I'm not talking about pretense. What I mean is that while jdate caters to Jews, they aren't set up to refuse services to non-Jews (right? that would be my assumption, though I'm asking if this is a valid assumption). They therefore don't actually discriminate against non-Jews if non-Jews can use the site to be matched up.

But a site set up to match up heterosexuals would not be able to be used by homosexuals looking for other homosexuals, so this is the difference.

What I'm saying is that gay.com actually doesn't provide services to a segment of the population -- heterosexuals. That makes gay.com more like the old eHarmony than jdate. The name isn't really part of my argument.

I understand your argument better now, and I guess that's a distinction, but it doesn't seem like a meaningful one.

As far as I'm concerned, a dating website can be set up with the intention of serving a particular clientele, and it shouldn't be forced to add additional services because some other clientele isn't being served. It's not "discriminatory" but rather just an artifact of the model. I can't go to AutoZone and complain that I can't find the milk and expect that complaint to go anywhere. It's not a grocery store, so I shouldn't go there if I'm looking for groceries. That doesn't stop me from going there and looking anyway, I guess.

Then I'm not quite sure what you meant by this:

A better example of discrimination? And what does the name have to do with it?

---

Incidentally, there was once a time that JDate was strictly heterosexual, too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/ny...y/08jdate.html

You've honed in on this a bit, but it's not just that they should be consistent with discriminating against all sinners. To be charitable, they probably see themselves as actually taking part in a type of marriage that they abhor. I'd say such a view is highly presumptive and overstepping their actual role (it's not as if their refusal to serve would prevent the marriage from taking place, it would just be a problem for the wedding day itself).

While some of us might have a bit of a libertarian streak, and there is concern about the freedom of those providing service to others, ultimately we live under a constitution that highly values equal treatment, esp of minorities, and those that provide services to the general public know this when they go into business.

otoh, I'm not sure how comfortable I would be requesting any kind of food preparation from someone that held a grossly negative opinion of me! That's why you don't act like a dick toward restaurant staff...

Yes, better example of discrimination. Gay.com actually discriminates like eHarmony did whereas a site that caters to a religion or ethnic group does not. The name has nothing to do with what I'm saying but was brought up simply as an attempt at a humorous explanation of why no heterosexual has sued the site to force it to provide services for non-gays.

I agree, I would only feel mildly bothered if a single bakery denied service to me for the cake.

But if every bakery in town denies service to me, that would seem really unfair and become really problematic for me, am I right?

The latter is a better example of what we are dealing with here.

This is a good thing if their conscience leads them to incorrect ideas about morality. As it was a good thing for the pro-slavery person to be "forced to act against their conscience" by having to live equally among blacks after slavery was abolished. We can take literally any moral value that is somewhat universal, and there will be some people who's "consciences are against it" for XYZ political, spiritual, religious, or other reason. Those people's consciences need to STFU and GTFO.

Thanks. I was focusing on the wrong sentence and thought you were going a completely different direction than you were.

oh look the deontologist calling the utilitarian unprincipled

But sure, such things are a double standard in the sense that I do think different groups with different situations take different treatments in our analysis. In particular, minority groups with specific histories of social oppression, for example, are benefited by certain special treatments whether that is explicit constitutional protections (for religious minorities or race, for example) or policies like affirmative action or social structures like Jewish oriented dating sites. There isn't a significant benefit for whites to a white only dating site because of the reality that they are the majority, but there is harm in the discrimination it helps engender.

So I wouldn't say its a weird double standard because it is one founded in pretty legitimate differences in social roles between various majority and minority groups.

A more serious scenario wherein religious beliefs affect someone's ability to perform their duties, is pharmacists that refuse to sell drugs like Plan B (now an over-the-counter drug). I think the law in the US allows such a pharmacist to step aside and have another pharmacist deal with the transaction. But what happens if there is no other pharmacist available?

I think this is also an overzealous interpretation of how complicit their role is in the other party's affairs, just as it is with a SSM wedding/marriage that I mentioned above. At the same time, these Christians undoubtedly don't see it that way ***.

I just found a news story of such a pharmacist who was fired and is now suing. Just prior to his being fired, he purchased the store's stock of Plan B and disposed of it himself.
I don't know the details of the law, and which provisions are store policy and which are law, so perhaps this pharmacist does have a decent case (legally, at least).

