Whenever you see a law on the books, one of your first suspicions should be is that law is on the books because not everyone would behave according to the specifications of the law and so if a restaurants or theatres or trolly carts would not let black enter under the same condition of whites why in the world would you need segregation laws.Evidently some whites would have and so the system would tended to collapsed. Speaking of discrimination I believe people have the right to discriminate on any basis they want, that is you can discriminate on race or sex or criminal background or what ever but you don't have the right to use government to force other people to concure with your discrimination.-Walter E. Williams (destroying the false meme it was a market failure)
I've often expressed a similar view. Williams isn't wrong.
But there is more to this I think.
Elimination of segregation laws didn't lead to the end of private contracts that prevented selling homes in certain neighborhoods to blacks. Where a man can raise his children has a real effect on those children's chances at financial and other success. There is a huge difference between growing up where everyone plans to go to college or otherwise obtain marketable skills, vs growing up where graduating HS is beyond most people's ambition. We also consider physical safety of one area to another.
In small towns, any single grocer or other service provider could risk losing 75% or more of his business if he provided service without discrimination.
I don't think such discrimination would be common today.
But the homosexuals have made a compelling argument that to permit it against them, however infrequently (especially while others enjoy legal protections against discrimination) is to send a subtle but unmistakable social message that homosexuals are 2nd class citizens, that it is ok to mistreat them. That this creates a situation in which criminal violence is more likely to occur.
I've frequently said that were we in Libertopia, I'd not suggest gun owners get the first anti-discrimination law. But in the current reality, what message do we allow society to continue sending about carrying guns if gun owners remain the last, only identifiable minority group against whom discrimination is legally permitted. Does this not reinforce the social belief that guns are scary and dangerous? That cops must take some action--at least investigate--if a concerned citizen calls in a MWAG?
What is the likely 911 response to a call about two men I a park holding hands or showing other mild, but clearly intimate affections? What about a call about an inter-racial couple doing likewise?
What might the response have been 50 years ago to those calls?
The repeal of laws criminalizing integration and homosexual conduct are inextricably linked with social views on those activities. And social views on those activities are greatly influenced by laws.
Are gun owners 2nd class citizens? Or do we deserve the same protections as every other protected group?
Do we get to that equality most readily by trying to attack the protections others get? Or by making the case that we deserve the same protections?
If someday society wakes up and says, "Enough with telling businesses how to run their affairs, repeal all the anti-discrimination laws. We are past that and don't need it," I don't believe I'll object.
But apparently we are not there yet, and I believe gun carriers should not be singled out as the last social pariah undeserving of receiving goods, services, and employment on equal terms with every other protected group.
Charles
