Like I said earlier, the US is based on a much more stringent interpretation of private property and individual rights than my country. Principle before consequence.

We accept a much broader interference from the state into the personal sphere. Then again, trust towards the state and its institutions is also much, much higher in my country than in the US.

Does it work? Well, we score higher than the US on the human freedom freedom index and we score higher on happiness indexes.

Though I'm fairly sure privileged groups (socio-economically speaking) in the US would score higher than equivalent groups in my country. You accept greater disparity, for good and for worse. In my country, the acceptance of unfairness is extremely low.

But no, we do not put an equivalency between nazis and gays in terms of protection by law. Then again, unlike the nazis, a gay state has yet to invade my country. Nor have we had political traitors willing to cooperate with such invaders. We had nazis who did, we used the law and shot most of them afterwards.

I will get back to Doordonot if at some point a gay state with feverish dreams of genocide arises.

If there ever was a "pro-business" bias in a law it's one which prohibits turning away profit in the form of customers. 🤣

What social justice cause's lack of acceptance is causing straight teen suicide?

I knew someone would get it, I assumed it would be someone as intelligent as you.

It fundamentally is because it is a political theory itself, namely progressivism, that describes which groups deserve protection and which do not!

Here's the second half of my first post on this:

I think America during the 60s is a likely situation where the social good that came from the Civil Rights Act was both justified and a positive good. The difference perhaps is that I view it more as a kind of remedial law that responds to the particularly racist history and laws of the US. But I don't really regard non-discrimination laws of this sort as a sort of neutral positive that I would support absent such a history and situation. I also have background federalist priors that prefers such laws be as localized as possible.

This really is such an intensely sharp intuition and such a key point. That's precisely what all these causes are about. What the United States is actually about, or should be, is the protection of individual liberty. When you continue to expand protected groups and classes ever outward you will necessarily and inevitably cause conflicts between classes and individuals. Rather, no group is homogenous or should ever enjoy special status as a group, but individuals have rights. Because clearly even in a group of two people you can have differing opinions between individuals, all of which should be protected from infringement by any other. The essence of freedom necessarily must be individual; it is directly opposed to freedom to have protected classes of people because you will inevitably find individuals whose rights are infringed upon by those 'protections.'

Technically, but not historically, black American citizens had just as many rights as white Americans and the civil rights act set that straight in a remedial way. Is that necessary for every single 'group' of people in history who have ever been persecuted, as an homage to the victims of the wrongs of our ancestors? It seems only progressivism requires this.

I'm not sure how to take seriously the notion that I need to treat homosexuals and Nazis the same in specific regards. I mean, in a general sense, Nazis get all sorts of rights. But, in spite of the efforts to define the groups in the broadest possible sense to make them equal, homosexuals and Nazis are not the same thing. They are easily distinguishable in their traits. I am under no obligation to pretend that it's an all or nothing deal when it comes to protected groups.

I am also not buying into the notion that you can just shop elsewhere because, well, we actually know how the world looks for discriminated groups under that model. It isn't some abstract economic argument, there's actual real world data. Turns out it sucked for them separate but equal folk who could just walk on to the next business.

You're claiming a right to discriminate here, whether you realize it or not.


Please explain how it's even possible to protect one group over another without practicing some form of discrimination.

Are any two individuals exactly alike? What makes you think individuals within a group are any different from individuals outside that group? I thought you were anti-discrimination? Whether x is 'black skin color' or 'christian beliefs about homosexuality' or 'homosexual attraction' is irrelevant; separating people into groups because of x, y, or z is precisely the definition of discrimination.

1) recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another
2) the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people

Of course, every individual is unique and individuals have rights, not groups.

Ok, yeah I see that. Pragmatism combined with the minimal necessary amount of ethical judgment. And flexibility to adjust the laws.

Doordonot: If I understand you accurately, you think individuals should have the freedom to discriminate but you don’t want laws to discriminate or protect from discrimination any group. Is that right?

I think this is only the best solution if most citizens have reached an ethical standard that we have yet to reach. Tribalism is still far too rampant currently.

