April 1, 2015
AND VICE VERSA:
The Self-Contradictory Argument All Republicans Are Making on the Indiana Discrimination Law (PAUL WALDMAN, MARCH 31, 2015, The American)
Their argument is: 1) We must allow religious people to discriminate; and 2) This has nothing to do with discrimination. But both those things can't simultaneously be true. You can call it "simply allowing people of faith space to be able to express their beliefs" or "people acting on their conscience," but the whole issue is that the act of conscience that they want to undertake is also an act of discrimination. That's because the particular acts of conscience we're talking about are those that are not in the realm of speech or worship but in the realm of commerce, and they involve another person.The cases in question are essentially zero-sum conflicts of claimed rights. Janet wants to have an anniversary dinner in a restaurant; Mike, the restaurant owner, doesn't want to serve gay couples. There are only two possible outcomes: Janet and her partner get served, in which case Mike has to give; or Mike gets to refuse that service, in which case Janet has to give. You can dress up Mike's motivations any way you want--"sincere religious beliefs," "act of conscience," whatever--but that doesn't change the fact that one person is going to win and the other is going to lose.
Likewise, if Janet is allowed to win, she's been given a right to force Mike to violate his religious beliefs. It's really just a question of whether society has a greater interest in protecting religious choices or sexual.
Of course, it can be argued that Mike could simply choose to go out of business (in other words, the cost of having religious beliefs would be that you weren't allowed to have a business). But, the obvious response is that Janet could simply patronize another business.
It can also be argued that this no different than when we desegregated businesses along racial lines, requiring white owners to serve black customers. Setting aside the question of whether that too was a mistake, the big differences are that color is a function of birth, not of personal choice, and that there is no moral component to one's color.
Posted by Orrin Judd at April 1, 2015 12:56 PM
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