I am going to offer three examples by way of considering the issue of whether or not a business owner should be permitted to refuse service to a customer on moral grounds.
Ill lead into the first example by recalling the business of my grandmother. From a reverend old house in Austin with four Ionic columns facing West 14th constructed in 1873 she directed a small but profitable operation. She and my grandfather lived on the original structures bottom floor; the rest she transformed into nine apartments rented to single occupants. She had a peculiar requirement of her tenants though not so peculiar back in the Fifties and Sixties: she demanded that they not bring home overnight guests. Naturally the intent of the stricture was not to ban a visiting parent or relative. Put simply tenants were not to import boyfriends or girlfriends onto the premises for night-long stays. Today any mass of idlers on their iPhones would vote down such moral bigotry" in a trice. Yet the restriction was indeed founded upon my grandmothers moral convictions and the times were initially not against her even in Austin Texas.
Since she paid the utility bills for her tenants as a practical-minded advocate might observe a long stream of casual lovers visiting one or more occupants could represent a not inconsiderable financial burden to herbut this was not the crux of the issue for my grandmother. Nevertheless our advocate might add that toward the end of her life when tenants increasingly began to dishonor this part of their verbal pledge abuse of the furnishings and defacing of the property also increased. Those like me who were spectators of this cultural drama are tempted to conclude that one kind of moral dissolution played into several others.
With that much in preface let me now offer my first hypothetical. Imagine a hotel (or an hotel" as people used to say) in Township X. The route from W to Z is a long one X being the only stop besides Y which is another 120 miles down the road. Yet the proprietor of Xs one hotel refuses to rent rooms to people of a certain race or ethnicity. All responsible adults would agree that this is intolerable. The situations trespass upon decency does not simply reside in the additional two-hour drive that a weary wayfarer might have to make to the hotels of Y. In fact its really irrelevant whether or not X has two dozen hotels and whether or not all except this one take every comer. The moral issue is absolute and non-negotiable. Extreme physical handicaps aside people must not be denied service for reasons having nothing to do with their chosen behavior.
So the distinction involved in this two-part example should be clear. My grandmothers objection to a certain kind of tenant was plainly and wholly a matter of moral conduct; the person who wished to reside in her house need only have abstained from certain behavior which she found objectionable. In contrast the helpless traveler who might find himself turned away from the hotel in X would be banned for reasons over which he had utterly no control. This is inhumane and blockheaded in a primitive tribal fashion unacceptable to free fair-minded people.
Example Two: Now consider a baker who is approached by a homosexual couple and requested to make a cake for their wedding. He politely declines offering in excuse his moral principles as taught by his religion. The cake itself he consents to bake yet he refuses to decorate it in the fashion required of him; as a compromise he offers to contact for his would-be clients another baker two blocks over. None of this satisfies the gay couple. Instead they sue him for everything hes worthand win effectively ruining his business.
Lets make the example more interesting: lets say that the baker specifies as a ground of his moral objection that encouraging the gay lifestyle may lead to one of the parties in such unions committing suicide. Let us say further that after this particular couple has been married for five years one of the pair indeed kills himself leaving behind a letter that explains as a motive his long-standing troubles about his sexuality. Now we have solid evidence that the bakers worries were only too well justified. Would he not have every right to counter-sue the survivor of the marriage seeking all the money that was originally taken from him as well as the projected profits of business never transacted and pain-and-suffering? He feared that one of these two might severely suffer if a fraternal stop sign were not thrown up in his path: it appears that this is precisely what happened. How could the baker possibly lose his case in court?
Nevertheless we all know that he wouldnt stand a chance. This inequity is well worth considering. It tells us much about the motives driving the forced acceptance in our society of non-biblical or conventionally aberrant lifestyles over the past three or four decades.
Final Example: Say that a pitching coach is approached by a father who demands that his son be taught how to throw a curveball. This is not an extravagant request. The boys is twelve and many of his age are already throwing the pitch; yet our coach is convinced that giving the father what he wants might imperil the healthy development of the childs arm so he refuses. The father sues the coach. Evidence is sketchy. The coachs decision must be said to be based upon a subjective value judgment rather than clinical research or even practical experience. Furthermore plenty of other coaches would willingly teach the boy just as directed. For that reason alone the fathers suit would surely be thrown out of court: the fine points of the coachs claim would never come under scrutiny. We could accept them as a professionals judgment of a vague health risk or we could conclude that the coach was irrationally but sincerely apprehensive about straining the boys arm. Either way however the abundance of other options for the client would render a punitive judgment against the professional unnecessary and even absurd.
