The libertarian approach to Indiana’s religious freedom law
This is a good article on the subject, which pretty much summarizes my opinion, which is the basic “moderate libertarian” (is that an oxymoron?) point of view.
It doesn’t really deal with the issue I see as vital, however, which is this one: where to draw the line in terms of a business’s right to refuse a service. Must the decision be based on religious grounds, or can it be arbitrary prejudice? And how to decide which is which? How reasonably must it be related to a religious point of view, and must the religion be an accepted mainstream one?
No doubt there is quite a bit of case law on this, but I certainly haven’t kept up with it and I’m not going to write a long, in-depth post on it now; I’ll just state the questions and call it a day (although some of the legal history is summarized here, if you’re interested). But the issues are very important to those of us who value individual liberty, which sometimes seems to me to be a dwindling group.
[NOTE: Further reading on the libertarian POV towards anti-discrimination laws in general.]
Deroy Murdock at NRO has some good questions about how far rights go in these situations:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/416257/freedom-association-burned-stake-indiana-deroy-murdock
My own feeling is that previously situations like this used to be solved with a lot more common sense. If you knew people had different beliefs or standards, you accepted them and didn’t push. Everything has to be a battle today.
“[The] right to free association, and therefore to discrimination, has greater validity than the principle of equality.”
– Hannah Arendt
From the pages of Modern Times, Chapter 2 – All That Had Once Been Obvious But Had Been Stood On Its Head.
“In principle, there are only two fundamental political viewpoints. That is, two contradictory ends of the ‘political spectrum.’ Those two principles are freedom and slavery.” — Mark Da Cunha
That wise insight blows away the mists of confusion. If a business owner cannot refuse service for any reason, that society has started to enslave its members. Someone’s motivation for a refusal of service may well be reprehensible but when a society compels service it has committed a much greater sin, one that in time has disastrous consequences.
“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
John Stuart Mill
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” C.S. Lewis
“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.” – John Stuart Mill
“We can contend with the evil that men do in the name of evil, but heaven protect us from what they do in the name of good.” uncertain attribution
When society’s moral obligations become legal compulsions, tyranny arises. Compulsion justified by good intentions have no natural limit. And tyranny… has an insatiable appetite.
How far our rights go is simple; my rights stop, where yours begin and your rights stop, where mine begin.
Liberty shmiberty. You’re living in Obama’s America now, bitches. You do what you’re told.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-left-wages-total-war-and-then-plays-victim/article/2562342
“is an emboldened and litigious cultural Left, unsated by its recent culture war victories, trying now to conscript the defeated soldiers at gunpoint.”
Half a sentence that sums up the outbreak of stupid in Obama’s America.
Burp!
So some Black Muslims walk into a print shop owned and operated by Orthodox Jews and wants them to print literature and banners for one of Lewis Farakhan’s rally. Are they obliged to do the print job?
I have never been more pessimistic about the future of our country than in this whole RFRA episode.
This is a perfect example of a complex issue which really can’t be dealt with today. We have a population of emotional people who aren’t very smart and have been poorly educated. Add in press manipulation/cheerleading/bias with the speed of social media and it is a disaster.
The key point here is the word “marriage.” Some people have strongly held religious beliefs against SSM. The First Amendment should protect that. It does protect it.
So today we have the women’s basketball coach at CT referring to religious people as “small minded” and being devoted to their religious “crap.” This in a state founded to achieve freedom of religion.
Check out the Yelp page for the small South Bend pizza place called Memories Pizza. The owner said he wouldn’t cater a gay wedding and he gets death threats and dishonest one star reviews from NY and CA. Website hacked and vandalized. Gay porn. (If Notre Dame students had any courage they would line up there all weekend. And Fr. President Tom Jenkins from Omaha should be first in line.)
I thought the LGBT crowd was against hate and bullying.
I listened to a gay thought leader Michaelangelo Signorle on Sirius 127 today. In his rant against this pizza guy he said the owner needed to be “re-educated.” Not making this up.
