From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Homophobia (really not about  Homeschooling)
Date: 8 Jan 93 19:25:13 GMT
Reply-To: roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
Originator: news@nimaster

In article <C0Jpu8.4qF@watserv2.uwaterloo.ca> msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris) writes:
>Rod Williams writes at me:
>  But the good citizens of Colorado, with whom you've expressed
>  agreement, voted to single out inclusion in a particular
>  minority group for special *exclusion* from the provisions of
>  existing and future civil rights laws.

>Yes, and as I've said, I would be much happier with the measure
>if it had said ``Sexual Orientation'' shall not be the basis
>of such laws. 

Which, as Steve Pope points out, makes firing for *any* reason
possible, because everyone has a sexual orientation.

>On the other hand, since I consider such ``future
>civil rights laws'' at bottom unjust, it seems to me to be a
>reasonable first step in opposing such legislation.

You still haven't told us *why* you don't like laws that protect
individuality.

>Regarding the possibility of government allowing employers
>to discriminate in hiring actually leading to there
>being little discrimination (or, say, no more discrimination
>than we have today), Rod responds:
>  I don't know what leads you to believe this, given ample
>  historical evidence that such discrimination has flourished
>  in the past -- the very reason civil rights laws were
>  passed -- and is pervasive today, despite its illegality.

>Well, the historical evidence is *exactly* what I point to
>all of the time with Canadians (who as a rule love to
>respond to just about any problem with a legislative program).
>You see, Rod, there seems to be this (what I think is loony)
>belief going around that making a law against some disapproved behaviour
>will be enough to make the behaviour disappear. 

Bullshit.  Nobody in this discussion has proposed that, nor have 
promoters of anti-discrimination legislation in general claimed that 
such effects would occur.  

Taking away the legal basis of discrimination is, however, a first step
toward promoting the *experience* of coexistence, which does indeed 
have an effect on prejudice, which is the grounds of much discrimination.

>I would say rather
>that the evidence is that it doesn't work this way at all. Hey,

Well, Colorado isn't in Canada, either.  And the US has social and
discriminatory problems that Canada rarely faces.

>I grew up in the 70s in white, suburban Indianapolis during the heady
>days of the institution of ``busing to achieve racial integration''.

Which we're not talking about.  That form of social engineering is
*not* a matter of redress against prima facie discrimination.

>Right now, looking back on the States from Canada over the
>past few years, I can't help but thinking how really bad the
>problem of race *still is* in the States. Is there any evidence
>that this great social experiment has actually worked to integrate
>black and white society? 

Yes.  I have lived in many integrated neighborhoods that have used 
legal remedies to become that way.  In fact, I moved into one just
last week.  

I know that the removal of legal barriers to integration, and the active
use of the courts to punish discrimination, has given people of all
races and groups -- not least mine, and, yes, there were neighborhoods
just a bike ride from the house in which I grew up where my parents
couldn't have bought a house with all the money in the world -- a new
sense of fairness in their society.  To be sure, race is a divisive 
element as before, and cynical politicians exploit it again and again,
and know that racial issues are a good way to get elected, and all that;
but, yes, we have made a *lot* of progress, and pointing at the failures
does not make the successes go away.

>Or even that it has worked to ameliorate
>any of the problem of racial tension in the U.S.?

Again, yes.  Not in all cases; in many ways, things are worse than they
were.  But post-hoc reasoning always stinks, and without recognizing 
the vast forces in this country that have worked *against* fairness
and equality of opportunity, we cannot reach sensible conclusions about 
what efforts to improve things have actually achieved.

>Why is the response when these laws don't work (cf. anti-drug
>laws) always to think that we need more such laws, rather than

Who says that    

a) this is always the response

b) it's always wrong

c) the laws don't work in the case we're discussing?  

In matters of discrimination, the laws are rarely at fault -- it is the
vast opposition from people who, unlike yourself, consider inequality
of opportunity, etc. to be "natural laws" or whatnot.  

>less? I think what it does, instead of facing the problem justly
>and squarely and making it a subject for real and open debate,
>by trading off ``just a wee little injustice for the social
>good'' (allowing wrongful termination suits on the grounds
>of minority status *does* infringe upon the employer's right
>to free association), 

Straw man, at the very least.  If you consider free association to
be the ONLY right in question -- and the *employer's* right to 
free association, to boot -- then you can argue that way.  But nobody
does, nor is "social good" the justification given.  

The justification comes from INDIVIDUAL good, not least the right of
the *employee* to associate, which the employer, by your standard, has 
a right to control absolutely.  That is, by becoming employed in your 
world, one FORFEITS the right to free association if one wishes to keep
one's job.  

Now, the ultralibertarian view is that a job is a thing of no inherent
value or right, that one does not have a right to keep working or anything
like that.  But jobs aren't like that -- they have at least a few aspects
of property.  (Not all, mind you, and not as many as some unions seem to
think.)  Moreover, the necessity of a job for continued existence -- to say
nothing of the continued existence of those other individuals, e.g., 
infants, who depend on the employee for sustenance -- makes it more than
an abstract thing unrelated to rights.  

After all, if there *is* such a thing as a right to life (and Jefferson
certainly argues that there is, though certain ultrapropertarians would
claim otherwise), how is it squared with the ability of bigoted employers
to hound certain people out of existence by way of boycott?

>is to drive the real problem underground
>where it's going to be that much harder to get at. I quite agree

The "real" problem being?

>that discrimination still takes place despite its illegality.

So making it legal will get rid of it?  

Will that work for murder and theft, too?

>  Your position is certainly consistent, but it betrays a
>  streak of smug Social Darwinism, or perhaps merely a
>  foolish misunderstanding of human nature.

>Liberalism, Rod, not Social Darwinism. There's a big difference.

Hard to tell in your case.  Seems to me that your individuals have 
to knuckle their individuality under to the caprices of those in
power, i.e., adapt radically at the caprice of others, in order to
survive.

Does this square with all those declarations of rights you invoked a
couple postings ago?

>As to my understanding of human nature, and my insistence that
>individual human beings be left to exercise their Rights, the

Unless they don't have enough money, eh?

>misunderstanding that other people often have is that this promises
>somehow that these individuals will necessarily choose the good.

Yet you don't mind that some people -- those with more power -- will
choose the coercive.

>I certainly don't believe that. I just think that individuals
>need room in which to choose either good or bad, and if individuals
>are denied this room, then the injustice of denying it to them is
>going to manifest itself as a social pathology. 

But if an employer denies employees the right to choose the good
or bad *as the employer sees it*, that's all right?

>In other words, I
>believe that it is the left and the right who join hands in
>misunderstanding human nature in this respect (in their both
>being willing to deny individuals this room for moral choice, however
>different their respective agendas may be).

Uh huh.  So we should legalize murder?  

Sorry, Mike, but your invocation of drug laws shows that you've missed
a crucial distinction here: with every act of discrimination, SOMEBODY
GETS HURT.  Not so with every toke.  This is true whether the discrimination
is legal or not, and the hurt is measurable along the lines of human rights
as well as along simple monetary lines.

Roger