Censorship

Since Christianity seems to be dogged with intolerant views, I fail to even understand what it means to be 'Christian.' I probably care even less.

Please tell me though, Pen, how the legislators are supposed to draft comprehensive equality laws that contain opt outs under 'freedom of conscience'?

 

What if Christians came to your guesthouse, Peerie?

 

It baffles me that you even have to ask that!!?

I'd obey the law and let them stay. Just for the record there would be no political or moral desire for me to exclude them either.

EDIT: As I have said - the equality laws protect us all, including Christians, so your point actually affirmed my standpoint.

What you see as 'a positive right for individuals to interact with you' I see as a "a right not to be discriminated against on the basis of your sexuality"

 

Well, business originally began as a means to provide a necessary service to somebody else, receiving compensation from that somebody else through means of trade. In a very simple economy, refusal of service to any one person (who has the means to trade) will result in their death if they are unable to service themselves.

The US Constitution (vainly) promises the pursuit of happiness or at least comfort, and that comfort is usually achieved by buying a plasma screen TV.... right?

According to Deutoronomy 13, it is Christian to kill your neighbor if they're a dirty Muslim.

Oh, and thou shalt not kill.

 

Well, you said that you'd obey the law, and also that you'd have no problem with them anyway (despite your shockingly anti-Christian statements- careful you don't create a "hostile atmosphere"!), so I don't get your point. You keep using the term "equality law" as if the existing laws against violating another's rights aren't already equal- where in the Offences Against the Person Act does it legitimise gaybashing?

 

Well, this is derailing pretty quickly.

It doesn't really say that and Deutoronomy is in the old testament.

Nowhere in the bible does it say thou shalt not kill.
It says do not murder.

 

Pen, I think you've gone off-piste.

Do you think that equality law/rights for gay people ought to end with their right not to be beaten up or murdered?

In progressive civic societies, there is a collective effort to help people integrate and to prevent discrimination. Where's the fire? Where's the problem?

 

Yeah, but you knew that'd happen, didn't you?

 

Everybody's natural rights must ultimately end where coercion of others begins, Peerie. Just how integrated is a society chained together by laws governing every little way in which people might interact?

 

lol... i guess you got me

 

Again, Pen, what you view as a society micromanaging it's citizens, I view as a society tackling discrimination. You would apparently put the Christian owner's right to exclude people above laws which are designed to achieve equal access to services.

Ideology is fine - what happens when you start applying it practically? People must interact in our communities/society and when those interactions collide, we must decide as a society where the compromise is.

Coercion is a very strong word and somewhat unwise in a conversation like this. Legally, they broke the law. It is certainly not a law designed to prevent Christians from freedom of their religion. If you want to distort it to suit your ideology then it's entirely up to you. Some of us think equality is a worth while pursuit.

 

Not very. The goal, then, is to break people from their constricting ideologies.

Just think of how socially unacceptable it is in modern day America to have a sign that says "NO BLACKS" on your business. It might not be illegal, but people will still avoid your shop because they don't like bigots.

 

Well said, punk, but to change somebody's ideology isn't something you can do with the threat of legal penalty. People don't put up those signs, of course, because it will cause outrage and cost a business a lot of money. It's also a nasty thing to do and most people honestly wouldn't do it for that reason alone.

People seem to be labouring under the assumption that without LAWS to tell us what to do and replace our basic civility, we will all indulge bigotry for no fathomable reason beyond the delights of being a dick. I'm sure that for every guesthouse like the one run by doofus there, there are fifty who would be happy to take their money and give them a room for the night.

Why? Because it's mutually beneficial, that's pretty much the idea of doing business. Discriminating, for reasons that are your own is the natural right, but not the compulsion, of everybody, and it is through civility and social interaction, not millions of coercive little laws, that we avoid doing so.

