political moderate view that demands higher taxes to feed the poor infringes on my freedom to earn money - so the question where to draw that line is a matter of open debate.
People who change their religion are often disowned by their family, their spouse might divorce them, etc. It can in no way be considered a choice.
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You can't choose not to be gay, but you can choose not to hold hands with your boyfriend in public. Is it okay to discriminate based on that?
Does it harm you when others hold hand in public? No, it does not. It only requires a modicum of tolerance. So no, it's not ok to discriminate based on that. Or do you discriminate based on couples kissing in public?
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