Coincidentally I read a good amicus brief in the SCOTUS SSM case. Signorle was cited for the proposition that SSM isn’t about marriage at all but about totally transforming American society. Sound familiar?
Brief also alleged that there are 500,000 poly relationships now!
Also pointed out how dishonest Harvard history prof was in her brief.
That marriage has little to do with Christanity and Judaism and that the ancient Greeks didn’t allow SSM.
SSM is not deeply rooted in American society but five judges are going to change it for 330m people.
Most interesting tidbit from the brief was that the president-elect of the APA when homosexuality was removed from the DSM was a deeply closeted homosexual. Surprise!
But the LGBT lobby and political correctness is so powerful that both Walmart and NASCAR have come out against the First Amendment.
Put me in the camp with Scalia, Jefferson and Madison and against Charles Barkley, Signorle and the insane, uneducated, emotive Left.
Paul in Boston:
Better question is should the government be allowed to compel the Jews to violate their deeply held religious beliefs under the guise of a public accommodations law especially in light of Caylpso Louis’ desire to kill Jews?
A big part of these lawsuits is to generate attorney’s fees, intimidate people and attempt to bankrupt a small business.
Also big media and big controversy.
Aren’t there any atheist or Muslim printers in the neighborhood?
Just leave them alone!
Bottom line, I will decide who I will associate with. Government can kill me, but that is all it can do. Once you accept this simple truth you are truly free.
This issue strikes at the heart of the idea of a free market. When a business is required to do business as directed by the government, it is no longer a free market.
The civil rights movement was meant to stop necessary public facilities from denying service to blacks. It seemed like a noble idea at the time because in the Jim Crow South all blacks were discriminated against. That principle of non-discrimination has now been expanded to cover all kinds of “victim” groups and to the use of government force to make businesses comply with new demands.
Yet, in Minneapolis Muslim cab drivers are allowed to refuse service to passengers who are carrying alcohol. Additionally, foot baths have been provided in airports to accommodate Muslim religious practices.
Tolerance requires some good will and common sense on both sides of an issue. Requiring bakers, florists, wedding planners, ministers, musicians, etc. to “participate” in a ceremony that is against their religious beliefs is the equivalent of requiring a Christian piano player to play the piano in a whorehouse if the whorehouse decides they want the piano player’s services.
Nothing has stoked my sense of foreboding about the future as this case has. It is tyranny masquerading as goodwill.
One of the mind parasites which infects the left is the false use of analogy. Here, they have drawn a false analogy between opposition to gay marriage and race and then have used that analogy to bludgeon their opponents. Arguments based on analogy are always weak at best.
Most moral people will agree that our out history of slavery and segregation was wrong and that the wrong might even have risen to the level that it was worth overriding people’s freedom of association to some extent to make amends. Is gay marriage analogous – hell no.
Incidentally, in the segregated South the major problem was that the government had laws which codified segregation. As with all laws they were enforced with the threat of violence towards anyone who broke the laws. Those laws had outlived any usefulness they might have once head, they were morally wrong, and they needed to go. If those bad laws had been repealed but individual liberty for free association had been respected things might have worked out as well or even better than they are now. The inequality built into the system to correct the previous wrongs has also outlived any possible usefulness, they are also morally wrong, and they are probably as destructive as the original race laws they have replaced. Because they are wrong, they have fueled a level of racial hatred which is rapidly approaching the boiling point similar to what Martin Luther King confronted when he started his marches.
Dennis:
The Left intentionally equated race with sexuality. It was part of the plan and because most people can’t think clearly and are very poorly educated they fall for it. I have respect for Charles Barkley’s basketball opinion but he is a dope outside his circle of competence and never should have weighed in on RFRA.
The law is that a suspect class must be due to an immutable characteristic. You can’t change your race.
But people do change their sexual preferences. Friend from college got married, had a kid and is now an open homosexual. Same for many others.
We don’t know the whole story on homosexuality on whether it is nature or nurture or something else. Until then, not a suspect class but I will lose on this in the end. The elites want their way.
Thanks Neo for the excellent link to Dan Mitchell.
Cornhead Says:
“We don’t know the whole story on homosexuality on whether it is nature or nurture or something else.”
