And it is not like they haven’t been warned …
In the 40-some-odd years since the Libertarian Party took such positions, we’ve seen the end of sodomy laws, the end of officially sanctioned government discrimination against gay employees, both civilian and military—and with Obergefell v. Hodges, the end of government bans on same-sex marriage recognition. We’ve seen the end of just about every government policy that treats gay and lesbian citizenry as somehow less than the heterosexual citizenry.
So: Is that it, then? Have supporters won, after all this time? Should we move on to other issues of liberty?
Some gay activists are warning that no, there is still work to be done. There are other issues of concern that affect the gay, lesbian, and transgender community. Top gay activist Michelangelo Signorile, predicting the gay marriage ruling and the subsequent celebrating, wrote a book-sized warning, titled It’s Not Over: Getting Beyond Tolerance, Defeating Homophobia, and Winning True Equality. Even before the ruling, “What comes next?” analyses started popping up in the media.
But just because libertarians and gay citizens were aligned in the pursuit of ending government mistreatment, that doesn’t mean other goals line up. Libertarians draw that bright, hard line between government behavior and private behavior. Others often do not, and what many gay activists see as justice and equality in the private sector, libertarians see as inappropriate government coercion. […]
Religious Freedom Exemptions. Even more than anti-discrimination employment laws, there is a significant philosophical divide between libertarians and many gay activists, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and state-level civil rights commissions over the responses to religious business owners not wanting to provide their goods and services for gay weddings. We’re now seeing additional suggestions that religious colleges could be punished for not accommodating gay couples, and even an early suggestion that churches should not have non-profit status any longer.
The freedom to choose with whom to associate is a fundamental human and Constitutionally protected right. The ability to engage freely in commerce another one. Anybody with any doubts about the importance of free commerce to human liberty is encouraged to ask a nearby Venezuelan about the alternatives. As such, libertarians have consistently been supporting the rights of religious businesses and individuals to say “No thanks” to potential customers. […]
A wedding cake is not a right. A wedding photographer is not a right. Everybody has the right to engage in commerce. We have the right to buy and sell our services and goods, but it must be voluntary on both ends of the exchange. Nobody has the right to force the baker, the photographer, or anybody else to work for them in a free country. The exchange of money doesn’t make it acceptable.
When defending accommodation laws used to force religious people’s hands, the response tends to be something along the lines of “A business is not a church. If religious folks want to run a business, they can’t use their beliefs to ignore the law. Those who choose to run a business have to follow all the government regulations.”
This argument flips the idea of civil liberties completely on its head and attributes the source of our rights to the government, a contradiction of the spirit of our own Constitution. If somebody said “If people choose to speak out they have to follow all the government regulations,” most people would immediately wonder: “What sort of regulations are we talking about? We have freedom of speech. The government can’t just pass any regulations they want to control what people say.”
The same should hold true for people’s right to engage in commerce. Any law or regulation that inhibits the right of individuals to choose with whom to associate needs to immediately be treated as suspect. In order to justify restrictions or mandates on this freedom, the government should be required to prove that a significant amount of harm is the result of inaction.
You would think a place that uses reason as an identifier would be just a little less naive about their partners’ motives.
The Left is never satisfied with whatever skirmish they just won because the details of that skirmish were never a goal or anything really of importance.
They want power. Total and complete power over everyone’s life down the last book one reads or thoughts one will be allowed to think.
Whatever goals of a “freer” society Libertarians thought they were working towards when they partnered with the Left-subsidiary “Gay Rights” group, Libertarians were the useful idiots who helped make the rope that will hang them, too.
How does it feel, Reason, to wake up sore and find the bed next to you empty with a $20 bill on the nightstand?
Props for saying “a cake is not a right,” and identifying the aggrieved as petty little persecutors.
Also for saying “Let Catholic Charities set their own standards; the more agencies the better.”
But yeah, when push comes to shove, the libertarians will have to choose between being “on the right side of history” and “the right side of liberty.”
The former being a Marxist concept in the first place, ya freak. History doesn’t take sides. It just repeats.
I judge politicians by what they want to require people to do, and what they want to forbid them to do.
I like libertarians for seeking to minimize both of these categories.
Unfortunately, the power seekers of today are trying to put everything I do into one of those two boxes.
‘You fucked up… you trusted us! Hey, make the best of it!’, said the more determined Ideologue to the other Ideologue.
ROTFLMAO.
The right to engage in commerce with those you choose to trade with has long since been violated by the Fed and the states.
You are forced to do business with whomever the government says you have to do business with, or do no business at all.
I hope Nick Gillespie and the whole crew over at Reason choke on their system of ideas, their non-Natural reordering of Reality.
Ideology and weakness on the part of non-Ideologues has murdered this country.
That was supposed to be ‘The Republic’ instead of ‘this country’.
Bad Post Comment button, bad, bad!
The hell you say that cake isn’t a right. Either we all get cake, or nobody gets cake!
That’s what equality means now that the radical egalitarians are in charge.
That’s right. You’re free to choose to do business or to choose to do no business at all. None of this cake for some and not for others. Every kindergartener knows that.
Why do you all hate equality so much? Is it because you’re the descendents of hick slave holders who enjoyed stringing up black men and stabbing gays with steely knives?
In my case it’s because I expect to be one of the handicapped– erm, excuse me, I meant similarly enabled, instead of one of the handicapper –damn, did it again– tink, tink, tink –similarity enablers.
Greetings:
This has really got me thinking. If one of those head-wrapped Muslimas ever gets hired here, well, I’m just going to start dragging my nine-foot cross replica to work every day. You know, like Mattress Rape-Hoax Girl.
That’s some funny shit right there. You can’t do that! This is the Market!
libertarian = a little bit nuts and proud
Libertarian = useful idiots turned to salesmen of their own shackles
If they offer you three of us, then you have three of us.
If they offer you two of us, then you have two of us.
But if they offer you only one of us then you won’t have any of us at all.
What are we ?
I find it amusing (not really, but isn’t that how these things start?) that the ACLU is refusing to stand up for (yet another) Constitutionally-protected right, in favor of one of those “penumbra” thingammies…
Good thing that we have such stalwart folk protecting those civil liberties, innit?
Wherein the good folks at Reason discover that “it’s never, ever just the tip” has applications beyond the bedroom.
I give up. What are youse?
A couple? As in, if you only have one of a couple then you no longer have a couple…
We are choices.
So you are. Clever. I kind of think you should have thrown in something about having 3, 2, but only getting to pick one, but that would have given the game away at one choice, wouldn’t it?
Here’s the worst part: it was a Riddler riddle from the Batman video game I’m playing this week.
Seemed kind of appropriate in the face of all this hardline victimocracy though.
Even better! The Schreiber’s don’t do video games, but we watch a sh*t ton of the Warner Bros. DC animated shows. Last week is Batman: the Brave and the Bold and Beware the Batman!. This week it’s Son of Batman and Batman: Under the Red Hood (for like the umpieth time).
“Why do you all hate equality so much?”
Best said in front of a mass grave while clutching a little red book and sipping a chilled glass of Khmer Rouge. Ghosts don’t hit very hard.