Religion and the inequality of rights.

My view tends to go along the lines that all people should have the same legal rights as everyone else unless there is a damn good reason otherwise.

But I keep running into religious exemptions to this rule. If you don't show up for work when scheduled you can be fired, unless you claim that a deity has ordered you to do something else that day. In those cases the employer has to accommodate your claim to divine revelation. Now my view is that employers ought to have the right to NOT hire individuals who will inflict higher costs on them by demanding special considerations due to their beliefs. I would honor a religious employer's right to not hire gay people just as I would honor the right of a gay establishment to refuse to hire born-again Christians.

I ran across another very interesting legal right to discriminate which is granted to religious people only.

According to the Federal Communication Commission any radio or television station is strictly banned from discriminating "in employment... because of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex." Plain and simple, if you are an atheist and don't want to hire a fundamentalist then you are forbidden from indulging your own preferences. You may NOT discriminate against the Christian.

But, if the shoe were on the other foot, and you were an atheist seeking employment, a Christian station is explicitly granted permission to discriminate against you. "Religious radio broadcasters may establish religious belief and affiliation as a job qualification for all station employees."

So, the same law that forbids secular stations from refusing to hire Christian employees grants Christian stations the right to refuse to hire secular employees. Next time some Right-wing religious nut whines to you about how they are being persecuted by the nasty secularists ask them about this federal law which grants them legal rights denied to non-religious people.

Legislation requires you to lie.

There is a case of interest brewing in Michigan. A woman named Tracie Rowe put up an ad at her church saying: "I'm looking for a Christian roommate."

For that she is facing charges in court for violating the federal fair housing laws. The bureaucrats pushing the case say it is a clear case of "an illegal preference."

Let me state immediately that while I'm an atheist and opponent of bigotry, I support this woman's right to make this decision.

Rowe was specifically looking for someone to share her living quarters, much the way that someone looks for someone to share a life with, which includes living quarters. Having a roommate encompasses many of the same issues that being married entails. There is an intimacy to sharing living space that does not exist in other human relationships.

Right-wing Christian groups are defending Rowe. The Alliance Defense Fund said, "This is outrageous to think that the government can come into your private house and try and tell you who you can and cannot have as a roommate. It's just absurd."

I have no love for the Alliance Defense Fund, they are a nasty bunch of bigoted fundamentalists. But here they are right, even if they are stunningly hypocritical. Why do I say that?

ADF is one of the religious Right groups wanting to deny gay couples the right to marry. Let us take the ADF's comments about the Rowe case and rewrite it very slightly: "This is outrageous to think that the government can come into your private house and try and tell you who you can and cannot have as a spouse. It's just absurd."

So, it is absurd for government to regulate roommates, but not absurd for government to control who is your legal spouse?

The lawyers from ADF say that this is a matter of freedom of association. True, it is. But so is marriage. In fact, under the law, as it has evolved, the government grants far more freedom in marriage than it does in others are of life. You can't racially discriminate in hiring, but you can in marrying. You can't refuse to perform business services for a Jew but a Catholic priest can refuse to perform a marriage for the same Jew. If anything, the legal case against state control of spouses is greater than the case against state control of roommate advertisements. Who one marries is ultimately more important to them than whether one's roommate has the same religion.

Need I remind the readers from the Left, with whom I share many values, that before they laugh at the utter hypocrisy of the Right in this case, that they should also consider their own contradictions. The law under which this woman is being prosecuted is one the Left supports. They said that the freedom of association of this woman must be infringed in the name of "fair housing."

What is particularly bizarre is that the woman can still only take on a Christian roommate, she just can't advertise for one. As was reported: "Haynes (one of the bureaucrats) says Rowe can live with whomever she wants, but law '804-C' is about what you publish. The law says you can't print publish, or advertise based on race. limitation, sex, or religion." So, an atheist such as myself can't say, "No religious need apply." But I can still only share a house with atheists if I prefer, I just can't tell the truth in my ad.

Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, so the Constitution says. Yet many of my friends on the Left who are quite willing to apply free speech protections to pornography (as I would) are not willing to apply this same principle to stating housing preferences. Remember that the crime here is stating the preference not indulging it.

And who are these bureacrats helping? Is it the people who would be discriminated against? No, not at all. Remember Rowe was still allowed to pick only a Christian roommate, she was only forbidden in expressing that preference. So individuals, looking to share a house with someone, could take time off of work to meet with Rowe, they could go out of their way to get to her home, spend their precious time and resources to meet with her, without ever having a chance to actually be a roommate. They aren't allowed to get advance warning that they are throwing away their time and money to meet with Rowe.

This does NOT mean they will be roommates as Rowe is still free to reject them. But Rowe is not allowed to let these people, doomed to failure in the roommate search, know that they would be wasting their time. The law itself inflicts additional damages on the unsuccessful roommates by requiring them to spend resources foolishly because the knowledge they needed to spend it wisely is censored under federal law. So the "victims" of the discrimination are not made better off by the law. All the law does is increase the costs for everyone. But it gives parasitical bureaucrats an excuse for squandering more tax funds.

Looking at roommates and spouses as a matter of freedom of association means I oppose both the Left and the Right. I oppose the Left when it comes to "anti-discrimination" laws, such as the one at stake in the Rowe case, but I equally, and for the same reasons, oppose the Right-wing attempts to have government control whether or not one may marry a person of the same gender. I agree with the Left when it comes to their general support (Obama is a big exception) for marriage rights for gay couples, but I equally, and for the same reasons, support the right of private individuals to decide who to room with.

By the way, the case for gay marriage is even stronger that that of roommate preferences. Government discrimination is far more onerous and troublesome than private discrimination. With private businesses that discriminate it is easier to move from one company to another; there are literally millions of employers seeking employees. But with government monopolistic power structures that is very difficult to do. If the US government discriminates, as it does with marriage rights, then you are screwed unless you can get another government monoply power structure to see things differently and allow you to live there, which is very difficult

It is far easier to avoid private discrimination than it is to avoid legislative discrimination. A non-Christian wanting to rent a room would have a much easier time locating a roommate who isn't so picky than a gay person would have in finding a government that will legally recognize his marriage. Government has more control over larger areas of life than any one private business can ever have, that is why private discrimination is not nearly as worrisome as state-mandated bigotry.

DADT measure takes heat off Obama: nothing to applaud

Don't expect me to cheer the so-called repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which Congress is busy passing. But don't get me wrong either. DADT should be repealed. Today! But this "repeal" doesn't repeal anything. It is an artfully-crafted political maneuver designed to take the heat off the Democrats. It is a fraud.

When all is said and done, and this measure is "law," nothing will change. DADT will still be official policy. All this measure does is pass this political hot potato on to the Pentagon. The politicians can pretend they did something, while the status quo remains until the Pentagon gets off its fat, bureaucratic ass and does something constructive.

This measure basically says that DADT is repealed after the military spends millions to "study" the issue, and takes, well... just about as long as they want. After they take untold amounts of time to "study" the issue, and hold countless meetings, spending millions along the way, then the measure says the Pentagon has to have time to study their studies and see what they conclude. There is no time limit for that either, and no budget cap.

After they spend unspecified, limitless amounts of time studying the issue, and then appraising their studies, they can do the same for drawing up a program of implementation. Again there is no limit to the time period they may take to draw up this third phase. And how repeal is implemented is left entirely up to the Pentagon as well. They can "phase" it in, over years if they want. One military leader mentioned that with racial integration the military took five years. And that was following a presidential order from Truman, as commander-in-chief, to the military to integrate.

