This past week, Arizona lawmakers passed a bill that would allow business owners to refuse service to gays if the owner does so on religious grounds. Critics of the bill argue that it will allow businesses to legally discriminate against gays and will open the door to legalizing other forms of discrimination.
As is so often the case, debate over the bill is filled with hypocrisy on both sides of the issue.
To begin, we must define discrimination. FreeDictionary.com offers the following definitions:
the practice of unfairly treating a person or group of people differently from other people or groups of people; the ability to recognize the difference between things that are of good quality and those that are not; the ability to understand that one thing is different from another thing
The first definition, which includes a moral evaluation, is what most people mean by discrimination today. According to this definition, discrimination is inherently unjust. Government, the argument goes, should promote justice, and therefore discrimination should be prohibited. On the surface, this is plausible.
However, everyone discriminates. Everyone makes choices regarding the products and services we buy, the businesses we patronize, the friends we keep. We make these choices based on our personal values, and our choices may or may not be fair. Our criteria may be rational or they may be superficial.
For example, we might refuse to patronize a particular business because of the background music played in the store. Background music has nothing to do with the quality of the product or service the business offers. Yet, if an individual uses that as his criteria—a criteria that is unfair—he should be free to act on his judgment.
Similarly, if an individual refuses to patronize a business because the owner is gay, his criteria is superficial. An individual’s sexual preference is irrelevant to the quality of the products or services offered. But again, individuals should be free to act according to their own choices, even when those choices are unfair.
But according to the anti-discrimination crowd, we should be prohibited from using superficial or irrelevant criteria. We should not be allowed to make choices that are unfair.
Further, anti-discrimination legislation is aimed only at one side of the equation. Businesses are prohibited from discriminating but consumers are not. Businesses are not free to choose with whom they will associate but consumers are.
If the proponents of anti-discrimination wish to be consistent (and they don’t), then they must prohibit all forms of unfair discrimination. Of course, this would be absurd and impossible. More importantly, it would be immoral and an improper function of government.
The proper purpose of government is the protection of individual rights—the freedom of each individual to act on his own judgment, so long as he respects the mutual rights of others. Individuals should be free to act as they choose, so long as they refrain from using force or fraud against others. And this is true even when their choices are irrational and based on unfair criteria.
If a business owner chooses to refuse service (or employment) to gays, blacks, women, or people with purple hair, he has a moral right to do so. His criteria may be irrational, irrelevant, and unfair. But government cannot and should not attempt to force individuals to use rational, relevant, and fair criteria in the decision making process.
The Arizona bill recognizes the moral right of individuals to use irrational, irrelevant, and unfair criteria, but only if those criteria are founded on religious grounds. In other words, the bill says, “You have a right to be stupid, but only if you justify your stupidity on the basis of religion.” The bill discriminates against those who wish to be stupid for reasons that have nothing to do with religion. This is unfair to those who have secular reasons for their irrationality.