It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that homosexuality might be nature due to varying levels of testosterone in utero. How people express their sexual preferences is their choice. The color of one’s skin is not an activity but is a physical trait. There is no analogy between an obvious physical trait like skin color which is difficult to hide and sexual orientation which leads to private actions which most people practice out of public view in their own bedrooms between consenting adults.
A second mind parasite which infects the left is their illogical use of causation. They often attribute causation to human behavior against common sense or evidence to indicate that there is a cause/effect relationship.
The left claim that they are the logical scientific thinkers vs. loony Christian conservatives who believe in God and miracles (at least to the extent that they believe their holy books are inspired since inspiration itself is a type of miracle).
Since the left are generally materialists, they can’t believe in free will and moral responsibility. This leads them to surprising conclusions like the believe that many humans who engage in violent behavior are really innocent victims. The more loathsome the “victims” behavior the more the left sympathizes with them since according to their deterministic philosophy the only reason anyone would do those terrible things is because they had been treated horribly themselves in the past. In other words a sadistic murderer rises to the level of a saintly victim since obviously that murderer must have come from a particularly evil environment which caused him/her to be so violent. On the other hand, the left especially hates people who are kind and gently but who have the temerity to oppose the left’s agenda. For the left, the fact that these oppressors are kind and gentle actually proves that they are evil since they obviously come from an especially benign environment (i.e. white privilege) which explains their kindness and gentility. The oppressors are especially evil because they have enjoyed that environment at the expense of the violent lawless classes which the left view as victims.
This entire exercise is really irrational since in a truly deterministic world the victims and the victimizers are both equally the product of their environment and are equally helpless to change who they are. Therefore for a materialist to chose one as good and the other as evil or to express moral outrage is itself an irrationality. In a genuinely deterministic universe the left are just as helpless to control their own thoughts and their own behavior as are their victims and their oppressors.
In a materialistic universe everyone is entitled to his/her own truth in the same way that two computers which are functioning correctly but are programmed differently can arrive at different states. Neither computer is in a position to prove that the other computer is wrong since both computers are slaves to their own programming which neither computer can transcend. The fact that the computers have arrived at different states proves that they are both functioning normally and are equally praiseworthy as computers.
Many Lefties are mentally ill and illogical. Emotion is their thing. Mother Earth is their religion. Add in the dominant popular culture and the horrible public school system and the Dems will always have 47%.
And I want to puke when I hear the likes of Rachel Maddow suggest that faith and reason can’t be reconciled. Jesuit education is built on that premise and it is the greatest enterprise in the world today.
Because I went to Jesuit schools I can spot BS instantly. Especially when it comes from a Georgetown alum like Bill Clinton or Boston College alum like John Forbes Kerry. Dick Durbin and Chris Matthews are two more.
Cornhead Says:
..”Jesuit education is built on that premise and it is the greatest enterprise in the world today.”
Good to hear that they are still standing strong.
“Jesuit education is built on that premise and it is the greatest enterprise in the world today.”
It may have been that way when you went to school, but I think overall it has changed. You only have to look at the likes of Georgetown to see the current fruit of the Jesuit tree. Remember when Obozo went to Georgetown to give a speech and the school covered up all the crucifixes and paintings in order not to offend? Do you think the early Jesuits that crossed the English Channel to help keep the Catholic Faith alive in England? I have no faith in the Jesuit Tree today. The liberal virus infected this tree long ago and most of the fruit it bears is rotten.
Interesting in general but I don’t think he read the Indiana law in question. It has a more liberal standard than the one he cites in general “But “some limits” is not the same as “no limits.” These laws all allow government to interfere if there is a “compelling state interest.”” I believe the Indiana law just says that religion has to able to be introduced as a defense. Not accepted. So; if you have an anti discrimination law the judge can not prevent your attorney from even broaching the subject. No requirement your argument be accepted.
The Issue is never about the issue, of marriage, for Leftists. The issue is always power and control. Those that cannot understand this, will be kicked in the head by the Left as many times as the Leftists wish.