From: flar@bendenweyr.Eng.Sun.COM (Jim Graham)
Newsgroups: ba.politics,ca.politics,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Fear, hate, and the eternal companion, hate
Date: 27 Jan 93 02:20:41 GMT
Reply-To: flar@bendenweyr.Eng.Sun.COM (Jim Graham)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: bendenweyr

cramer@optilink.COM (Clayton Cramer) writes:
|> Why should a woman have the right to refuse to have sex with any man
|> who approaches her?  Where did he agree to be discriminated against?  

The majority of society decided which they would prefer:

	1. Everyone must have sex with another individual when asked.
	2. Everyone has the right to refuse to have sex with another
	   individual at any time.

They decided that the consequences of 2 were preferable to the consequences
of 1 overall, so they enacted rape laws.  This majority did not consist
entirely of recovering rape victims, it also contained people who would
consider themselves far more likely to be in the position of the rejectee
than the rejecter.  And still they agree that the law is needed.

|> In that case, it's rape.  AB 2601 is analogous.  She CAN refuse to
|> have sex -- but only if she decides to be celibate, and have sex
|> with no one.

In the case of anti-discrimination in employment and housing laws,
the majority of society decides which they would prefer:

	1. Any employer or property owner may discriminate against
	   any applicant for any reason.
	2. An employer or property owner may choose which of many
	   applicants they employ/house provided they do not use
	   any of a short list of fixed criteria in that decision.
	   Currently that list usually contains race, creed, etc.

It seems that the majority of society would prefer the consequences
of case #2.  They view the ignorant whining of some employers or
property owners as being less worthy of consideration than the real
needs of those who might be discriminated against.

It would seem that every day more and more people are coming to
believe that if "sexual orientation" were included in #2 above,
they would prefer the consequences than if it were not included.
And this list of people is not restricted to homosexuals who are
only thinking of self-serving gains.  The list contains many of
the heterosexual people that I know who are making this choice
based on original position - i.e. what opinion would I have if I
had no idea what segment of the resulting society I would occupy,
be it destitute homosexual, or greedy businessman?  The same
reasoning that allows a virile horny man to agree that he has
no right to force anyone to have sex with him just because he
wishes it.

The end result of these two decisions may yield an inconsistency
between the criteria allowed an individual in choosing a sexual
partner and the criteria allowed an employer or housing provider,
but why is this an issue?

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

To force a consistency between these sets of criteria would be
to assert that the two situations are sociologically equivalent.

If I allow you to answer NO to one question and YES to another,
because you perceive the two questions to be different (even if
I myself view them as one), then why not allow society to hold
different opinions on the appropriate criteria to apply in these
two situations?

|> X           Y           Z           result
|> woman       sex         man         rape
|> employer    employment  homosexual  mandatory

The laws indicate that the result in the first case is not always
rape just as AB2601 allows that in the second case, the result
is not mandatory employment.  This is a gross misrepresentation
of the effects of the two laws.

				...jim