Walgreens Fires Pharmacist for Refusing to Violate His Religious Beliefs

*** ("Specifically, Dr.Hall expressed concern that based on his sincerely held religious belief the sale of this drug was tantamount to facilitating an abortion.", see https://www.thomasmoresociety.org/wp...-SUBMITTED.pdf)

So you will tolerate discrimination from people if they're nice, and sincere?

Discrimination is defined as "the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people". I'd say that in this case that you probably wouldn't consider their behaviour 'unjust' because you said that they're just "attempting to live out their convictions the best way they know how"and I'm not certain that you being 'upset' really qualifies as 'prejudicial', and so I'm wondering whether or not you actually consider this to be discrimination?

Let's flip this and use an example a bit further from home. Let's assume that I'm a nice person (I actually am) and I'm quite sincere in my anti-theist beliefs and convictions and I'm simply attempting to live them out as best I can. In the UK it's illegal for me to refuse service to someone on the grounds of them being religious (there's a nice summary here - Discrimination because of religion or belief). As much as I'd like to turn people away for supporting something that I find intolerable (in the nicest possible way), I can't, I'd be breaking the law. What's your view on that? Should my Atheist freedoms include my being able to choose who I serve based on their beliefs?

What if you don't know that they honestly thought divorce and remarriage is a sin? And you have no right of appeal or inquiry? What if they are hateful or rude?

I don't think this is a direct analogy. No-one has (afaik) proposed a law to force the bakery to bake cakes for gay marriages.

What has been proposed is a bill that would so inoculate the refusal from scrutiny that there would be no avenue to establish if such discrimination was justified, or even that the customer was gay and/or having a wedding. It's a blank cheque for unaccountable discrimination.

And if we go further down this rabbit-hole, do you believe that public and private entities should be forced to employ people who have discriminatory inclinations? E.g. if this bill were passed, is it ok for employers to fire / refuse to hire staff who they believe might discriminate against gay people? IOW, do you support both an employees right to refuse service to gay people AND an employers right to fire such employees?

Would a bill that says this be acceptable to you?

"governmental entities cannot require individuals, businesses or religious groups to provide services, facilities, goods or employment benefits to any person or persons who may be homophobic. It also prohibits anti-discrimination lawsuits on such grounds."

(Would like LZ's response to this also)

There's definitely no law in the US that states this, however that may be one company's individual policy.

This example reminds me of the Duck Dynasty news story. Walgreens is not the United States government, they are a for-profit company. This pharmacist can feel free to exercise his/her religious beliefs, so long as it doesn't interfere with them doing their job. If it does interfere with them doing their job, the company has every right to fire them, and they are free to choose any other job they want that doesn't interfere with their religious beliefs.

It's just so tilting that many people can't seem to grasp this. The United States constitution is in essence a contract between the US government and it's citizens. An employment contract is between a company and an individual. During the time each day that you are at work, you are, by definition, "not free", you are fulfilling a specific agreement. If I hire someone to mow my lawn for 1 hour, and they spend 45 minutes of that hour talking on their cell phone citing "free speech", they didn't do the job we agreed to, and they violated our contract.

I forgot you were a utilitarian. I suppose you can take that position, but it really does open up a fair accusation of "reverse discrimination" and unfair racial double standards. Most of the liberals I know tend to advocate for a colorblind society (ie, "I don't see race, I just see people") while simultaneously holding positions like yours which make clear racial distinctions. I find that to be inconsistent. In some ways, I see similar inconsistencies with regards to sexual orientation.

For these reasons, I think the utilitarian argument is ad hoc (a better phrasing than "unprincipled"). It seems like its advocates can justify all sorts of things with seemingly little consequence to their other beliefs.

No, it's not a perfect analogy. But under current laws, I think it *IS* illegal to refuse to bake a cake for a gay marriage.

When you say "public entities" are you talking about places of public accommodations or government entities? Obviously government is for all people, so the government should not have such a restriction.

So I really think you're talking about private companies that are places of public accommodation. I think it would return to the second of the two principles: What is the nature of the place of the services being offered at the place of employment?

