Victory for Gay Rights in Seattle
The ACLU reports:
Under the settlement announced today, the business owner acknowledged that all persons should be treated with respect and dignity, regardless of sexual orientation, and she apologized that her actions offended and hurt Butts. She agreed not to violate Seattle’s anti-discrimination law in the future.
Not everyone approves of this, however. Consider:
Same-sex weddings are not only against the owner's belief system–they're also not legal in Washington state. So the ACLU would have her forced against her convictions into taking part in a legal fiction or charade. This is "tolerance for me, coercion for you," and constitutes an attempt to make acting on traditional morality illegal. I wish the owner had contacted a legal service like the Rutherford Institute rather than settling. The ACLU shouldn't be allowed to force its moral agenda on the rest of us without a fight. ... The right of businesses to discriminate against customers on the basis of race is settled in the US. The right of businesses to discriminate on the basis of personal moral or religious convictions is not, and poses far more difficult problems. Should a printer be accorded the right to refuse to print pornography, for instance, simply because it is contrary to his moral or religious convictions, even though it is a legal product?
Notice the dishonest shift in terms? It’s not OK for someone to discriminate on the basis of race, but it should be OK for someone to discriminate on the basis of “personal moral or religious convictions.” In the first case, the issue is the characteristics of the customers, in the second the issue the personal feelings of the vendor. The problem is that two often coincide.
A vendor can have “personal moral or religious convictions” against serving people of a certain race. A printer could have “personal moral or religious convictions” against selling wedding invitations for an interracial or interfaith couple. The author of the above is profoundly incoherent because the above statements would both favor a legal remedy and oppose a legal remedy here. Would a refusal to sell wedding invitations to a black or interracial couple be illegal because it is “settled” that businesses cannot discriminate on the basis of race, or would it be legal because it is “not settled” whether businesses can discriminate on the basis of “personal moral or religious convictions”?
That’s how anti-gay bigots manage to avoid dealing honestly and forthrightly with discrimination against gays and the laws designed to end it. They contrast anti-discrimination laws dealing with race, religion, or gender and say that’s not so bad because they deal with things like racial characteristics. When it comes to anti-discrimination laws dealing with sexual orientation, however, that’s suddenly different because now, all of the sudden, we’ve entered the realm of “personal moral or religious convictions” and it’s wrong to make people act against them.
But it’s not new — we didn’t suddenly stumble against “personal moral or religious convictions.” Those were always an issue because there have always been people who have “personal moral or religious convictions” against treating the members of certain races or religions equally. There are fewer such people now than before, but that is due in part to precisely those anti-discrimination laws. When people recoil from selling wedding invitations to an interracial couple, we call them bigots; when people recoil from selling wedding invitations to a same-sex couple, they are suddenly heros of the Christian Right and lauded for standing up against political correctness.
Dismissing laws that ban discrimination against gays because this forces people to go against “personal moral or religious convictions” would create the same loophole in all other anti-discrimination laws. Such a loophole was not allowed before and there is no reason why it should be created now. Yes, people who don’t like gays will suddenly have to treat them like everyone else - but I have no more pity for them than I do for the people who have to treat blacks, Jews, or women just like everyone else. If you have a “personal moral or religious conviction” against treating gay, black, Jewish, or female customers like everyone else, then don’t open up a public business.
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Comments
gays and lesbians need to stop trying to push themselves on us and quit trying to look for cause to sue for every little thing. that’s like saying they have a handi cap and were discriminated against. if you like the same sex, then fine. Just PLEASE stop trying to smother the rest of us with your “lifestyle”. Thank you.
How are gay people trying to “push themselves” on you? How are they trying to “trying to smother the rest of [you] with [their] “lifestyle”? I think you are letting your prejudices shine through here. As a gay atheist I must say that I really cop flack about my sexuality from atheists but all the time from the religious loonies. Guess it just goes to show that not all atheists are tolerant, inclusive etc. You talk as if a gay lifestyle is something people choose. Well, more and more science is showing us that it is in large measure genetically determined. I wish the homophobes both theist and atheist could just take it on board and get over their fear of difference. Ah! Will the world ever change? I console myself with the knowledge that although “the voice of reason is soft, [] it is persistent. I can’t remember the source of that quote but it’s one I live by in relation to both religious nonsense and all other sort of divisive drivle.
CHeers
Rob
This comment sounds like it was taken straight from the pages of an ultra-conservative media hate monger, in an era when “reasonable” is relabeled “PC.” I have been married for 15 years, I have two children and I even live in Southern California, most of which does not come close to living up to its reputation - yet I have never felt like anyone was trying to push themselves on me. Please, sir, try thinking your own thoughts, rather than merely repeating someone else’s rhetoric.
My 6 kilometer long road has eight residences. One has two male, and another two female, homosexual residents. Neither have been “Pushy.” Unless you consider holding a New Years eve get together for all the street’s residents given by the Ladies
“Pushy”. The only residents who declined to attend were two elderly Fundamentalist Christians.
Today I sat at the hospital bedside of an elderly friend, on the opposite side was the local Anglican Church Minister.
Live and let live. I didn’t push my Atheism and he didn’t preach to either of us.
This doesn’t mean that some people do not “Push”. I well remember many years ago, India, when a “Pukkah Sahib.” flattened with one blow an Indian male who had accosted him, for sex.
He was visibly angry, and said as he passed us. “Sorry about that, bloody swine has tried it on three times this week.”
Some are pushy and some are not; but then do you all avoid looking at the sexually suggestive billboards, depicting scantily clad females, raised by heterosexual males to “Push” the advertised products??
tomedgar@halenet.com.au
As P S. Directed to sir.
I am not Gay. Actually when I was in my teens seventy years ago it meant Happy.
If “Gays” stayed in the closet people like you would be satisfied?? Then of course we could go back to the “Good Old Days” The slightest indication of effeminate behavior could end up in ostracism, bashings and often enough death. In many countries, especially Islamic. Death is the LAWFUL penalty.
Homosexuals had to be, initially, “Pushy” so that people would come to learn that there was a third preference.
Personally I am repulsed by the physical side of homosexuality, but only as much as a genuine Homosexual is repulsed by the thought of Heterosexual sexual acts.
Live and let Live. Or should that be Love and let’s Love.
tomedgar@halenet.com.au