From: bard@cutter.ssd.loral.com (James Woodyatt)
Subject: Homosexuality and Anti-discrimination (was Re: why don't you just read soc.motss)
Keywords: blah blah
Organization: Space Systems/Loral
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 03:50:29 GMT

In article <10340@optilink.UUCP>, cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
|> In article <1992Apr3.050128.15157@wdl.loral.com>, bard@cutter.ssd.loral.com (James Woodyatt) writes:

[Clayton's *artful* dodge of my Christian Radio analogy is deleted.]

|> # In most cases. Nevertheless, with regards to the actual topic of this
|> # thread (which was the appropriateness of anti-discrimination law and the
|> # extension of the law to cover sexual orientation), I am prohibited by
|> # existing law from refusing to hire (or rent to) a Christian solely
|> # because they're `filthy, disgusting {insert-offensive-slur-here} and I
|> # hate hate hate them.' (I'm pretty certain I'm not allowed to discriminate
|> # on the basis of religion.)
|> 
|> I happen to think that such laws have no place in our society, with
|> the exception of the government.  It's should be none of the government's
|> business who you hire or rent to.

Yeah, I know your position against anti-discrimination law. I'm trying to
advance the idea that you have other reasons for opposing anti-discrimination
laws specifically aimed at protecting homosexuals.

|> # The law seems to draw a distinction between religious discrimination
|> # and refusing to do business with someone for more innocuous reasons. This
|> # is because there is an ocean of difference between ``I won't sell to you
|> # because you don't meet my reasonable requirements,'' and ``I won't sell
|> # to you because you're a God-fearing, white, Christian, heterosexual
|> # male...'' The fact that I ``hate hate hate'' you is indicative of my
|> # motives for refusing to business with you, and is important only because
|> # it illustrates why my requirement is `unreasonable.'
|> 
|> How about, "I won't do business with 'misogynists'."  We allow
|> that distinction, for some reason.  Why should we allow you to do
|> that?  Obviously, it's because you are filled with hatred for
|> misogynists. :-)

I submit that you would not be motivated to work to defeat a bill that
would explicitly disallow housing and employment discrimination against
misogynists without effecting any other changes in existing anti-
discrimination law, but that you have shown that you would be inclined to
do so when the bill is to protect homosexuals from the same discrimination.

This is what I have come to expect of you from reading what you write. I
have to ask myself, is my perception wrong? Because if it's not, there
would seem to be something else besides your opposition to anti-
discrimination law driving you, and it would be within reason to wonder
if you hadn't just concocted the opposition to anti-discrimination law
position to allow you to escape the charge of bigotry.

Now, I'm inclined to believe that you're not really a bigot, though you
sometimes seem like one -- I'm more inclined to use a less emotionally
charged word like `prejudiced' instead, and that's just my intuition.

But I still wonder why it is that you got so much more worked up about
AB101 than you did about the *much* more revolutionary Americans With
Disabilities Act.

-----

|> I oppose ALL expansions of governmental power that tell consenting
|> adults what they can do in private.  You are full of excuses for
|> THIS type of expansion of governmental power, but not others.

In all the text I just deleted, nowhere did I advocate expansion of
governmental power to tell consenting adults what they cannot do in
private, and I challenge you to produce where I have advocated such in
a case where the activity proscribed of said consenting adults would
not adversely affect an innocent party in any way.

Further, there *are* expansions of government power I am in favor of,
that fall outside that set.

Finally, I dare say I expect I could fabricate a hypothetical situation
wherein an adult could consent to do something in private with another
consenting adult and you would jump through flaming rhetorical hoops to
explain that the activity should be punished by the government.

You have distorted the truth -- which is to say I am calling you a liar.

What I have called for is a *restoration* of the rights of all people
to equal opportunities to housing and employment, and I say that `all
people' includes homosexuals.

I can respect your arguments that there exists no right to equal
opportunity in housing and employment, because it denies the providers
of these things the freedom to discriminate on the basis of their
irrational fears, but I reject the notion that equal opportunity in
housing and employment means government control over the personal
business of consenting adults in private which does not adversely and
directly affect innocent parties.

-----

One wonders why you have resorted to meeting my charge of homophobia,
which I make based on what you have actually written, by making a
spurious reference and following with a mocking but groundless retort
designed to give it the same weight as mine by sounding similar.

|> Fascism could explain that.

Indeed. (You can do better than that, can't you Clayton?)

What I can't understand is why you don't just admit your homophobia. It's
not like you'll lose all your friends (or your job) if you do. Maybe, you
have, and I just missed it.


-- 
James Woodyatt  Space Systems/Loral   Palo Alto, CA   bard@cutter.ssd.loral.com

``And when he dreamed his ears drooled thirty weight engine oil
He took personality tests and stapled them to his lower lip''
				    --Stan Ridgway,
				      `Jack Talked (Like A Man On Fire)'
Newsgroups: alt.sex,talk.politics.misc