In Public, Your Feelings Are Worth Squat
What does it mean to be in the public sphere?
Your personal space ends where my nose begins. No one is marching into homes initiating conversations about things citizens don’t like. Outside the realm of your property, your level of “butthurt” (these kids) over other people’s choices matters not. Things are changing due to social media and everyone’s feelings are so very important now. When in public people are going to have to put their big boy pants (gendered I know) on and realize they don’t have a say in how others live their lives. Level of comfort, nor disapproval by religious texts are valid legal reasons to impose will on people.
Business
No one forces anyone to open up a business. When you choose where you want to enter into the stream of commerce, you accept the terms and conditions of the area in which you incorporate. When you apply for a business license, the conditions of your license state that you have to abide by the laws of the state in which you incorporate. That is a contract. Forcing businesses to abide by contracts they freely enter into is how business law has generally worked for a millennia. States with democratically passed laws require businesses to abide by those laws per the conditions of being granted their business license. If there’s no law against it, then business is perfectly within its rights. In the United States of America, no business that is open to the public can discriminate based upon race, sex, age, handicap, or sexual orientation.
Civil Rights Movement
That’s the end result of it public policy wise. While initially aimed at combatting racism, 50 years later, we’re seeing women and lgbt citizens come to the forefront. “Preserving” long held institutions are secondary, or tertiary if at all.
Eliminating any and all legal and social distinctions is where society struggles. Simply put, not infringing upon your rights does not mean you will be liked. Government, if it exists at all, can’t be allowed to draw a distinction between the rights of individuals. For those who want less government interference in private affairs, contract with individuals and not the government.
Stubborn opposition to the Civil Rights movement will fade as the years go by. All of this yowling about equality under the law, whether it be race, sex, age, handicap or sexual orientation raises a bigger question. When will the whaling stop and the sudden support for equality began? We are seeing this with the civil rights era now. The people who were on the wrong side of history are now, eschewing historical accuracy or even the concept of irony, trying to co-opt the civil rights era and pretend to support, for example MLK, someone they claimed 50 years ago was a rabble-rousing communist menace and “the most dangerous man in America”. Progress does not have to be embraced as long as it is accepted.
