Gay Rights

I agree that the government shouldn't be able to do anything that it thinks promotes the most good, but I don't think that we can trust people to promote the most good either. While a totalitarian government would likely be bad, so would complete anarchy or even a democracy without any regulation. A middle ground, I'd say, is the best; the government and the people need to both regulate the other. Where this middle ground should be is very difficult to decide, I'll admit, and I don't claim to know what the best solution is.

To tie this back in with what I was originally saying, I don't think that the government should have the power to declare whatever they want legal or illegal based on the good and/or harm that said thing causes (though I do think that there should be some exceptions), but as far as I remember, I never said anything that contradicted with this (correct me if I'm wrong). While I do think that laws should revolve around what promotes the most good (and that denying service based on sexuality should be illegal if it being legal causes more harm than good), I don't necessarily think that the government should decide this on its own. Assuming that said thing does cause more harm than good (which, again, I'm not claiming), perhaps the best course of action would be to simply urge people to support it being illegal. I don't know what the best way to balance the government's power and the people's power is, but regardless of who is controlling the laws, I think that we should strive for laws that promote the greatest good.

 

I just skimmed over your post. I'm a bit tired and too lazy to check my old posts right now (so forgive me if I'm wrong), but I argued that I think people will change and shun the removal of gay individuals from restaurants (or anything really); but that for now, restaurants should reserve the right to throw individuals out at their own convenience and judgement. I completely take back that back. After this white supremacist movement, I've come to think that we must take action now. If we give those of the LGBT community equal rights, I believe most people will soon come to accept them as normal people. Of course, there will probably be weak-minded, hateful cowards like the white supremacists. Those idiots aside, as of today, I would fight for anyone who is facing racism, sexism, sexual discrimination, or anything of the sort. I think many people would stand beside me on that.

 

Rights don't change based on how oppressed someone is. Don't give the government a new stick to beat the populace with.

 

3 years later, it's still going.

 

I think many people would have argued that when we banned certain acts of racist segregation.

 

And?

 

removed

 

You seriously think we would be where we are today if that had not happened?

 

I don't think anybody has a right to the services of any private person, I think they should legally be allowed to refuse you service for whatever reason. As for your actual question I won't speculate, I don't know if we would've made the same amount of progress.

 

So, as an example, if we were in the 1800s and there was that very high prejudice against black people along with no protections from discrimination, then all stores should be allowed to disallow said black people from buying goods. Segregation made it so black people had a harder time getting anything, including a simple bus ride.

Currently, the law allows businesses to give and not give any service to any individual, as long as judgments of worthiness are made on the actions of the individual, and not the thoughts or physical aspects of a person. How about some examples (but not all):

1. Giving or not giving services based on these things is discrimination:

a. Person born with a different color of skin, hair, eyes, etc.

b. Sexual oriantation (Gay, straight, lesbian)

c. Gender (Male, female, transgender categorizations)

d. Religion

2. Giving or not giving services based on these things is NOT discrimination, if applied equally to all people:

a. Height, weight, or size if the service provider cannot meet their needs.

b. Actions, whether criminal or not

I'm not certain about people with disabilities, whether mental or physical. I believe there's some complications with that. In the end, however, the law says that businesses shouldn't ban or punish people for things out of their control (what they were born with) but may for their actions, as long as everyone is punished equally for those same actions (Can't punish a gay couple from hugging while allowing friend groups of the same gender hugging each other as a quick and silly example).

Can it be agreed that this all sounds reasonable?

 

Private citizens should be allowed to do anything so long as they are not initiating aggression against someone. Nobody has a right to your services. If someone decides to be a bigot you don't get to use the government to smack them.

Public services should have to treat everyone equally.

 

So, if you can only buy simple food for 30 dollars a meal because your eyes are blue, it's fair and the government shouldn't do anything?

 

The burden is on you to prove that LGBTQ discrimination is on par with racial segregation for your morally pragmatic argument to have any basis in reality. On your actual question, I don't think its fair, I don't think the government should do anything about it. In addition you said that private businesses shouldn't be allowed to discriminate on the basis of thoughts, so businesses cannot disallow white supremacists from their services right? Every time a gym cancels Richard Spencer's membership, or every time AirB&B decides to publish a list saying people like James Allsup, Baked Alaska, David Duke, and Tara McCarthy cannot use their services, the white supremacists should be able to take the government and force private citizens who want nothing to do with their disgusting ideologies to serve them?

 

1. Businesses have a right to still ban people off their actions, including what they say. A customer who comes into a store and is generally rude can be asked to immediately leave. Someone who has publicly advocated for white supremacy could be denied service by businesses, as the words spoken were their actions.

