Much as I despise all forms of discrimination, there comes a clash whereby I must choose on which side I will descend. Inevitably, it is the side of liberty.
The government (now straight away, I’m not going to like it) has told hotel owners that they must change their way of doing trade in order to remain within the law:
Muslim or Christian guest house owners who refuse to accept homosexual couples must impose a “sleeping together ban” on all other guests, the Government says.
As the holiday season gets under way, Meg Munn, a junior minister, has emphasised that it is illegal to allow married couples to share a room at a guest house or hotel while not allowing homosexuals the same right.
If gays are turned away, the only way a Christian or Muslim guest house owner can lawfully stay in business is if he or she offers single bedrooms to all guests – straight or gay.
It takes some doing, but New Labour in all their spite and control freakery, have managed it; they’ve put me in bed with the god botherers.
Okay, do I think guest house owners are wrong to discriminate against gay couples? Yes, absolutely. Do I think they should be allowed to do business with whom they choose – even if doing so damages their business? Yes, absolutely. If turning away trade is what their conscience tells them to do, and that trade goes next door, then so be it. Should any of this be any concern whatsoever of government? No, absolutely not.
Miss Munn said a wedding photographer who refused a gay wedding booking should take up portrait photography instead, while a chauffeur who declined to work with homosexuals must specialise in corporate travel.
Miss Munn wants to learn to butt out of other peoples’ business. As a self-employed contractor, I am at liberty to turn away trade if I am sufficiently stupid and if I was that stupid, I wouldn’t be so daft as to let people know that it was my bigotry at work; that would be stupid. That is my concern – and my accounts will tell me that it is bad business, it is not for Miss Munn to be involved. Not to mention the arrant control freakery and the insufferable “taking offence” industry that she represents. There are plenty of hotels that will accommodate same sex couples, so boycott the ones that choose to impose religious morality, let the market condemn them to fade away.
Giles Fraser, the vicar of Putney and a leading Church of England liberal, said the legislation was right and fair because discrimination against homosexuals was always wrong.
“It is nonsense for the Government to allow any loopholes for religious homophobia,” he added. “Bigotry is bigotry whether it’s dressed up in the language of faith or not.”
Indeed it is, but in a free society we allow people to be bigots. It wouldn’t be a free society otherwise.
“Indeed it is, but in a free society we allow people to be bigots. It wouldn’t be a free society otherwise.”
It’s more fundamental than that: if we don’t allow people to be bigots, it’s not morality.
Morality deals exclusively with choices. If you have no choice, it is not bad. In just the same way that if it doesn’t require courage, it’s not really a virtue.
It has nothing to do with the friggin government – nor has anything to do with them except running defence and providing the cash for the aged and babies. That’s all.
As a lifelong campaigner for gay rights [see my 27 July post in anticant’s arena] I’m in entire agreement with you on this one. We are living in an age of PC-meddling nanny-ism gone mad. I expect you enjoy, as I do, Ken Frost’s magnificent “Nanny Knows Best” blog.
This sort of article is why I place all ‘libertarians’ like you on the right of politics.
Sooner or later you all find yourself ‘in agreement’ with the Christian Right and other fascists.
This ‘I own the property so I can do what I like’ argument is absolute rubbish.
As a commenter said on my blog recently ‘we don’t allow people to let their properties become environmental hazards, we don’t let businesses have poor health and safety.
Sometimes, and this is what you don’t seem to understand, to expand choice, to improve liberty – governments have to intervene and protect the public interest.
Any business discriminating against gay people is exactly the same as discriminating on grounds of race, are you also in favour of ‘No blacks, No dogs, No Irish’ signs springing up everywhere on the principle that it is the owners prerogative?
“This ‘I own the property so I can do what I like’ argument is absolute rubbish.”
No. Unless there is peculiar definition of “absolute rubbish” that includes the fundamental underlying principle of civil and prosperous society. Unfortunately, given that this is Neil Harding we are dealing with, we can’t rule that out.
“Any business discriminating against gay people is exactly the same as discriminating on grounds of race, are you also in favour of ‘No blacks, No dogs, No Irish’ signs springing up everywhere on the principle that it is the owners prerogative?”
But Neil, the freedom that allows an owner to put up such a sign is also the freedom that allows the rest of us rounding to denounce such bigotry.
Further, do you not think that the objects of such bigotry might be interested in knowing that such an establishment was run by a bigot?
But at its core – again, surprise! – you have missed the WHOLE FUCKING POINT.
“Sooner or later you all find yourself ‘in agreement’ with the Christian Right and other fascists.”
The Christian “Right” are not fascists. Your elision here is, I believe, deliberate. Libertarians are in agreement with neither. Retract please.
Libertarians suggest that everyone should have the freedom to do stuff or not do stuff. Religious fundamentalists (of all stripes, and notably not Christians in this country) and fascists seek to insist that everyone does and – worse – BELIEVES what they hold to be true.
Religious fundamentalists say “It is wrong to be gay [or whatever] and gays [or whatever] should be punished. Everyone should submit to this viewpoint”
Libertarians say: “Everyone has the right to express their opinions about gays REGARDLESS OF HOW OFFENSIVE OR WRONG THOSE OPINIONS MAY BE. ”
Only someone as wilfully obtuse as you, Neil, could assert that these are the same thing.