 

Laws generally aren't rules imposed to the detriment of the populace and against our interests. They aren't sent down by a divine dictator to make our lives a misery. We elect people to represent us and initiate legislation after consultation and legislative checks and balances. Laws are very moralistic and say a lot about how we want our society to be.

You say that people wouldn't run amok without laws telling them not to be bigots. Fine, you're probably right. We do, however, live in a world where some gay people are beaten to death because of their sexuality and whose lifestyle was criminalised relatively recently.

Why you would condemn a law which tries to send out a non-discriminatory message is beyond me. I really don't know what this debate is about any more.

 

Neither do I. It goes back to censorship, or it gets closed. The point of this thread, when started, wasn't to debate the usefulness of anti-discrimination laws.

 

You're a punk

Well, you would have to look at what defines an ideology. An ideology, in and of itself, is almost a complete facade (at least, my definition of it is). It's a piece of clothing that everybody else wheres, and so you put it on as well, thinking for whatever reason that these thoughts about bigotry or religion or sports teams are somehow your own.

Now, there is a such thing as true and genuine philosophies that people will stand by regardless, but I am talking about the socially defined ideologies.

Just think of the percentage of racist white individuals in 1920 as compared to the percentage today. Did every white person really think critically about discrimination, or did the gradual social acceptance of civil rights change the environment in which they learned in, creating a whole new ideology of tolerance?

The sociological theory of law states that laws adapt to the needs of the people, while at the same time it in fact transforms the needs of the people.

I agree with you that the requisite of having laws to dictate a person's ideology into something more civil is sad and manipulative. I wish people could see that racism is wrong without having some law to tell them so.

... and thats why things shouldn't be censored.

 

Laws shouldn't be used to send messages, champ, that's what a free exchange of ideas is for.

They should be used to compel people not to do things that violate another's rights, not to force people to do things so they don't hurt another's feelings. Your premise that it's OK to force that couple to do business against their will in the name of not being discriminatory is a bizarre double negative- they don't have the right not to do something, ergo, they must do it in the name of the law.

You don't have a natural right to interact with people who don't want to deal with you, whether in business or socially, because the whole idea of human interaction is that it is mutually beneficial. That's what holds society together, mutual benefit of interaction, not shrouding coercion as people "not having the right not to interact with others."

 

whoops, posted after I saw the above message.

 

You mean before? I figured. An unfortunate danger of posting a warning like that is that I know people will be mid-reply when I post it. But let's get this actually back on topic now, please.

 

Yes, true. Mid reply and blindly posted. Does the Preview button update the thread, incidentally?

So, my question is this. Stephen King, under the pen name of Richard Bachman, published a novel titled "Rage", in which a disturbed protagonist takes his high school class hostage at gunpoint, killing a teacher. Now, King has asked this book be allowed to go out of print because of the easily imitable nature of the violence in it. [edit- people actually did imitate it]

If somebody was to read a book you had written which contained a violent act, and imitated it, what would your response be? Would it be reasonable for libraries not to carry it?

 

Well, I would like mine to be censored. But that of course doesn't solve the problem.

If there is a demand for such a book out there, it will be supplied.

I guess the purpose of censorship would be to limit exposure to an impressionable mind, in fear that they would act it out without much critical thought.

 

It would definitely bother me, even though I can't really control what other people do.

I honestly don't know what I would do in that situation... I just hope it would never happen.

 

It would definitely not bother me, because I can't really control what other people do.

 

Or can you? There is always an antecedent.

 

Wouldn't bother me; imitation is the highest form of flattery. Anyway you can't possibly predict which of the innumerable violent acts depicted in fiction of all media will get incorporated into the psychotic personal mythology of some random schizophrenic. If it happened with something I wrote it could have just as easily have happened with something he saw on Law and Order.

I dunno if I like the idea of libraries censoring that sort of thing, since they're government-run. A bookstore, sure, but not a library. Anything even remotely government-affiliated should stay the hell away from censorship, IMO.