2. The reason the government intervened was because of discrimination. Jim Crow laws made all places able to segregate and disallow high quality services to all black people. It's already been proven by it happening in the past that not having these laws to protect against discrimination creates high levels of discrimination and makes certain groups of people unable to access services and goods all other people can access.

 

The white supremacists don't advocate for white supremacy in the stores. They do it at a rally or something and then the business bans them from coming to their store.

Absolutely categorically wrong. Jim Crow enforced segregation at a public level, with state services being segregated. In some states Jim Crow even forced segregation on private businesses.

This is just a lazy argument. Currently we don't have laws protecting gay people, yet gay people don't suffer a high level of discrimination. Correlation doesn't equal causation.

The burden is on you to prove that not protecting gay people leads to gay people having no access to services and goods. The reality is that the number of people who actually discriminate with their own private businesses is extremely low.

 

1. It doesn't matter where or when the action is, as long as it is public the business can choose to allow or disallow service. This includes actions in the store, online, or in public rallies.

2. Jim Crow laws were not the best example with the laws being about the public space. A better example would be during the Irish potato famine where business restricted those of Irish origins from using their businesses. This was done by businesses personally. Similarly, Jewish people faced similar problems before the end of WWII (even in the US). These are examples of discrimination which made life more difficult for people because of public judgments based on religion and race.

3. Laws do protect gay people in some states. Also, I'm arguing that allowing discrimination in rejecting service to consumers will create discrimination to a party, not to all parties immediately. The beginning argument may have been about gay individuals being discriminated, but losing protections for consumers from discrimination allows any (and historically shows it will lead to) group to be discriminated against unfairly. This issue reaches much further than just people who are gay.

4. Black people were discriminated against (though by law) and still had access to services and goods, just much lower in quality. This is the same type of discrimination which I'm arguing would occur to some group without protection from consumer discrimination.

5. The number of businesses which discriminate now is low, but it can be seen historically that discrimination in businesses occurs most during times of hardship (depressions, job shortages, etc.). As the US isn't in a very hard time, discrimination in businesses is low, but could very easily increase without protections for the consumer.

 

So why is religion protected? Why can't I ban all Muslims from my store because they pray to their god.

Actually, the correlation between the economy and racism has been debunked numerous times. An article from Vox compiled most of the sources I was gonna quote so ill just link to it. Trump's idea that jobs will solve racism is just wrong

Preserving individual liberty is more important than a few people being discriminated against. For me to better understand your argument, could you explain your moral framework?

 

1. Religion is beliefs not actions. It would be certain actions correlating to a religion which could allow banning of services.

2. In the provided example of prayer, the rule would have to apply to all equally, regardless of the individual's beliefs, and there must be some type of physical evidence to the business owner. As such, issues with prayers would have to ignore the diety being prayed to and only be based on the words of the prayer along with the actions associated with it (once again ignoring the diety in the thought process). This still fits under the supplied rules.

3. I was not saying that religion was increased in depressions, but that moments of depression have historically shown more examples of service denial based on discrimination then times without economic depression. The example of Irish people for example.

4. I'll describe my moral framework, but let's try to keep the debate as friendly too all people as possible. I'm moving for the idea of the most moral option is that which allows all people equal opportunities to all goods, services, and rights. In other words, a type of justice, or giving each their due. My list allows all people the same opportunities to the listed objectives, even if it restricts all people in some ways to do so. This system doesn't allow issues of discrimination to take rights away from any group, be they ethnic, racial, gender, or any other. A focus on individual liberty doesn't protect those who most need protections, insteading focusing on adding rights while ignoring the issues caused by certain groups in relation to others. Justice allows both sides to receive as much individual liberties as possible, as long as all groups can freely access those rights, thus protecting the majority of people.

 

So would a store owner have to have physical proof of a white supremacist being a white supremacist. Banning white supremacists isn't applying the rules equally, its singling out an identifiable group for persecution. If you wanted to ban white supremacists wouldn't you also have to ban every other ideology?

We can achieve justice without government and without curtailing individual liberty. The market is bigotry's chief enemy. No large scale business can discriminate against LGBT people and survive, its just not conceivable. The CEO of mozilla was literally fired after he donated money to a anti-gay charity.

 

Religion is protected and ideology not because of the time America was founded and because of the ideology of the people who found it. A good portion of our founding fathers were considered Deist more than any Christian religion, being direct products of the Renaissance. All of them directly knew of the unrest that Europe suffered from as a direct consequence from the conflict of Religion vs religion. They made a pragmatic choice, which tied into the Enlightened values of free thought and speech, from a position of not necessarily backing any winner.

Religion is also protected because pre-America was a largely fundamentalist Christian group of colonies. While most of them failed their outlined goals in their Charter, they none-the-less set the future country on a specific course.