Republican BernBros, Punishing Women, Private Discrimination

One thought on “Republican BernBros, Punishing Women, Private Discrimination”

  1. Where people like LaFerrara see unjustifiable violations of “inalienable rights,” I see simple trade-offs.

    First, an exchange of one’s right to discriminate for one’s own safety from discrimination. In other words: the Christian may not discriminate against a gay man in his business, but neither can the gay man discriminate against the Christian in his. This trade doesn’t seem very appealing to someone who doesn’t have to fear much discrimination (e.g. part of the majority), but demographics change.

    Second, an exchange of one’s right to discriminate for the safety and well-being of those against whom one wishes to discriminate. Some of us believe that the risks of allowing businesses to discriminate as they see fit (e.g. victims of discrimination being unable or potentially unable to get the products and services that they need) outweigh the benefits.

    I accept the argument that there is an important difference between legislatively mandated discrimination and citizens choosing to discriminate, but much of the rest of LaFerrara’s piece is nonsense. His libertarian obsession with coercion (and property rights in his other posts) to the exclusion of all other concerns and his naive belief in rational self-interest significantly limit his moral reasoning. He tries to make it all seem noble, but it amounts simply to a willful disregard for the *real* harms of discrimination and exaggeration of the harms of being forbidden to discriminate.

    Perhaps, as LaFerrara says, “A gay couple turned away from a Christian baker can simply take their business elsewhere” in 2016. But this isn’t true for all people in all towns for all products and services. If your town only has one grocery store and it turns you away, you can’t just go somewhere else. And what about just 100 or 200 years ago? He seems to believe that his principles are timeless, but people had even fewer options back then, particularly due to the limits of transportation and absence of the online market. For some reason, despite his claim that gay couples turned away from Christian bakeries can go elsewhere, I get the impression that he wouldn’t care if they couldn’t anyway. For him, morality is abstraction.

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