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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (21124)	8/9/2001 1:07:26 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

But you cannot deny that allowing wholesale exclusion is also a rights issue for those being excluded, not just a social issue. I think I can deny that, Karen. An issue of basic decency? Yes. An issue of equality and fairness? Yes. But IMO people don't have a natural or constitutional right to force others to associate with them in personal or even business matters. If they have a legal right then it was created by these laws and would not normally be something that I would call a rights issue, just as I would not call receiving some government entitlement a rights issue even if the law says "you have a right" to receive money from this program. I might be prepared to accept the idea that the practical benefit of anti discrimination laws is so great as to still make them a good idea dispute the fact that they do infringe on people's rights when they are applied to the private sector. I'd have to think about this some more. I usually set the bar very very high if someone is trying to use the idea of a practical benefit being sufficient to justify an infringement of rights. The benefit in this case would not only be the benefit to the people who where formally discriminated against but also the benefit to the economy of allowing the best people to have a shot regardless of their skin color or religion, and hopefully the benefit of helping to make unjust discrimination socially unacceptable, and in the very long run make it almost disappear. I think affirmative action can have the opposite effect it defines people by race, religion, sex, or whatever rather then considering them as people first and foremost, but a body of well designed anti-discrimination laws can and probably has helped to reduce bigotry. Tim