The great state of Washington passed a law adding "sexual orientation" to the list of groups provided anti-discrimination protection It’s a sad state of affairs when these measures, of any form, are needed to ensure that people are civil to other people; however there are clear needs for such measures.
There’s this polictician who thought it would be a grand idea to sponsor a referendum to put to ballot a measure that specifically excludes these protections for gay and lesbians citizens. Sad to say more than 100,000 of my fellow Washingtonians signed the measure, but calm rationale heads prevailed:
There is no need for laws like these.
“When examined from a philosophical standpoint, such laws are nothing more than the legal right to trespass. A qualified individual may demand service against the will of the owner. He may demand to be hired, or not to be fired, against the will of the owner. He may demand a higher salary or a promotion, against the will of the owner.
If the free market embodies the idea of contract, civil rights embodies what Barry Smith has called the spromise. A spromise commits a third party to act against his will. As the owner of the business, you may wish to stop paying an employee and terminate his employment. Civil rights say you may not, without the permission of the government.
…
Just recently, 99 white male troopers in Maryland collected $3,500 each in back pay on grounds that they had been discriminated against in promotions. I don’t doubt that they were, but I’m suggesting a more peaceful solution. Let’s return all decisions about hiring, firing, promotion, and access to the market. That means getting the government and the courts out of the business of enforcing equality once and for all.
But that solution is nowhere in sight. The courts enforce an egalitarianism that tolerates no acknowledgement of differences among people. This denies the obvious. People do differ radically in their talents and weaknesses, their determinations to succeed, their mental facilities, their attitudes and character, their physical abilities, their environments, and their physical makeup. Moreover, these differences appear not only in individuals but also appear systematically among groups.
Men as a group, for example, are different from women as a group. Northerners are different from Southerners. Californians are different from Texans. Catholics are different from Baptists. Blacks are different from whites. Immigrants are different from natives. The rich are different from the poor. These differences should not be denied, but celebrated, for they are the very source of the division of labor.
Yet our central government attempts to stamp out all these difference[s] by forcing individuals and businesses to act as if they did not exist. The primary means has been the criminalization of our most serious secular sin: discrimination. There can be no actions in American life – save the decision of whom to marry – that discriminates on the grounds of any number of criteria as defined by the government. If anyone commits this sin, he can forget the confessional or forgiveness. The heavy penance is cash handed over to the government and the special interests, with half going to the lawyers who arranged the transfer.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/economics-discrimination.html
8IxI2a http://fgb7s3Ffjsev7yrbvqqcf7.com