The UK is about to outlaw all discrimination based on sexual orientation:
The Equality Act, due to come into effect in England, Wales and Scotland in April, outlaws discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services on the basis of sexual orientation.Among other things, it would mean that Catholic adoption agencies can no longer refuse to place children with gay couples.
Serves them right, you say?
But some business that provide services to gay clients also oppose this ban:
Mr Hurst, who runs Guyz hotel in Blackpool with his partner Steve, said: "Rather than improve gay rights, it will make things much worse. We run a gay hotel exclusively for men. We feel if we were forced to a situation where we had to accept heterosexual people into our hotel, our gay clientele will not behave as naturally as they would now."I think a very cogent argument can be made that it's not the government's job to correct our beliefs, however bigoted. It's hard to draw the line between preventing harm and becoming a perpetual nanny spanking the naughty kids for misdeeds. (And it's usually the issues that involve kids that make us become very interested in others' morals, see evils of music lyrics, videogames, and porn.) I think it's reasonable to require certain level of equality for agencies receiving public funding, but again, how much public financing should demand what compliance? I haven't bothered to read the language of this bill, but if it does apply to private hotel owners, it smacks of overreach.
Totally off topic, except for fabulous Brits, here's my Friday live music clip. This song has haunted me for a few years, ever since I really listened to the Smiths, and the band does a nice job:
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5 comments:
I gotta say, I'm loving the Swedish nanny state and the positive effect it has on society.
Sometimes the law has to take the lead on abolishing discrimination, because the people won't do it themselves. Think about civil rights in the US.
Megan, I agree that the state is good at guaranteeing that people don't starve and get medical care and education. So I support that side of the nanny state.
But when it comes to social questions, discrimination, hate speech, etc, it's much trickier. Mandating certain types of behavior may sometimes drive social progress, but it can also push the more virulent strains of hatred underground, where they become more dangerous and harder to eradicate. I think I ultimately come down on the side of the US interpretation of freedom of speech: unless there is "clear and present danger" in your speech or behavior, you're free to be as bigoted, ignorant, and offensive as you want to be. I think some data comparing fringe groups in the US and Europe may support this view, but I don't pretend to know it...
I have to side with Megan here. Given the chance to discriminate, people, and more importantly the businesses that they own, generally will discriminate, and society is the worse for it. No one has an inherent right to discriminate against blacks, Jews, or gays, and the law does well to keep them from doing so. If it drives the discrimination underground, all the better. Ending segregation in America helped stop widespread lynching, it didn't foster it.
I think the hotel owner you bring up is wrong for two reasons. First, the law wouldn't seem to apply to him in the way he thinks. He may not be able to ban heterosexuals from staying over, but he can restrict his clientele to males and make sure that everyone knows that whatever behavior he wishes to take place will be welcome. Second, and more importantly, anti-discrimination laws virtually always help the minority population, not hurt it. A case in point: Brandeis University has always been a "secular" school, but it was founded to be a Jewish counterpart to the Ivies when they were wtill placing quotas on Jewish students. Banning the quota system allowed Jews much broader access to higher education, but Brandeis has had no problem maintaining a majority Jewish student body through completely legal means.
Minorities often group themselves voluntarily (Boystown in Chicago isn't legally requried to be gay, it was a voluntary grouping of the population), and can thus maintain their institutions (We lived within blocks of gay bars, gay bathhouses, gay theatres, gay Asian fusion restaurants, etc.). Better to make the discrimination illegal, though, to allow the minorities full access to all social institutions, to which they would otherwise be frequently denied access.
The Swedish nanny state isn't just about social welfare though. They go pretty far at banning anything that even looks a little like discrimination, particularly when it comes to gender. For instance, the committee that investigates sexism in advertising banned a photo in a stupid supermarket weekly circular because a picture portrayed a little girl in pink pajamas and a little boy in blue ones -- the blue and the pink were promoting gender stereotypes, they said. Extreme? Yes. But I appreciate what they're trying to do here.
I agree with Josh that there are ways for minority groups to protect their spaces without allowing discrimination to remain legal. Yeah, you wind up with an unwelcome chick in a gay bar every now and then, but it's still a gay bar.
I don't know the statistics on hate groups in Europe, and I was shocked to find several graffiti swastikas here in Sweden, but then Russia isn't doing much to stifle hate speech and there are a lot more swastikas there, not to mention the weekly beating to death of a non-white person, so I really think governments do have to take a stand about these things.
I don't know if I buy this argument that driving behavior underground makes it harder to eradicate. It's an attractive-sounding hypothesis, but I don't think it really holds. I think that allowing discrimination to remain in the open legitimizes it and makes it harder to eradicate.
The US has a long way to go, but things are still a lot better than in the '50s, for women and minorities, don't you suppose?
Also, there's a difference between allowing people to have racist opinions and even promote them, and allowing them to discriminate in their business practices. And the latter is definitely not OK, even if there's some room for discussion about the former in terms of civil liberties.
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