Posted by:
ificouldhietokolob
(
)
Date: August 16, 2015 01:40PM
Recovered Molly Mo Wrote:
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> I am stating I support other businesses who choose
> NOT to serve others and they have a right to do
> so.
But that's the point -- they *don't* have a "right" to do so. See, businesses aren't self-contained isolated units existing in a vacuum. They depend on publicly paid for roads to get customers to them. They use publicly subsidized water and sewer and power grids to operate. Their business benefits from publicly subsidized mail; they depend on publicly paid for fire and police services, road repair, street sweeping, snow plowing, traffic lights, courts, city/county administrations, etc. etc. etc. Without all those publicly-paid for services and infrastructure, their business would go nowhere. So there are two "prices" they pay for getting to use all that stuff to make money for themselves: one, they pay taxes to support it, two they have to abide by laws about non-discrimination. Since ALL of the public contributes to the services they use to make money, they don't get to arbitrarily exclude PART of the public in their business.
They don't have any such "right." They agreed to that when they opened a public-accommodation business.
> Businesses come and go all on their own with this
> type of attitude to the public. They do not LAST
> ANYWAY.
In the very, very long run, maybe. Admittedly, a lawsuit is sort of a "fast-track" approach. Instead of waiting for public pressure to shame them out of business, a suit brings the issue to a head, quickly.
The thing is, in a place like, say, San Francisco, that public shaming will happen *fast.* Nobody running a business in San Francisco will last probably even a few months if they refuse business to gays.
But how about in a place like St. George, Utah? The business there has no more "right" to discriminate than the one in San Francisco does, but it can "get away" with doing it without public pressure or shaming for a lot longer than the one in San Francisco -- because there are a lot fewer gays in St. George, and because the overall population is very likely to support the discrimination. Suing the business there for discrimination will stop the discrimination, rather than waiting a long, long time for social pressure to work.
Black civil rights history provides many fine examples for this. Laws were passed nationwide prohibited discrimination; many places already didn't discriminate, many others stopped when the laws were passed. A significant bunch, though, in communities where discrimination was the "norm," still discriminated (and sometimes still do). Lawsuits are effective and sometimes necessary to get those "holdouts" of bigotry to comply with the law.
A public accommodation business uses public resources, and by law must serve the public. ALL of the public. Its owners do not have a "right" to not serve some part of the public they happen to hate for no good reason. It's that simple.
> Demanding others meets your needs should not
> impose on the rights of others.
There is no "right" to discriminate, and there's no "demand others meet your needs" here.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2015 01:41PM by ificouldhietokolob.