What distinguishes these circumstances from those of Case One where the traveler in search of lodging might have sought a room in several of Xs other hotels? Our coachs ground of objection has dubious moral value but is not overtly immoral; that is to say we can recognize a predisposition to honor a moral objection even if we find it silly. The defendants concern clearly focuses on harm being done to an innocent party. When my grandmother refused to rent to people whose lifestyle was not abstinent she too would readily have explained (if asked) that the sexual revolution was causing great damage to innocent victims many of whom were not even aware of themselves as such.
Yet here we stray into a gray area. I am by no means confident that as of the year 2000and certainly not by 2015a plaintiff might not have won a case against my grandmother even though Austin abounds in single-occupant apartments. The difference between her case and that of the reluctant coach would obviously be that the latter had not fallen afoul of political correctness whereas the former might very likely be judged deserving of punishment for clinging to antediluvian values.
Conclusions: First of all the convenient presence or inconvenient absence of a comparable server in these cases should never be considered. I think the matter surfaces so often because weve grown uncomfortable with making moral determinations; but if a potential client is refused service based on factors that are morally invalid (and have no practical merit as might certain physical limitations) then he shouldnt be subjected to the trouble and humiliation of traveling even next door for proper attention.
Second a genuine moral objection should target a specific act not vaguely associate the client with a constellation of remote acts. My grandmother wouldnt have refused to rent to a pretty young woman on the supposition that the girl would be more pursued by men and hence more likely to break house rules. Our hotel in X shouldnt refuse Muslim lodgers because of 9/11. The baker shouldnt decline to produce a generic cake because the customer looks gay" and might top off the confection later by posing two male figures at an altar. The pitching coach shouldnt refuse lessons to a certain boy with the claim Black kids get into sports and then neglect their studies." A moral objection responds to specific behavior and not to a careless ascription of behavioral patterns to broad groups.
Finallyand whats obviously the central point of this pieceour system has been tending to adjudicate these cases not with respect to how well they meet genuine moral criteria with respect to how well they conform to politically correct doctrine. No one cares about our somewhat over-punctilious pitching coach: he can go free because his objections have no political value whatever. In many locales however the system brings all of its force to requiring that bakersand tee-shirt designers and candlestick-makersaccommodate the overt promotion of the gay lifestyle. Resistance to that lifestyle is assumed definitively immoral from the outset. Or in my grandmothers case if a promiscuous tenant decided to haul her into court in 2019 does any of us doubt that she would be forced to rent the room and also pay damages for emotional distress"? Our courts havent so much thrown out biblical principles as they have decided to enforce an airy Good Book" existing only in the heads of activist judges. Do you suppose at least that the supercilious hotelier of X may still not turn away a traveler whose hair-color he doesnt like? Im not so sure. A Best Western hotel in a German city turned away attendees at an Alternatif fur Deutschland (AfD) conference last year. The new-and-improved Klan is likely coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
I offer this final thought not as a conclusion but as an honest query. Are we seeing this Procrustean surge of PC enforcement from the bench because we as a decaying society have decided to be done once and for all with guilt? Ive observed in my lifetime two favorite ways that people tormented by the inward conviction of their behaviors wrongness will handle their tortureI mean besides repenting and changing their ways. One strategy is to repeat the behavior in hopes that the accompanying sense of trespass gets old and falls away. The other often used in tandem with the first is to browbeat bystanders into silence or even into praise of the culpable behavior.
Isnt that whats happening right now? Youre not going to get off with saying nothing against what Ive doneno! Youre going to bow to me and then youre going to rear back and applaud and cry Oh how brave! How noble! How we admire you! Do it... or die!" This is the utterance of a damned soul teetering on the edge of Hell. When the legal system glowers at us over that souls shoulder exacting obedience with its clenched fist were apt to think that our lives have reached a very dark place; but Hell is much darker and choruses of forced praise will not suffice to make it disappear.