This position does not go as far as the US government's rules of employment, which state that it is the nature of the activity for which the person has been employed, and not the nature of the entity itself. For example, if a conservative church does not hire a person as a secretary because he is gay (even though he is otherwise qualified), that can be seen as a violation of equal employment laws, but the position of the senior pastor would not.

I think churches can refuse to hire someone on the basis of their sexual orientation, and I think that hospitals should be able to fire janitors who are also smokers.

I would have a problem with "may be" homophobic. Is that the language of the original bill? I wouldn't have a problem for private companies to refuse service to someone who walks in and declares he hates gays (or blacks or whatever). The only exception that would arise if is that was the only place within a reasonable distance that provides the service.

So you're essentially saying that people are harmed if they aren't allowed to enforce their bigotry in a public enterprise?

I'm sure in some sense they may be. However, I don't accept that the Jim Crow laws lowered the level of harm done in society simply because the people enforcing them were sincere. Sincerity is not a justification for a position, the argument for the position must stand and fall on its own merit and not whether it's simply believed.

It's a question of what value you place on "personal freedoms." According to this position, people are forced to do things that they do not want to do, and that is a harm to them.

It does not mean that they are the ONLY ones experiencing harm. But they are still experiencing harm in some way.

This does not appear to be the argument he's making. "Harm" is taken relative to certain entities.

Suppose that everyone in the world agreed that segregation is a good thing (and that this belief was deeply held by everyone), but the world was currently integrated. In this society, Jim Crow laws would lower the level of harm in society because everyone would get something that they view is a good thing.

Now if you remove the sincerity of belief, so that segregation was not a deeply held value, you might find that Jim Crow laws would not lower the level of harm in society anymore.

Yes. I think it is better phrased as something like "forcing people to do something against their sincerely held beliefs" harms them. However, that doesn't imply we shouldn't still act this way and thus harm them. Namely, if the harm they are creating - discrimination in this case - considerably exceeds the harm of violating their freedom, then the path to lowest net harm can involve such actions. In the case of the Jim Crow laws, I do think that there was some harm to the oppressors, its just that the harm was so insignificant in contrast to the harm done to the black population that it is trivial for every person in this thread to agree that abolishing them was correct.

Certainly. The utilitarian (using the word relatively broadly here) has a pretty significant burden to argue their threading the needle case in a lot of these situations, and to argue that the double standards are NOT unfair and are indeed justified. Take seventies era affirmative action, for instance. These are obviously deeply racial policies, and relative to not doing anything (like a minimum black acceptance quota at a university) it undoubtably hurts whites and so many people have long decried that it is precisely reverse discrimination. So proponents have a strong burden to argue that the harm society is doing to blacks is so egregious and can be alleviated by providing an easier pathway to success in society in a way significant enough to overcome the much smaller harm being done to white people.

Put another way, an anarcho capitalist with an axiom like "government should do nothing" requires no further thought on a particular situation regarding government because the correct course for the anarcho capitalist is known. They might chime in on the debate to lend credence to why government intervention is bad in a situation, but they already know their answer, as it were. Someone without such an axiom that tries to view government intervention when some analysis leads them to conclude it is benefitial doesn't know ahead of time what their conclusion is (if they genuinely follow such a path, which is probably rare) and really has a strong burden to do such analysis correctly.

I disagree with such liberals. We have a society with meaningful racial (and sexual, and religious, etc) distinctions and arguments we make very well may need to address these distinctions. You seen any of the liberal backlash to Amy Chua's books? Regardless of the validity of her various theses, I'm quite okay with someone making strong proclamations about various minorities groups. Part of it sort of is a confusion between being egalitarian in one's hopes of for the world contrasted with ones analysis of how the world is. As in, I might hope that our world didn't put any distinctions on race, while acknowledging that race nonetheless plays many social roles.

As another example, I support workplace nondiscrimination laws against LGBT members. A minority-blind approach would just make generic workplace nondiscrimination laws. However, I believe that societal discrimination against LGBT members is sufficiently large to justify such an explicit additional protection that, say, straight white guys don't need written into law.