By the time the military finishes all the phases of the measure that Congress has given them, Obama will most likely be out of office, perhaps having gone to his reward due to old age. By the time the measure actually comes to any conclusion Congress may be back in the hands of the Party that represents the organized forces of hate in American politics: the Republicans. With almost zero Republican support for even this fraudulent measure, the GOP may well repeal the bogus repeal and mandate continued discriminatory practices—discrimination and the GOP today go together hand-in-glove. Given that this measure actually doesn't accomplish anything even Republicans could have safely voted for the bill.

This was the perfect political measure. It gives the appearance of doing something while doing absolutely nothing. It allows politicians to pass the buck to people who don't run for office and are not subject to the will of the voters—military bureaucrats.

Here is how the typical Congressweasel can deal with the issue. If facing an angry opponent of DADT, he can say: "We passed the measure to repeal DADT in Congress. We feel your pain and share your anger, which is why we did this."

If facing a Right-wing gay hater, the Congressweasel can say: "We didn't repeal DADT, that is a media fallacy. We said that only the military can decide on this matter and we trust them to do the right thing (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). This is in the hands of our military leaders and not subject to the whims of organized pressure groups now."

What this measure does is take the heat off the politicians. It effectively kills any chance that real legislation, that will end DADT, will pass anytime soon. This was not the Obama administration fulfilling a promise. This was the Democrats sabotaging any efforts at real reform anytime soon in order to save the sorry ass of Obama—a man who is proving himself to be every bit as bad a leader as George Bush.

There is nothing to applaud in this bill. This was done to kill repeal measures precisely as the Obama administration has been wanting all along. It solves a political problem but doesn't end the discrimination.

Rand Paul and Ayn Rand: not peas from the same pod

One of the tragedies from the Ron Paul movement has been the association of libertarianism with very unlibertarian sentiments. Before Rand Paul picked up his father's sullied mantle I was talking with someone who had been a top official in the Liberal Democratic Party at a dinner in London. Some of the people were libertarians who thought the Paulites were a good thing. I pointed out how our ideas were being associated with ideas that were most clearly not libertarian. The Lib Dem guy made the point about "brand contamination." When someone becomes associated with other things, a tad bit more nefarious and questionable, the good aspects of the brand become contaminated.

That is what Ron Paul did to libertarianism—associating it with anti-immigrant sentiments, neo-Confederate politics, Birch Society conspiracy nonsense, state's rights, and racism, to name a few. Ron Paul has always been a conservative, not a libertarian—as his vote to keep sodomy a crime in D.C., showed. And Rand Paul is more of the same, but worse.

So who gets blamed for Rand Paul's views? Libertarians do. Sam Tanenhaus referred to Rand Paul's controversial statements with a New York Times piece entitled: "Rand Paul and the Perils of Textbook Libertarianism." That would imply that Rand Paul is a textbook libertarian when he is no such thing. He has less right to claim libertarianism than does his father.

So I wanted to clear up a few points. Not only isn't Rand Paul a libertarian, as I have asserted before, but he isn't even named after Ayn Rand—as some of his worshippers and detractors all seem to assume. Paul has clarified it himself but that doesn't stop the morons, on both Left and Right, from saying otherwise. His full name is Randal Paul and Rand is merely an abbreviation of his first name, not homage to Ayn Rand.

And, if it had been homage to Rand, I can assure you she wouldn't have been honored. Rand refused to support candidates if they campaigned against abortion. She refused to support Reagan and stated his opposition to abortion as a reason, and Reagan was much more moderate on the issue than Paul, who wouldn't even allow a woman to abort in order to save her own life. My friend Barbara Branden reports: "When I last saw Rand in 1981, she told me that she was opposed to Reagan because she considered him a typical conservative in his attempt to link politics and religion. About his anti-abortion view, she said: 'A man who does not believe in a woman's right to her own body, does not believe in human rights.'"

Paul, according to his own site, had the endorsement of the far-Right theocratic group, Concerned Women for America, and his site says that his "socially conservative views have earned the respect and trust of church leaders across Kentucky." Consider how Rand saw Reagan and his friendly relations with the Moral Majority:

The appalling disgrace of his administration is his connection with the so-called "Moral Majority" and sundry other TV religionists, who are struggling—apparently with his approval—to take us back to the Middle Ages, via the unconstitutional union of religion and politics.