I am going to offer three examples by way of considering the issue of whether or not a business owner should be permitted to refuse service to a customer on moral grounds.
Ill lead into the first example by recalling the business of my grandmother. From a reverend old house in Austin with four Ionic columns facing West 14th constructed in 1873 she directed a small but profitable operation. She and my grandfather lived on the original structures bottom floor; the rest she transformed into nine apartments rented to single occupants. She had a peculiar requirement of her tenants though not so peculiar back in the Fifties and Sixties: she demanded that they not bring home overnight guests. Naturally the intent of the stricture was not to ban a visiting parent or relative. Put simply tenants were not to import boyfriends or girlfriends onto the premises for night-long stays. Today any mass of idlers on their iPhones would vote down such moral bigotry" in a trice. Yet the restriction was indeed founded upon my grandmothers moral convictions and the times were initially not against her even in Austin Texas.
Since she paid the utility bills for her tenants as a practical-minded advocate might observe a long stream of casual lovers visiting one or more occupants could represent a not inconsiderable financial burden to herbut this was not the crux of the issue for my grandmother. Nevertheless our advocate might add that toward the end of her life when tenants increasingly began to dishonor this part of their verbal pledge abuse of the furnishings and defacing of the property also increased. Those like me who were spectators of this cultural drama are tempted to conclude that one kind of moral dissolution played into several others.
With that much in preface let me now offer my first hypothetical. Imagine a hotel (or an hotel" as people used to say) in Township X. The route from W to Z is a long one X being the only stop besides Y which is another 120 miles down the road. Yet the proprietor of Xs one hotel refuses to rent rooms to people of a certain race or ethnicity. All responsible adults would agree that this is intolerable. The situations trespass upon decency does not simply reside in the additional two-hour drive that a weary wayfarer might have to make to the hotels of Y. In fact its really irrelevant whether or not X has two dozen hotels and whether or not all except this one take every comer. The moral issue is absolute and non-negotiable. Extreme physical handicaps aside people must not be denied service for reasons having nothing to do with their chosen behavior.
So the distinction involved in this two-part example should be clear. My grandmothers objection to a certain kind of tenant was plainly and wholly a matter of moral conduct; the person who wished to reside in her house need only have abstained from certain behavior which she found objectionable. In contrast the helpless traveler who might find himself turned away from the hotel in X would be banned for reasons over which he had utterly no control. This is inhumane and blockheaded in a primitive tribal fashion unacceptable to free fair-minded people.
Example Two: Now consider a baker who is approached by a homosexual couple and requested to make a cake for their wedding. He politely declines offering in excuse his moral principles as taught by his religion. The cake itself he consents to bake yet he refuses to decorate it in the fashion required of him; as a compromise he offers to contact for his would-be clients another baker two blocks over. None of this satisfies the gay couple. Instead they sue him for everything hes worthand win effectively ruining his business.
Lets make the example more interesting: lets say that the baker specifies as a ground of his moral objection that encouraging the gay lifestyle may lead to one of the parties in such unions committing suicide. Let us say further that after this particular couple has been married for five years one of the pair indeed kills himself leaving behind a letter that explains as a motive his long-standing troubles about his sexuality. Now we have solid evidence that the bakers worries were only too well justified. Would he not have every right to counter-sue the survivor of the marriage seeking all the money that was originally taken from him as well as the projected profits of business never transacted and pain-and-suffering? He feared that one of these two might severely suffer if a fraternal stop sign were not thrown up in his path: it appears that this is precisely what happened. How could the baker possibly lose his case in court?
Nevertheless we all know that he wouldnt stand a chance. This inequity is well worth considering. It tells us much about the motives driving the forced acceptance in our society of non-biblical or conventionally aberrant lifestyles over the past three or four decades.
Final Example: Say that a pitching coach is approached by a father who demands that his son be taught how to throw a curveball. This is not an extravagant request. The boys is twelve and many of his age are already throwing the pitch; yet our coach is convinced that giving the father what he wants might imperil the healthy development of the childs arm so he refuses. The father sues the coach. Evidence is sketchy. The coachs decision must be said to be based upon a subjective value judgment rather than clinical research or even practical experience. Furthermore plenty of other coaches would willingly teach the boy just as directed. For that reason alone the fathers suit would surely be thrown out of court: the fine points of the coachs claim would never come under scrutiny. We could accept them as a professionals judgment of a vague health risk or we could conclude that the coach was irrationally but sincerely apprehensive about straining the boys arm. Either way however the abundance of other options for the client would render a punitive judgment against the professional unnecessary and even absurd.