I see that Neil is as reliable as ever. Despite the excellent evisceration of his comments by Cleanthes, my twopennyworth:
And here you put your ignorance on display for all to see. This is about property rights and freedom of association, not economics. The left/right axis does not apply.
As stated already, Christians are not fascists; there is a clear difference. Indeed a philosophy closer to Fascism is that adopted by the current government with its obsessive authoritarianism. Again, as stated, libertarian philosophy takes no sides on the matter of Christian (or other religious) belief systems; it merely seeks to allow them their voice.
Again you demonstrate ignorance of property rights and freedom of association. Indeed, you do not understand the concept of liberty, so why we continue to try to educate you is beyond me.
Non sequitur. Causing harm to others through negligence, acts or omissions is in breach of tort law no matter whose property it is on. Discrimination does not cause harm or injury.
It is you who does not understand the concept of liberty, a fair, free and civilised, civil society.
That’s fine by me. I like my bigots out in the open where I can see them. Public opprobrium and economics will kill off such businesses pretty sharply. Having been on the receiving end of such discrimination, I choose to spend my money with more open minded people – if they are upfront about their prejudices, there is no possibility of me giving them any of my money in error.
Perhaps you would like to contact Sheila’s Wheels and remind them that their decision to restrict their own marketplace is discriminatory and that they should open up their client base forthwith.
And whilst we are at it, this is also complete sh*te:
“to expand choice, to improve liberty – governments have to intervene”
When Governments intervene everyone ALWAYS loses liberty. More importantly, you do NOT get choice: you get what the legislation declares you should get. It is never what is actually wanted.
The world is littered with examples of such nonsense. Stakeholder pensions anyone? Tiny companies were forced to spend huge amounts of cash to set up these schemes for precisely zero take-up rate. That is the kind of sh*te that happens when governments intervene. People are forced to sell stuff that they don’t really want to sell and, sure enough, no-one wants to buy.
Quite. The only time that it is appropriate to restrict liberty in the name of liberty is when one person’s freedoms restrict or cause harm to others. It’s why we outlaw murder, theft and so on. Causing offence – which is what this discussion amounts to – is not actual harm, and therefore requries no restrictions from government
longrider: “Discrimination does not cause harm or injury”.
I think the fact that you make a statement like this demonstrates the sort of fascist territory you are having to stray onto to defend your argument.
So the discrimination faced by gay, black people and others throughout history ‘did them no harm’?
I think this is a good example of what I mean when I call your argument ‘rightwing’ and ‘absolute rubbish’. You think everything is all fine and dandy if left to the ‘free hand of the market’. Well I have news for you, the market is not free or fair, it is heavily distorted and controlled by those already with wealth and power and minorities are the first to suffer its Orwellian ‘free hand’. If you truly understood the concept of liberty – you would recognise that. As the freed slaves in the Caribbean used to say ‘they took chains from my ankles and put them on my pockets’.
So you think it ok to have bigots openly or covertly discriminating – with no comeback in law for their victims. Society has changed since the ‘no blacks, no irish’ signs of the 1950s and 1960s – but I think this change in society has been progressed by laws that outlawed discrimination and sent a very strong message that such behaviour was WRONG. This needed to be done because without penalties, bigoted behaviour can be very difficult to change, precisely because their closed minds are largely immune to argument.
I am sure you will accuse me of ‘missing the point’ somewhere in your rebuttal – but I think I get your point very well – what I also get, that perhaps you don’t, are the implications of your point.
You have become so hostile to government and so wrapped up in the peculiar ideology that anything governments do must be bad – you refuse to accept that government should be involved in anything other than stopping people inflicting physical damage to property or each other. Some ‘libertarians’ think even that intervention wrong, perhaps you are heading the same way.
Without government ‘intervention’ most of the social progress that has happened would at best have been much slower. The change in attutudes towards gay people since 1997 has been remarkable. I have seen it argued that this had nothing to do Labour’s equalisation of age of consent, outlawing discrimination in public bodies and civil partnerships. Maybe they are right – maybe it is a coincidence that social change took place fastest during Wilson/Callaghans 1960s and 1970s and Blair’s 1997-2007 periods. I personally think it is one hell of a coincidence!
You are quite right; you don’t understand. You don’t understand the terms you use; you certainly do not understand the term “fascism” yet bandy it about as if it is about to go out of fashion. You certainly have no concept of property rights or freedom of association and most definitely do not understand the term “liberty” and, again, tediously, you misuse the right/left axis. Perhaps most importantly of all, despite having been told often enough, you do not understand what a logical fallacy is – again, the strawman is used.
The 1967 act that you refer to was the government of the day deciding to remove itself from what people did in the privacy of their own homes; precisely the opposite of what is happening here.
And yet still you persist in asserting that they are the same thing.
Interestingly, you have studiously ignored Anticant’s comments that demonstrate that gay people do not need you riding in on your white charger protecting them from thought crimes.