Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: TimF who wrote (80700)	6/17/2004 11:55:21 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"when people talk about what forms of discrimination should be legal and what should be illegal, they aren't questioning if people have a right to say no to sex." Please don't lose the focus or point. As I pointed out to you: "If the Government expresses the values of the people, and if the Government ought not to discriminate in certain ways which offend the values of the citizenry...then how do you jump from that to a permissiveness of private sector behaviour which violates the standards desired and enforced by the people?? How and why should the government be held to different standards of behavior than is the citizen?" You have not explained to me why the private sector ought to enjoy more leniency to do what is considered to be against individual rights by rational consensus than the leniency enjoyed by the public sector. If an individual enjoys a "RIGHT" not to be harmed in the public sector....then how is that "RIGHT" justifiably thwarted in the private sector?? You have intimated that "equal protection under the law" is not necessarily a private sector expectation. But you have not explained why. How do you decide which prejudices and offenses will be deemed illegal in the public sector but will be received as neutral or even laudable in the private sector? On what basis does one validate the proposition and on what bases does society permit certain harmful prejudices {such as firing a breadwinner because she is a a certain colour and thus destroying a family}? "when people talk about what forms of discrimination should be legal and what should be illegal, they aren't questioning if people have a right to say no to sex." Well, I am asking you that question because I am trying to establish the basis on which you permit harm to others or consider it anathema to human society. It strikes me as obvious that we assess the moral repugnance of an act by the harm it causes. Forcing a sexual act certainly causes harm. But firing someone and perhaps causing their life to collapse and their children to hunger JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE A CERTAIN COLOUR OR GENDER seems to me to require an explanation from those who support it. A glib spin around the ice is insufficient, in my opinion. The essence of society is that people have rights and that governments and laws are in place to preserve and protect those rights. If it is wrong to cause harm to someone because of gender or colour in the public sector, how does it become right to cause such harm in the private sector?? We don't permit individuals to make up their own minds as to whether or not rape is permissible. So why should they make up their minds individually when it comes to raping or violating other human rights in general??