What distinguishes these circumstances from those of Case One where the traveler in search of lodging might have sought a room in several of Xs other hotels? Our coachs ground of objection has dubious moral value but is not overtly immoral; that is to say we can recognize a predisposition to honor a moral objection even if we find it silly. The defendants concern clearly focuses on harm being done to an innocent party. When my grandmother refused to rent to people whose lifestyle was not abstinent she too would readily have explained (if asked) that the sexual revolution was causing great damage to innocent victims many of whom were not even aware of themselves as such.
Yet here we stray into a gray area. I am by no means confident that as of the year 2000and certainly not by 2015a plaintiff might not have won a case against my grandmother even though Austin abounds in single-occupant apartments. The difference between her case and that of the reluctant coach would obviously be that the latter had not fallen afoul of political correctness whereas the former might very likely be judged deserving of punishment for clinging to antediluvian values.
Conclusions: First of all the convenient presence or inconvenient absence of a comparable server in these cases should never be considered. I think the matter surfaces so often because weve grown uncomfortable with making moral determinations; but if a potential client is refused service based on factors that are morally invalid (and have no practical merit as might certain physical limitations) then he shouldnt be subjected to the trouble and humiliation of traveling even next door for proper attention.
Second a genuine moral objection should target a specific act not vaguely associate the client with a constellation of remote acts. My grandmother wouldnt have refused to rent to a pretty young woman on the supposition that the girl would be more pursued by men and hence more likely to break house rules. Our hotel in X shouldnt refuse Muslim lodgers because of 9/11. The baker shouldnt decline to produce a generic cake because the customer looks gay" and might top off the confection later by posing two male figures at an altar. The pitching coach shouldnt refuse lessons to a certain boy with the claim Black kids get into sports and then neglect their studies." A moral objection responds to specific behavior and not to a careless ascription of behavioral patterns to broad groups.
Finallyand whats obviously the central point of this pieceour system has been tending to adjudicate these cases not with respect to how well they meet genuine moral criteria with respect to how well they conform to politically correct doctrine. No one cares about our somewhat over-punctilious pitching coach: he can go free because his objections have no political value whatever. In many locales however the system brings all of its force to requiring that bakersand tee-shirt designers and candlestick-makersaccommodate the overt promotion of the gay lifestyle. Resistance to that lifestyle is assumed definitively immoral from the outset. Or in my grandmothers case if a promiscuous tenant decided to haul her into court in 2019 does any of us doubt that she would be forced to rent the room and also pay damages for emotional distress"? Our courts havent so much thrown out biblical principles as they have decided to enforce an airy Good Book" existing only in the heads of activist judges. Do you suppose at least that the supercilious hotelier of X may still not turn away a traveler whose hair-color he doesnt like? Im not so sure. A Best Western hotel in a German city turned away attendees at an Alternatif fur Deutschland (AfD) conference last year. The new-and-improved Klan is likely coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
I offer this final thought not as a conclusion but as an honest query. Are we seeing this Procrustean surge of PC enforcement from the bench because we as a decaying society have decided to be done once and for all with guilt? Ive observed in my lifetime two favorite ways that people tormented by the inward conviction of their behaviors wrongness will handle their tortureI mean besides repenting and changing their ways. One strategy is to repeat the behavior in hopes that the accompanying sense of trespass gets old and falls away. The other often used in tandem with the first is to browbeat bystanders into silence or even into praise of the culpable behavior.
Isnt that whats happening right now? Youre not going to get off with saying nothing against what Ive doneno! Youre going to bow to me and then youre going to rear back and applaud and cry Oh how brave! How noble! How we admire you! Do it... or die!" This is the utterance of a damned soul teetering on the edge of Hell. When the legal system glowers at us over that souls shoulder exacting obedience with its clenched fist were apt to think that our lives have reached a very dark place; but Hell is much darker and choruses of forced praise will not suffice to make it disappear.