I don't think laws can even protect groups, because groups are made up of individuals and are defined only very loosely on one loosely defined characteristic. So saying 'christians are a protected class' is not only wrong, it's extremely dangerous to individual liberty, because the group 'christians' is simply a group of individuals with widely disparate beliefs some of which might even be illegal (such as stoning to death someone who commits adultery). Protecting groups cannot be the goal of someone who believes in freedom, it can only be the goal of someone who is discriminating against the groups he doesn't agree with. Similary, saying 'blacks are a protected class' is absurd. Each individual has rights that are not removed because of skin color, or religion, or sexual preference or whatever. Individuals cannot be discriminated against. Certain situations such as this cake baking thing, where one individual wants another to make a cake for their wedding, is a clash of individual rights. The christian baker should not be forced to exercise creativity towards a ceremony he doesn't believe in, and the gay person should not be discriminated against for being gay. If left up to the courts, they cannot make a ruling on this case without infringing upon someones rights. However, if 'gays are a protected class' then their rights supersede that of the christian individual even if they were an ******* to him, or were being deliberately provocative, which is quite clearly wrong. Classifying groups as protected gives them more rights than other groups or individuals without that status. They now have the right to force others to pander to their desires despite their clear, religiously based objection to it. That is not fair.

The solution not to take in this case is for the government to step in and require one person to do something he doesn't want to do. That is the definition of tyranny. The only solution is peaceful avoidance.

So you want to protect tribes first as a way of getting rid of tribalist mentality? That seems ludicrous.

I wasn’t criticizing you by assuming you think individuals should be free to discriminate against other individuals. We discriminate all the time by making value judgments.


No, why are you assuming that? Do you believe that politics is the path to getting rid of the tribalist mentality by only operating at the individual level? As a Christian, you’re putting the onus on politics to lead us on morality?

I think individuals should be free to speak and act how they want, all individuals. So long as the things they do don't infringe on others rights, I'm cool with it. Not doing something is your choice, and has no infringement upon anyone.

Saying someone refusing to act creatively for someone else is discrimination is ridiculous. Like I said, Dairy Queen won't make me a penis shaped ice cream cake. It's not discrimination against penises or people with penises if they refuse to do so.



How can it be anything but that? This group identity politics trend is extremely dangerous to our society. On the left we have people who think it's ok to take campaign signs because they don't personally like the candidate who is democratically elected and require obedience to political doctrine or lose your livelihood and on the right we have people who actually believe jews should be eliminated from society. Neither side will listen to the other and calls each other names in place of arguments which causes more and more people to be drawn to the extremes. Take one guess what that will eventually result in.

What is "peaceful avoidance"? I don't understand how this answers the legal question here.

Ok. What, then, do you think of this: today I can't legally fire you for being black or muslim, but I CAN fire you for being gay (in a majority of states + federally). All forms of discrimination are massively down compared to civil rights era, but not nonexistent and indeed harm to the gay community (ex teen suicide rate) is nontrivial. So what do you think we should do? We could REMOVE the laws enumerating protections based on race and religion given there isn't this particularly racist period any more (and be an extreme outlier among western democracy that all, more or less, protect against this kind of stuff). Or we could - as I advocate - include sexual orientation among the enumerated classes, such as Canada did back in the 90s. Or, I suppose, just live with the inconsistency that some major groups with long history of oppression are protected while this other group is not.





Great. Since there is no chance of the enumeration of LGBT people in anti-discrimination statutes at the federal level, all recent movement has been at the state level.

Although, if it was possible, your view seems misplaced here. I'm fairly sympathetic of federalist views on quite a few issues, but protecting minorities is one of the best places for federal level laws. This is because the smaller localities with the most extreme racist/homophobic/etc views likely to do the most damage, are exactly the places least likely to pass meaningful protections. Regardless, I think you could say something like "it would be better if federal protections against firing black people were state level. But wherever they happen to be protected, we ought to enumerate sexual orientation as well. "

C’mon man, you’re no truth teller to me. You keep talking down to me when I’m trying to have a discussion with you, as if I need to be educated on the potential dangers of the current political climate and tribalism in general. Inflamed, emotional responses are part of the problem.

You think I’m part of the problem because I think it’s necessary for a pragmatic political response that is realistic with where we currently in terms of our morality? Because I think the solution to tribalism is at the level of the conscience rather than the political level? I recommend you reevaluate the strength of your faith.