Rand said Reagan was trying to "arouse the country by some sort of inspirational appeal. He is right in thinking that the country needs an inspirational element. But he will not find it in the God-Family-Tradition swamp." So while Randal Paul was sucking up to the social conservative religionists, Ayn Rand had called their ideology a "swamp" and wanted nothing to do with them.

Previously I mentioned Rand's views on the issue of state's rights, which is vastly different than Randal Paul's views. While social conservatives like the two Pauls, Wayne Allen Root, Bob Barr and others, argue for state's rights, Ayn Rand said that people don't understand what it means She argued it was merely a "division of power between local and national authorities" and did "not grant to a state government an unlimited arbitrary power over its citizens or the privilege of abrogating the citizens' individual rights." As Rand saw it state's rights would justify the violation of separation of church and state at the state level, as Ron Paul and other conservatives have said.

George Wallace used the state's right mantra to justify his racist campaigns for political office. Rand noted that Wallace was NOT "a defender of individual rights, but merely of state's rights—which is far from being the same thing." She said Wallace's denunciation of big government was one that merely wanted to replace federal tyranny with local tyranny, that all Wallace wanted was "to place the same unlimited, arbitrary power in the hands of many little governments." This is also true of the paleo-conservatives pretending to be libertarians: Randal and Ron Paul being the prime examples.

Libertarian blogger Timothy Lee noticed that Randal Paul's "libertarianism" "is curiously one-sided." Lee notes that Paul's view "is far from uncompromising" and points to Paul's rabid anti-immigration stands, his demand that anyone who is a citizen of a "rogue nation" be denied travel visas and that he supports "holding suspects indefinitely without trial at GITMO," as evidence. He also lists Paul's opposition to marriage equality, his refusal to talk about the war on drugs, or free trade as areas of concern. Lee writes:

Paul is an uncompromising defender of the rights of business owners to decide who will sit at their lunch counters. But Paul apparently sees no problem with deploying the power of the state to stop private business owners from hiring undocumented workers. Nor does he seem to care very much about business owners’ freedom to do business with the millions of non-terrorists who live in “rogue nations.” Or, for that matter, the freedom of a gay business owner to marry the person he loves. There’s a principle at work here, all right, but I don’t think it has very much to do with limited government.

Randal Paul got caught by his own position in defense of private discrimination. And while I agree with freedom of association as a right, it is very difficult, if not impossible to defend those rights if you yourself advocate violating those rights in numerous ways. Social conservatives, like Paul, are not advocates of individual rights, but proponents of social order and state control in the name of God, family, tradition, morality and religion. They are sometimes opponents of state intervention and sometimes advocates of it. Their lack of consistency means it is easy to show them up as hypocrites, advocating one set of laws for one group of people and another set for other, less favored, groups.

As a libertarian I would say this lack of consistency plagues both Progressives and Conservatives. Which is why libertarians are neither, but hold the radical middle ground where rights are applied consistently. Randal Paul, like his father doesn't support equality of rights for gay people. So that meant he could not answer Rachel Maddow well when she nailed him on discrimination. He stuttered, stumbled, tried to evade, and basically made his position look bad. He tried to claim libertarian principles, but not being a consistent libertarian made that difficult. So how would I have responded to Maddow, in the same circumstances? Here is my answer:

Rachel, that's a good question and is the answer is more complex that a lot of people want to believe. For instance, why shouldn't a "black student's union" have the right to admit only black students? And doesn't it make sense that with the sort of sexual harassment that many women have experienced that a lesbian bar might rationally want to exclude straight men as patrons or employees?

Much of the struggle for human rights, especially for those oppressed and discriminated against, has revolved around the freedom to associate. With the right to freely associate comes the right to not associate, which is what that lesbian bar would be doing. Government is a very blunt tool, and when the law applies to private associations it does so without taking into account, nor can it take into account, the nuances which may well justify the reluctance for some people to associate with others.

