The left would have you believe there are no conservative fans of the civil rights movement. Of course, that's not true at all. There are lots, and I'm one.
Racism has always struck me as one of the most obviously stupid forms of enmity between people. To dislike someone because of skin pigmentation requires you to be so stupid and so malevolent, it's hard to believe you can hold such attitudes and still function in civilized society with any degree of success. Ironically, this is one of the reasons I disagree with the left's assertion that racist attitudes remain widespread and influential. In order to believe that, you have to believe the population in general is so stupid it's amazing people can remember how to breathe.
I realize there are a lot of stupid people out there, but I don't find society awash in that much stupidity. I believe racism in 2017 is confined to the fringes of society because that's where you find people stupid enough to embrace it. That the left remains as obsessed as it is with race and racism tells me a) it's just a political ploy; or b) they think the lot of you by and large are a lot more stupid than I think you are.
At any rate, the prevalence of segregated diners, restaurants and lunch counters was one of the most insane manifestations of this phenomenon when it still held sway, mainly in the south. These were the injustices that the civil rights movement successfully marched against, winning legislative victories against it, but I think even more importantly, changing hearts.
One of the legislative achievements of the civil rights movement was the adoption of public accommodation laws, the idea that if you have a business that serves the public, you could not refuse to serve certain people because of their race, religion or whatever other reason. You could kick someone out who was causing a problem, but you couldn't just pick and choose who you let in.
I'll be honest: There's a part of me that's always felt public accommodation laws require some give on the matter of freedom of association. It may be totally wrong and morally repugnant that you would choose to serve certain people but not others, but it is your business. Do you not have that right, even if the way you want to exercise it is horrible?
But my slight discomfort with that question was always overcome by the realization that such segregation was a great societal evil, and public accommodation laws were effective in correcting that evil. For that reason, I have always come down on the side of public accommodation laws and the greater good they have accomplished for the past half-century.
But now I'm starting to wonder, because the left is now trying to expand the principle to involve a lot more than just serving people sandwiches and Cokes. It's now using the concept of the public accommodation law to try to force people to violate their own religious beliefs.
I'm talking, of course, about the cases involving Christian bakers, photographers and florists who are being approached by gay couples and asked to provide services for their gay "weddings." When the Christian business owners decline, citing the conflict between gay marriage and their Christian beliefs, gay couples are not simply accepting this answer and going back out to look for someone else. They're taking legal action, trying to force an unwilling service provider to either a) capitulate and provide the service; or b) pay a severe legal penalty for their refusal to do so.
And the left is citing public accommodation laws to justify this. Here is a direct quote from a liberal who tried to make this case to me just last week: "Sorry but if you open a public business you serve the entire public, you don't get to pick and choose who your customers are. If they walk in and want to purchase a service, in this case baking a cake.....you take their money and bake it. Or go become a private membership only club."
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So according to this line of logic, any business that allows a member of the public to walk through your door is a public accommodation, and is legally obligated to provide whatever service is requested, regardless of whether the service provider wants to or believes it is right to do so.
This is a far cry from the original idea of a public accommodation. In this scenario, you're not just letting people sit at your tables and taking their food orders. Bakers and florists have to apply expressions of art to the work they do for weddings. A photographer has to actually attend the wedding and make a concerted effort to make the participants look good, and to make the entire event look wonderful.
I have several times posed this question: I'm a writer, and one of the things I can write is poetry. What if a gay couple asked me to write a poem to celebrate their "wedding"? Do I have the right to refuse? It's true that I don't have a storefront where people can just walk in and request writing from me. But I have a web site that lists my phone number and my e-mail address. I'm very easy to get ahold of. In the digital age, this is as public an accommodation as a restaurant with the door unlocked, maybe even more public.
In the past I have refused work because it involved things I didn't want to promote, especially alcohol. If a wedding photographer can't turn down a gay wedding because it violates his faith, why is it OK for me to say no to Jack Daniels? How much longer will it be OK?
I've never been big on slippery-slope arguments. If you don't like an idea because someone might take it too far, then tell them no when they try to take it too far. But public accommodation laws are turning into a classic case of the slippery slope argument having merit. I believe they are just and right when their application is limited to racial discrimination in the use of diners, drinking fountains and the like. There is no justification for that discrimination.
But if you're now going to expand the application of these laws to force people to violate their own faith and conscience, judging adherence to said faith and conscience to be "discrimination," then maybe we need to honestly question whether we'd be better off letting racist jerks run their businesses as racist jerks, and simply leaving it up to the rest of us not to do business with them? That would be an awful thing. But the Constitution protects the practice of religion. It does not protect your right to get a cup of coffee, or a cake, or your picture taken, by anyone you want - regardless of whether they want to provide these things to you.
It seems right to ban people from being jerks, until you realize that anyone in power can declare you to be a jerk just because they disagree with you. That's how the left is not misusing public accommodation laws, well-intended though they are. And if that's where this is going, maybe the laws themselves need to go.
