Dear visionaries,
Now that some progressives have been revealed as malice and/or ignorance mongers with regard to Christian businesses, I want to add two cents on the individual rights front — because this is where a far more important issue is. This also relates to our other discussion on hate crimes — which is increasingly relevant because local psychics have informed us we have had a homophobic murder committed right here in Moscow. Perhaps the local psychics were also the source of the rumor about that Christian business.
In a free society, we have the right of free association. When I see that common restaurant sign — “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone” — it reminds me that we are supposed to be such a free society. I would appreciate this meaning of the sign even if it were the basis for asking me to leave an infidel establishment because I was a Christian. If the infidel owns the joint, or is paying the rent, he has the full right to limit my access to the service he is providing. In such a free society, were it to exist, people would have the right to be jerks, moral, high-tone, and so on, provided it was on their own dime. Owners of restaurants, being numbered among the people, also have the right to be jerks, moral, toney, and so forth. This means that they should have the legal right to refuse service to little old ladies, Nazi war criminals, and people without shirts or shoes, respectively and possibly in that order.
In the topless debate, one theme in the general hue and cry against the ordinance has been the fact that topless women on their own property might be arrested for violating the law. But what are we to do about topless women wandering in off the public property of Main Street into privately owned establishments? Establishments that are the private property of others? Regardless of whether Moscow has a topless ordinance or not, a proprietor of an establishment has the fundamental right to ask such a person to leave. If I were that proprietor, I certainly would. But if I asked someone to leave the establishment for coming on to my property in order to insult my values, this would be widely regarded by progressives (where were we progressing to again?) as a violation of that customer’s civil rights.
All this is relevant to hate crimes as they are currently debated. I agree that certain forms of malice make a crime more egregious, and consequently do not have a problem with the law distinguishing between various forms of murder. Sometimes there are mitigating circumstances and sometimes there are aggravating circumstances. My problem is that progressives (onward, through the fog!) are on a hair trigger when it comes to identifying what they are pleased to call hate. In their lexicon, hatred ranges from mild disagreement up through genocide, and their “diversity or else” approach often reacts to mild disagreement as though it were genocide.
So if I owned a restaurant and a homosexual couple came in, I would not ask them if they were homosexual. But if they began behaving in such a way as to demand my explicit or implicit approval of their lifestyle, which my silence would provide them, would I ask them to leave? You bet I would. And progressives have so trashed the word hate that my attempt to maintain a decent establishment would no doubt be called a form of hatred. But I would do the same with heterosexual women with their tops off, heterosexual men with their trousers off, and various members of Congress.
Cordially,
Douglas Wilson
“How’s that again?” Joseph Stalin
“Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing these posts (lightly) with intelligibility in mind.