Walking a Fine and Blurry Line

I've run across this story a couple of places.

"It seems to me that what we are doing is producing a tyrannous new morality that is every bit as oppressive as the old. The way to [handle this] is not to ban them, not to fine them. It is for them simply to put up what seems to me to be a quite proper notice in a small privately run hotel which says we are Christians and this is what we believe. Otherwise, we are as I said, we are producing a new tyranny."

This is from David Starkey, a gay historian who also happens to be an atheist. The impetus is from in incident in England in which a gay couple was refused a room at a hotel because two men sharing a bed violated the owners' religious beliefs. (I can't find the original story, but here's a sort of follow-up from Pink News.)

I think Starkey has it almost right -- and keep in mind that the U.K., and Europe in general, have gone a lot farther with anti-discrimination laws than we have in the States. However, we have a principle in our laws that I think addresses this kind of issue very well: public accommodation. If you are a business offering goods or services to the public, you offer those goods or services to everyone. You leave your personal beliefs at the door.

We've made huge, and I think disproportionate, accommodations to "religious institutions" in this country, and I think it has set the idea of nondiscrimination back, sometimes substantially. And I've noticed one thing that I think is indicative of the essential dishonesty of many of those "religious institutions": up until a few years ago, organizations such as Catholic Charities were run as separate entities from the Church so that they could collect public money for their work. This was an arrangement that worked very well -- they were, in effect, offering a public service and could be publicly supported as long as their work did not involve forcing the Church's doctrine on those who received those services. Now, almost overnight, it seems that Catholic Charities and like organizations are "religious institutions" and feel free to discriminate on the basis of their religious beliefs -- but they still want the public money. They've tried to use that as a club -- remember that the Diocese of Washington, D.C., threatened to cancel their adoption agencies and other public services if D.C. passed a marriage equality law. D.C. said fine -- there are other organizations offering the same services, and in fact several of them offered to fill the vacuum. The Diocese folded -- I guess the money was too attractive.

But I digress.

This is a principle that has bearing on any public accommodation. It's even more pertinent in cases such as pharmacists refusing to dispense birth control. We've catered to them, when I think their licenses should have been pulled. If you're licensed by the state, you obey the law and conform to the requirements the state imposes as part of your license. If you can't deal with it, find another line of work.

I suppose, in cases such as the hotel that Starkey's referring to, we could make allowances on the order he suggests, but I think rather than a sign on the premises, you make sure all your advertising and listings note that you discriminate on the basis of your religious beliefs.

We'll see what that does for your business.