Al, if you were on this site looking for a roommate and the question had three possible answers “straight, gay or refuse to answer” and you were very concerned that “refuse to answer” meant you might end up with a gay roommate, couldn’t you just look at the people who asnwered the question “straight?”
Yes you do Freedom and the website deserves the freedom to not do business with someone who makes it difficult to provide its service, in this case information to those seeking a roommate. Bringing it back to insurance, a company can refuse to write a risk who refuses to disclose the information necessary to properly underwrite that risk.
Sure, on someone else’s web site. But the owners of this site have a right to run their business as they see fit. Go start your own web site.
Liberals do not want freedom. They want to punish people who do not agree with them, even if that disagreement harms them not a whit. You would rather force these business owners to conform their business to your values even though you have taken no risk, you are not working fourteen hour days for this business, you do not have a second mortgage on your house to fund capital improvements – they do – that’s just tough.
So some perverts sued this business to make a point, and the 9th Circuit is the willing tool in this monstrous little game. That’s great. That’s what America is all about.
I agree, Al. My understanding, though, was that the website can still ask the question, they just can’t require an answer to the question in order to use the website.
On the one hand, knowing that someone has refused to answer the question sort of answers the question. However, the fact that a circuit court deems it their responsibility to intervene in such a trivial, private matter is disgusting.
While I agree there was a point in time when these laws were necessary due to a huge disparity in control of resources, I’m not convinced we need them now. I do believe that for the most part they’ve gone the way of the union – hanging around because we’re used to them but ultimately getting in the way.
Yes, we all have the right to discriminate, albiet with certain limitations since 1965. If you’re in the ins industry, you probably get paid well to discriminate. We also all individually, and in some circumstances en masse, have the right to freedom of association.
There are however, a few areas in the practice of those in alienable rights that Congress and the courts have identified as so egregious and pernicious that they need to be further defined. This was Title VII of the Civil Rights Code. Those are the limited and defined protected classes, including race, religion and now sexual orientation. Right or wrong, that’s the law. The courts don’t make the law, they just attempt to interpret what Congress meant when they scratched them out.
The courts have consistently ruled that the Web is public domiane. Not quite public airways, more like a public utility.
If you’re gay and looking for a gay roomie, ask the respondent to the add in person. It’s that simple. That’s exercising your individual right to free association. Or in your add looking for a straight roomie, state that you are straight and want a straight roomie.
Your personal freedoms have not been touched. What has been protected is one of the few legislatively protected classes’ right not to state but to still access a public utility. That is indeed, and increase in the freedoms and rights of all, not just for the segment of the population with which you most identify.
It’s not that the court got it wrong in this case, it’s that the law is not necessarily useful in this day and age. People will always either integrate or segregate themselves based on their own preference. What I have a problem with is non-public entities being forced to do things they don’t want to do based on an outmoded concept of “fairness”. I can support non-discrimination for public entities – those owned and/or operated by the public or those publically traded on the stock market or other exchange, since they too can be seen as being owned by the public. But a private person, with their own business, should be allowed to do what they will with that business. Economics will either reward or punish their decisions.
I’m greedy, so if I owned a business I’d transact with anyone that could pay me and treated me well. But if I only wanted to transact business with left-handed, blond-haired people from Spain I should have that right. I should be able to turn away anybody for any reason. That includes employment relations. Yes there would be some upheaval, but resources are now distributed in such a way that economics alone would force most people to continue as they have been for the past 40 years. Those that didn’t want to would suffer whatever consequences – good or bad. And don’t assume it would be SWASPs that would benefit since there are billions of dollars being controlled by “minorities”. Everyone would have a chance to run their business the way they want to.
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Al, if you were on this site looking for a roommate and the question had three possible answers “straight, gay or refuse to answer” and you were very concerned that “refuse to answer” meant you might end up with a gay roommate, couldn’t you just look at the people who asnwered the question “straight?”
Of course. That’s the point: freedom is better than having judges micromanaging things.
Al, don’t I deserve the freedom NOT to have to reveal my sexual orientation if I don’t want to?
Yes you do Freedom and the website deserves the freedom to not do business with someone who makes it difficult to provide its service, in this case information to those seeking a roommate. Bringing it back to insurance, a company can refuse to write a risk who refuses to disclose the information necessary to properly underwrite that risk.
Sure, on someone else’s web site. But the owners of this site have a right to run their business as they see fit. Go start your own web site.
Liberals do not want freedom. They want to punish people who do not agree with them, even if that disagreement harms them not a whit. You would rather force these business owners to conform their business to your values even though you have taken no risk, you are not working fourteen hour days for this business, you do not have a second mortgage on your house to fund capital improvements – they do – that’s just tough.
So some perverts sued this business to make a point, and the 9th Circuit is the willing tool in this monstrous little game. That’s great. That’s what America is all about.
I agree, Al. My understanding, though, was that the website can still ask the question, they just can’t require an answer to the question in order to use the website.
On the one hand, knowing that someone has refused to answer the question sort of answers the question. However, the fact that a circuit court deems it their responsibility to intervene in such a trivial, private matter is disgusting.
While I agree there was a point in time when these laws were necessary due to a huge disparity in control of resources, I’m not convinced we need them now. I do believe that for the most part they’ve gone the way of the union – hanging around because we’re used to them but ultimately getting in the way.
Yes, we all have the right to discriminate, albiet with certain limitations since 1965. If you’re in the ins industry, you probably get paid well to discriminate. We also all individually, and in some circumstances en masse, have the right to freedom of association.
There are however, a few areas in the practice of those in alienable rights that Congress and the courts have identified as so egregious and pernicious that they need to be further defined. This was Title VII of the Civil Rights Code. Those are the limited and defined protected classes, including race, religion and now sexual orientation. Right or wrong, that’s the law. The courts don’t make the law, they just attempt to interpret what Congress meant when they scratched them out.
The courts have consistently ruled that the Web is public domiane. Not quite public airways, more like a public utility.
If you’re gay and looking for a gay roomie, ask the respondent to the add in person. It’s that simple. That’s exercising your individual right to free association. Or in your add looking for a straight roomie, state that you are straight and want a straight roomie.
Your personal freedoms have not been touched. What has been protected is one of the few legislatively protected classes’ right not to state but to still access a public utility. That is indeed, and increase in the freedoms and rights of all, not just for the segment of the population with which you most identify.
It’s not that the court got it wrong in this case, it’s that the law is not necessarily useful in this day and age. People will always either integrate or segregate themselves based on their own preference. What I have a problem with is non-public entities being forced to do things they don’t want to do based on an outmoded concept of “fairness”. I can support non-discrimination for public entities – those owned and/or operated by the public or those publically traded on the stock market or other exchange, since they too can be seen as being owned by the public. But a private person, with their own business, should be allowed to do what they will with that business. Economics will either reward or punish their decisions.
I’m greedy, so if I owned a business I’d transact with anyone that could pay me and treated me well. But if I only wanted to transact business with left-handed, blond-haired people from Spain I should have that right. I should be able to turn away anybody for any reason. That includes employment relations. Yes there would be some upheaval, but resources are now distributed in such a way that economics alone would force most people to continue as they have been for the past 40 years. Those that didn’t want to would suffer whatever consequences – good or bad. And don’t assume it would be SWASPs that would benefit since there are billions of dollars being controlled by “minorities”. Everyone would have a chance to run their business the way they want to.
Just my opinion.