There are admittedly a lot of very bad utilitarian arguments and it is easy to end up with pretty contradictory claims on analogous situations because one is using different bad arguments in different places. But there are also some good ones, which I TRY to be. If you're interested, part of the reason I style myself more of a utilitarian is because of past failures to come up with a more deontological worldview where any time there was a conflict between various strong values I had ascribed to I then found myself unable to say much of anything. As my post to bladesman indicated, I think this general discussion is one that puts in conflict two differing fundamental values most liberals ascribe to. I don't see a good way to resolve these conflicts without resorting to some analysis of which way causes the most harm and whatnot which I readily admit is likewise full of possible flaws (what is "harm", for instance? how do you measure it?), but at least get's one started.

It's unfortunate that so many people can't comprehend this. They can't understand how it's not hypocritical to be intolerant of their intolerance.

Good to know.

The only thing I know is that she wrote the "Tiger Mom" book, and that a lot of people weren't happy about it. I don't actually know what her thesis is, so I don't really know what the uproar was about.

I think such hope is misplaced. I don't think the world is better off if it were homogenized. I think it's a stark denial of reality. I do think that some processes within a society should be color blind, but to hope for no distinctions at all is both a pipe dream and a largely negative outcome to strive for.

I like Mexican food. I don't want to lose the distinctiveness of Mexican food to some sort of world-fusion cuisine. I view ethnic and cultural distinctions in exactly the same way.

The question is not about right to believe, but about right to act.

Now, I don't believe in cookie-cutter arguments. There are many things we make illegal due to moral aesthetics more so than rational argument, and there are many discriminations we accept that are eerily similar to the ones we don't accept. We can sit around all day and bash Christians for discrimination of gays, but everyone discriminates someone.

However the problem with religious conviction is that ultimately it does not answer to anybody. Understand then, that for me it becomes a problem to legislate that religious conviction is sufficient grounds for public servants to deny people service. It is basically legislature passing a law that allows public service to be distributed outside the rule of law.

Oh ya a world without mexican food would be unliveable. The "might" meant to indicate only a hypothetic, I was only trying to show how people might confuse some normative claim with an observational one not trying to entertain the normative 100% colour blind claim myself. Currently given how cultural differences are so tied in racial differences, pretty hard to even imagine what a truly colour blind society would be and whether that would actually be better. Personally, I tend not to worry about such idealism, and try to focus on incremental improvements to our society.

Kansas Senate Comes To It’s Senses And Nixes Extreme Anti-Gay Legislation

The headline is a bit sensational and the article may or may not be correct in it's assessment that the religious right realised that this law would be a (possibly fatal) millstone around their neck if it was actually passed, but whatever, it's heartening to know that religious 'freedoms' still have a limit to their effects.

There's clearly a conflict between religious freedoms and what is acceptable in a society wishing to remain cohesive and functional. Immovable objects and irresistible forces spring to mind. Something has to become resistible or movable.

Perhaps in this segregated world, in which people celebrate segregation, they are avoided some form of harm. I'm not convinced that this segregation wouldn't be damaging if only by the loss of potential relationships and advancements that could be made. That is, I can't imagine a society in which everybody chooses segregation is better than one in which they choose integration.

I can follow this. And I could agree that it's in some sense harmful to sincere Christians who don't want to deal with homosexuals. But I would still contend that their suffering is nothing compared to the creation, by institutional prejudice in law, of a society in which homosexuals are so greatly oppressed.

I don't afford their belief that much respect.

So, an argument from incredulity alone?

This is the type of utilitarian argument that I'm very critical of. When you argument reads like this, it comes across that you've essentially established an deontological position ("good" is defined by rules, ie "integration" > "segregation"), but you're trying to frame it like a utilitarian argument. It doesn't work out very well.

This is something that MB has done on several occasions in his attempts to justify his disdain for religion. He liked the utilitarian idea until he found out that it is logically possible for religion to be good under utilitarianism, and then he abandoned that for some other position. He's deciding his moral philosophy on the basis of adherence to a certain conclusion of what's good and what's bad, which is very similar to what you're trying to do here.

I wouldn't call myself a utilitarian. I was just running with the argument presented and willing to accept a certain amount of it.

I think there's a loss caused by segregation. Lack of interaction imposed by needless boundaries slows progress, holds people back, and results in a loss of the rich relationships and developments that can occur in a society unhindered by such burdens.

How I'd quantify that, I don't know, so maybe the segregated society could be better. I'm certainly not willing to accept that it is on the basis of unquantifiable levels of harm inflicted on bigots.