Businesses Have a Right to Discriminate

Thank you for continuing to present thought-out points throughout your debate. First of all, the prospect of a jail sentence was never brought up. There are many forms of illegal, and many punishments as well, and not all of those are jail time. Even I must admit that jailing somebody for choosing who to do business with is outrageous. However, a fine or restriction on the business I believe would be a much better fit. Second of all, you continue to use the term "force against someone else". However, our country already has laws about discrimination that don't involve the use of force. Finally, I continue to press my opinion that if a business is selling a product that affects other people, it now becomes less of an issue of private property and more of an issue of the way you affect others and how those people are protected by the law. Again, you push the idea of physical force and harm. Hurting a minority's feelings, as you put it, is more than an offense in a lot of cases. If a business decided that they would only sell to black people, a lot of white people would not only feel offended but some, for sure, would feel in danger for their lives. While this may seem like a very drastic position to hold, a lot of people in this country would hold it if they were in that circumstance. If the idea of a business catering only to the African American community seems unreasonable, then what's the difference between that and a business deciding not to cater towards the gay community? It's not about how many other choices one has to eat, it's about the situation that person may be in. Say a restaurant operated in a very rural area and was the only restaurant for miles around? If a gay couple doesn't have the means to cook for themselves or buy food from a market, and that restaurant doesn't serve gay people, then what will they eat? Of course this seems like an incredibly foolish situation to suggest, but the law has to accomodate for special circumstances. If we let certain businesses discriminate, and others not because of the situation, then how can we fairly say who decides who gets this right and who doesn't? It would seem safer to close off that possibility for businesses, or at least discourage them from taking that option. While one would hope that the bigots of soceity would fail, think about companies that have made their feelings about homosexuality open but don't discriminate against homosexuals catering-wise. For example, the CEO of Chick-Fil-A has admitted to press that he doesn't support homosexuality. However, the business is still running and even though people have boy-cotted it before, Chick-Fil-A remains a fairly successful chain. Now, of course, if Chick-Fil-A decided not to do business with homosexuals, that would be a very different situation. However, who's to say how much of a difference it would make? And finally, the scenarios you give aren't completely accurate. Sure, Scenario 1 would most likely occur. However, a lot of people would want that person to be legally reprimanded due to strong feelings of justice. As for Scenario 2, the things that racist would do to black people would still be discrimination. Even if you aren't technically discriminating between who to do business with, you are still discriminating between who gets better service, which wouldn't be allowed either in the ideal situation that I'm arguing for. Giving his profits to racist organizations would be his personal freedom, even if it seems wrong. If people don't support him doing this, however, hopefully they could attempt to boycott the restaurant. However, this would be the choice of the people.