“It is the Price of Citizenship”?—An Elegy for Religious Liberty in America

You can legislate against harmful actions, but you can’t legislate against attitudes. Free association doesn’t violate anyone’s right to life, liberty, or property, while making free association illegal does violate one’s right to private property and personal liberty.

Agreed. You cannot force people to love each other or to have good thoughts about another person.

I think the word racist is overused in our society. Now adays you cannot say any negative thing about a person of another race, without being called racist. There is a difference between being a racist, and being observant of the way people of other cultures are.

For example, if I say that I am looking to buy a house, but I do not want to live in a black neighborhood because they tend to be high crime areas with bad schools, I am not being racist. I am just being real.

[Susan R]

You can legislate against harmful actions, but you can’t legislate against attitudes. Free association doesn’t violate anyone’s right to life, liberty, or property, while making free association illegal does violate one’s right to private property and personal liberty.

[Chip Van Emmerik]

On one hand he seems to be advocating removing all laws that intrude on free exercise of conscience so that his photographer could refuse to take the job photographing the gay wedding. However, that also seems to remove any prohibition against segregation as it existed legally from the Plessy vs Ferguson SCOTA verdict in 1896 until the Civil Rights movement of the 60s. If he sees a way to end the racist’s free exercise of conscience while allowing the photographer’s, I’d like to hear how he describes the principle that guides the rule of that law.

Chip,

You are confusing two very different things. Freedom of conscience is not the same as legally enforced segregation. I never said that the racist’s free exercise of conscience should be ended, but that certainly doesn’t mean that he has the right to limit anyone else’s free exercise using government authority. Refusing to serve someone for whatever reason is not the same thing as limiting his/her rights.

It seems obvious to me that there are economic advantages to serving all people without discrimination, but if an individual chooses to forgo those advantages, what is that to those he refuses to serve? Can’t they simply look for someone who is willing to serve them? And if not, then why can’t they fill that niche in the market, themselves? It seems to me that this is the way a free market would handle discrimination.

Paul

[pvawter]….if an individual chooses to forgo those advantages, what is that to those he refuses to serve? Can’t they simply look for someone who is willing to serve them? And if not, then why can’t they fill that niche in the market, themselves? It seems to me that this is the way a free market would handle discrimination.

Paul

Have you ever worked in a retail environment where you serve the public? Or owned a business where you have customers?

Paul,

Do you believe this libertarian type of government you have described is the one Paul wrote about in Romans 13 or God intended when He instituted human government in Genesis 9? Do you believe that as we Christians stand before God to give an account of our lives, this is what God would be pleased to have us stand behind?

Ya’ll do realize that segregation used to be de jure - enforced by law. The Civil Rights movement rightly protested segregation in schools, public transportation, the military, and other federal public spaces.

But we aren’t talking about those kinds of public places. We are talking about ‘desegregation’, if you will, for privately owned businesses. There is a difference between a landlord or shop proprietor choosing with whom they wish to do business, and segregation sanctioned and enforced by law. We have actually got it the other way around now- people are required by law to do business and associate with individuals that they’d rather not associate or do business with, for whatever reason.

Anyone of a minority, be it ethnicity or gender, can claim ‘discrimination’ any time someone doesn’t want to do business with or hire them, even if the reason has nothing to do their ethnicity or gender. People have to ‘prove’ that they aren’t racist- but you can’t prove the non-existence of something.

And if Mr. Bob doesn’t sell you a glass of lemonade, he’s not preventing you from buying lemonade from anyone on any planet forevermore. Just from him. The gov’t shouldn’t be in the business of using their police power to tell businesses with whom they must do business.

[Susan R]

And if Mr. Bob doesn’t sell you a glass of lemonade, he’s not preventing you from buying lemonade from anyone on any planet forevermore. Just from him. The gov’t shouldn’t be in the business of using their police power to tell businesses with whom they must do business.

[Susan R]

The gov’t shouldn’t be in the business of using their police power to tell businesses with whom they must do business.

Whether it should or not, I will not debate. It is and they use the Commerce Clause for the authority

[Chip Van Emmerik]

[Susan R]

And if Mr. Bob doesn’t sell you a glass of lemonade, he’s not preventing you from buying lemonade from anyone on any planet forevermore. Just from him. The gov’t shouldn’t be in the business of using their police power to tell businesses with whom they must do business.

This was the case under legalized segregation too. Blacks could always go somewhere else where there wasn’t segregation to do their business. Desegregation was the government using their police power to tell businesses with whom they must do business.

Gov’t set the precedent by legislating and enforcing segregation.

But this isn’t primarily about ethnic segregation- this is about forcing people to do business with everyone that crosses their threshhold, regardless of what the proprietor believes or whether or not it is even in his best interests. People can claim discrimination even when race or gender identity isn’t the reason someone doesn’t want to do business with them.

The racism of the past was very clear in the way it was practiced by both gov’t and citizens. Racism today is just a word, like ‘purple’ or ‘noodles’. It gets thrown around so much that it has no meaning other than a way for some people to intimidate and coerce others. And ditto ‘tolerance’. It just means ‘tolerance for LGBT’, not tolerance for religious beliefs.

Jim,

yes I have worked in several different retail environments, although I have not been a business owner.

Chip,

The kind of government I described is one where individuals are free to exercise their rights according to the dictates of their own conscience without infringing on the free exercise of others, so I don’t see how that is inconsistent with the description of Genesis 9. As a Baptist by conviction, I affirm the principle of soul liberty, so each individual will answer to God for his own actions, and the separation of church and state, so the government ought not use the power of the sword to enforce the standards of the church.

I am not saying that it is morally right for anyone to practice discrimination, that it makes good business sense to do so, or that it is even legal for them to do so. What I am saying is that I believe it ought to be legal for them to do so. In the same way, I do not believe that it is morally right to commit adultery (it is clearly wrong according to God’s word), but that does not mean it should be illegal to do so.