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Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discrimination?

What's More Important - the "Right" to Discriminate, or Freedom From Discrimination?


  • Total voters
    93
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

We need not go quite that far, just treat discrimination as a civil matter. As far as false criminal accusations go, the state should be required to pay restitution.

The standards for arrest, like all crimes, will prevent most fraudulent claims from getting anywhere. You're creating a phantom menace to object to rational legislation.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

You continue to ignore the difference between legal and illegal discrimination. No court would ever begrudge a business the right to not serve someone who raped an employee or an employee's family member.

It's a stupid example, because there is no chance of prosecution.

Not so, if the law says you must service everyone who wants to engage in commerce with you, whether you want to or not.

Let's say the person she refused to have in her hair salon was a woman who she believed her husband may have had an affair with. The law says she must cut that woman's hair. Oh, and that woman happens to be a minority. What protection would my friend be granted under such a law? No crime was committed by the woman. But why would my friend be obligated to serve her...just because?
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

So if all of that came true, which one of your rights would have been violated?

Equal protection under the law.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

Not so, if the law says you must service everyone who wants to engage in commerce with you, whether you want to or not.

No law says that and no law will say that. You're engaging in a ludicrous strawman.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

This is one of the few subjects on which I disagree with many of my fellow libertarians. I think the benefit of (most) anti-discrimination laws is ultimately worth the small sacrifice of some people's liberty.

If you want to open your business to the public, that is exactly what you're going to have to do.
I don't disagree. The problems don't start with wanting to legislate against discrimination. The problems start when some take it too far and get hyper-sensitive and define absurd examples as discrimination. Like pretty much everything else, if we human could just settle on a happy medium...
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

No law says that and no law will say that. You're engaging in a ludicrous strawman.

Then if anyone can refuse to serve anyone if they choose not to serve them, then there is no problem.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

Equal protection under the law.

I already made clear I wasn't referring to government discrimination.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

I don't disagree. The problems don't start with wanting to legislate against discrimination. The problems start when some take it too far and get hyper-sensitive and define absurd examples as discrimination. Like pretty much everything else, if we human could just settle on a happy medium...

I don't think a happy medium exists in terms of slavery.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

Then if anyone can refuse to serve anyone if they choose not to serve them, then there is no problem.

That's a ludicrous answer to a ludicrous strawman.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

That's a ludicrous answer to a ludicrous strawman.

So there is a law? You said there wasn't. Stop with the strawman comments and say it.

Is there a law in place that says that everyone has to be served or not? If there isn't, there is no issue.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

So there is a law? You said there wasn't. Stop with the strawman comments and say it.

Is there a law in place that says that everyone has to be served or not? If there isn't, there is no issue.

Of course there isn't. Have you lost grip on reality?
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

So there is a law? You said there wasn't. Stop with the strawman comments and say it.

Is there a law in place that says that everyone has to be served or not? If there isn't, there is no issue.

There is a law that states you can't discriminate based on race.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

Of course there isn't. Have you lost grip on reality?

Then the question of having to engage in commerce is irrelevant.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

I already made clear I wasn't referring to government discrimination.

I hope you understand that Jim Crow and other forms of government discrimination weren't separate from, and were in fact paired with, government backing of private discrimination against blacks. They were equal and necessary parts of the same effort to marginalize African-Americans and effectively render them second-class citizens. By allowing private businesses to discriminate against blacks, Jews, the disabled, etc. the government de facto makes those minorities second-class citizens and supports their oppression.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

Then the question of having to engage in commerce is irrelevant.

The law is such that a business open to the public must, in fact, be open to the public and unjust discrimination is not permitted. Discrimination with cause is permitted. Race does not constitute cause.

A law requiring everyone be served, regardless of circumstance, is nonsense.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

Which is more important: the "right" to discriminate, or freedom from discrimination?

Remember, you can't have both. If a business refuses to serve someone because he's black, and he refuses to leave and the business calls the cops to enforce their "right"...it is at that moment that we have government-enforced racism.

Is that really what we want?

How do you know it was because they were black?

Even if you are correct however, you are forcing someone to act against their own beliefs. No One has to right to tell others what to believe or to limit their actions based upon their beliefs.

What we really want is for the people to act as individuals, cause the business to go under without the need to involve the government.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

How do you know it was because they were black?

Even if you are correct however, you are forcing someone to act against their own beliefs. No One has to right to tell others what to believe or to limit their actions based upon their beliefs.

What we really want is for the people to act as individuals, cause the business to go under without the need to involve the government.

The recent court case in New Mexico said otherwise. They said the photographers who refused to photograph a lesbian wedding because of their religious beliefs were wrong. Unfortunately, people's rights to act on their own beliefs isn't really a right.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

Freedom from discrimination is more important. There is no right to discriminate.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

If a law is in place that says you have to engage in business with everyone then the law would be applied to her.

I never said that should be the law, did I? The law SHOULD read that people can't be denied on basis of race/ethnicity/religion/sexual gender.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

What if a restaurant or motel refused to accommodate a customer purely because of their race? Aside from a confession, how could you prove that it was racially motivated?

That's the rub. If it happens many times, then it becomes easier to prove from witness accounts. Or it could come from internal whistleblowers. But the law cannot be designed to bypass due process.
 
Re: Which Is More Important? The Right to Discriminate, or Freedom from Discriminati

The law is such that a business open to the public must, in fact, be open to the public and unjust discrimination is not permitted. Discrimination with cause is permitted. Race does not constitute cause.

A law requiring everyone be served, regardless of circumstance, is nonsense.

A law requiring anyone be served is nonsense as well.
 
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