So I stopped at a kosher deli and ordered a ham sandwich.
They refused me service!
Then I went by the Halal meat market and ordered a ham sandwich. They refused me service!
I tried to hire Jackson Pollock to paint a family portrait. He
refused me service!
I stopped by the Washington Post and asked to buy advertising
space to run a full page editorial criticizing the Washington Post's liberal biases. They refused me service!
I went by the Catholic Church and tried to get the priest to
perform a bar mitzvah. He refused me service!
I visited the Baptist
Church
I slipped on a yarmulke and tried to get into a Neo Nazi meeting. They refused me service!
Suddenly, it struck me! This Nation is filled with bigots! The
American University Women's Association, the National Association for the
Advancement of COLORED People, La Raza, the Ku Klux Klan, Girl Scouts USA, etc
etc etc.
And it's not just private clubs!
Businesses refuse to sell me the products I like.
Jewish delis and halal meat markets inconvenience me by not
carrying ham. Artists inconvenience me by claiming a right to control their
creativity. Editors oppress me by refusing to adopt my messages in their
papers.
Or. perhaps, this Nation is filled with people who have the natural right
to LIBERTY . A right
not granted by the State (sorry Chris Cuomo) but by God. And
encompassed within that right is a freedom to associate with others and to
associate with ideas.
How meaningless is the right to associate and to associate
yourself with ideas if the government can come along and compel you to
associate with those that you do not freely choose to join with, or to express
ideas that you have not freely adopted for yourself.
Do I think that Denny's or Kinko's should deny service to
whites or blacks, straights or gays, Catholics or Protestants? No.
If I go into Denny's and demand that they serve me a product
they don't carry, however, that's not discrimination. And, when it comes to
printing, if I go into Kinko's and demand that they make 100 copies of a
copyrighted work belonging to another, and they decline, that's not
discrimination. Denny's isn't in the business of serving Big Macs and Kinko's
is not in the business of copyright infringement.
Now, oftentimes, there is no particular exercise of natural
rights to liberty at stake when a person seeks to have the benefit of another's
entry into a business or offering of a service. And, for most businesses, a
foolish insistence on the right to refuse service is a foolish commitment to less foot traffic, lower volumes and, subsequently, reduced income,
So, some folks will prefer not to do business with me, or
you, or another. Given our distaste -- ensconced in law -- for monopoly, the
unwillingness of one to do business with another only means that the person
denied service will get their product or service from someone else, someone
that has no such strong sense -- whether founded in religion, morality,
politics, ideology, or just stupidity -- that it's better to lose a sale than to
compromise a view, an opinion, a belief or a conviction.
There is more than hubris in the current brouhaha over the
Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act. There is a terrible shortsighted
ignorance of how the ruination of the freedoms belonging to others ruins our
own freedoms too.
Sure, we'd love the day when Klansmen invite African
Americans into their homes for kindly discussions over dinner. We'd all love
the day when vitriolic demagogues in the Democratic Party and rascally radicals in the
Republican Party worked together for the common good. But who is fooling whom
when it is the jackboot on the neck that obtains the cooperation of all?