In what way was I emotional or inflamed? I was merely making a point, not against you at all, in an attempt to suss out what you believe.

Nah I don't think you're part of any problem, nor did I say that. Tribalism is more at the level of basic biology. I don't think it's a matter of conscience or ethics, but is actually a fundamental part of human nature.

Norway is also comparable to the US on the Doing Business Index and Heritage Institute's Economic Freedom Index, so I don't think we're getting much of a contrast here on Norway's protection of people's business rights vs the US.

In my view, it is a moral principle that we need to first reject what is not working before we discover the truth in how to act. Moral truth exists in the unknown and reason reinforces that we stay in the known. Only once we free ourselves from our motivated reasoning can we begin to see that our solutions are insufficient. That vision to see the truth in the insufficiency of our actions is given to us by the conscience, which will then direct us further into the unknown toward truth.

Tribalism IS a human nature issue and the best we can do at a political level is symptom management, but we need a sustainable solution, or a cure.

I feel as though you're equivocating here a little, but in the sense of discrimination here, I'm okay with it.




You just take it one day at a time.



Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is all window dressing for the utterly silly idea you're trying to get me to engage with that Nazi rights and LGBT rights are equally important. Discrimination against Nazis is not a real world issue that concerns me.

The distinction between individual rights and group rights is a bit nonsensical. All rights apply to individuals but refer to groups. At the very least, "individuals" is a plural.

No rather individuals all share the same rights. If LGBT have rights for having an uncontrolled sexual desire, then every other uncontrolled sexual desire on earth needs the same rights, or they all need none, or at this point LGBT have special rights that no one else who doesn't identify as LGBT shares; and that's not fair. Understand?

No it's not. What's nonsensical is why when black people get killed by cops for bad reasons it's institutional racism but when all other races who get killed by cops for bad reasons gets no play at all. Because it happens more often? Well corrected for number of interactions with cops, whites get killed at a rate of 3-1 to blacks. Discrimination is claimed in one case and not the other, when really there is no evidence at all that discrimination is even an issue. So really, the only people who are discriminating based on sexual, racial or whatever status are people who think there are groups who need protection instead of individuals. You discriminate by definition when you parse people according to shared characteristics whether it be sexual preference, skin color, cultural background, religion, or whatever else.

Instead of doing that, you should look at each individual case independently without regard to race, sexuality, or religion. Only when you have exhausted all other possibilities or there is direct evidence of discrimination by one party can you even remotely bring it up. When you're always looking at individuals based on the group they're in, discrimination becomes the default position of every human interaction, which is absurd. The entire point of equal rights is to eliminate the relevance of group identity.

Clearly this isn't true in reality land.

btw here is a map showing the various states and their laws in terms of whether you can fire employees for being gay. One curious thing is whether we will see an uptick in the "block local government from passing LGBT anti-discrimination laws" at the state level strategy, still fairly minimal

https://www.fastcompany.com/40456937...g-gay-or-trans

Of course not, because bias is part of human nature that will arguably never be eliminated. So when one person says 'this group with this uncontrollable sexual preference is protected' and 'it's bigotry to compare that group with this other group, even though they also have an uncontrolled sexual preference,' he is being biased.

What is true is that individual rights exist for everyone according to the law and discrimination is remedied to a pretty reasonable extent by the courts when there is evidence of it happening.

The real problem is that by assuming there are groups that have special rights as opposed to individuals who have equal rights is that they propagate the very discrimination they intend to diminish.

I don't know enough about the effects of non-discrimination laws to support any change from the status quo. So, persuadable to either side. I'm in a political coalition with gay rights activists, so most of the politicians I support are also in favor of adding homosexuals as a protected class. I am also probably more in favor of banning employment discrimination than of banning discrimination towards customers.

Well, this is a general problem with democracy. My bias here is that as political issues drift more towards questions of value and away from questions of policy or governance, the more I think people's direct views should influence the decision. The more local the decision, the more people's direct views will influence the decision. And questions about gay rights seems pretty clearly on the value end of the spectrum. This is only a heuristic, so it is defeasible.