Where there is private discrimination, that is irrational and prejudicial, such as the refusal of some restaurants to serve black patrons, I think it important that community leaders, people like yourself, all decent people, stand up and protest, boycott, picket, leaflet and force a change in policy. And there are many examples of that happening.

Government is such a blunt tool to use that it can't distinguish between the first kind of discrimination and the second kind. It destroys both with the same law. Thus we could get bizarre things like a gay resort, with somewhat liberal standards on nudity or public displays of sexuality, being sued for discriminating against heterosexual families with children. Government does a bad job of telling the differences and thus tends to ban both.

Most people, like yourself, clearly can see the differences. A Christian church that refused to perform Jewish weddings doesn't bother most people. A restaurant that refuses to serve black customers does. The church is only exempt because of the First Amendment, and thus safe from such laws. But the lesbian bar I mentioned is not. The community is free to distinguish between these different forms of discrimination and routinely does so. They will boycott and protest against the restaurant but no one bats an eye at religious discrimination by churches.

What is critical to remember is that state power has more often been used to force discrimination than to forbid it. The South was not a free society and had legislation mandating bigotry and prejudicial policies. When local government violates the rights of people, it is fit and proper for federal legislation to prevent that. Government is a dangerous weapon and is more likely to be used to suppress rights.

The great civil rights battle of today, Rachel, is that of marriage equality.
Look at the battle line. All across the country private businesses treat their gay employees and customers with respect, sure some don't, but they are not the dominant trend by any means, but the exception. As a gay woman you surely know this.

Gay relationships are recognized by employers who grant their gay employees the same rights as other employees. Where is the problem? Don't Ask, Don't Tell -- government mandated discrimination. The Defense of Marriage Act -- government mandated discrimination. Immigration laws exist that refuse to recognize gay couples. That is state bigotry, not private. We have state mandated discrimination in the tax codes, marriage laws, custody laws, even in hospital visitation rights.

So, Rachel, here is my offer, based on my principles. Let us abolish all government mandated discrimination, abolish those laws, reform the system to see full equality of rights for all. Compared to the nationwide massive violations of rights that government is doing today, the issue of private discrimination is tiny. Not only is the impact of state discrimination far more destructive but it is much harder to change. Many a business has suddenly switched sides due to a boycott, but you can't boycott government. In addition, much of the private prejudices collapse when government-sanctioned bigotry is abolished.

So, when it comes to my preferences, I prefer the private versus governmental approach. It is easier to wipe out bigotry when privately practiced then when enforced by law. Even with a so-called "friend" in the White House look at the meager progress gay and lesbian people have made with their just demands. It is far easier to end private discrimination than state-enforced bigotry.

A government that routinely discriminates against tens of millions of Americans, due to their sexual orientation, or gender identity, is not a trust-worthy advocate for individual rights. I would rather leave this to the common sense of the people, using proven strategies like boycotts and picket lines, to eradicate irrational prejudice while leaving the woman's bar alone, as I suspect the case would be.

My answer may not entirely satisfy Maddow, but it would go a long way toward addressing her concerns and showing the good intentions of libertarians toward minorities. So why didn't Randall Paul say this? Why didn't he defend well the libertarian position? Because he couldn't, he doesn't believe in it.

Justifying bigotry isn't easy, but sometimes it's funny.

Cate and Elizabeth Wirth have been spouses for a long-time and they are raising their 10-year-old son. The two women enrolled the boy in Cub Scouts and volunteered with the troop regularly. Recently the troop was asking for some parents to increase their volunteer work and the two women said they would.

Everything was going fine. Since they had been involved with their son's troop for some years they decided they should just let the Scout official they were working with know that they were spouses. You would think this would have been apparent but there are none so blind as those who refuse to see. District Director Erik Tanney, then told the women that they were forbidden from volunteering because "we wouldn't want you pushing your lifestyle on the boys."

Try to get your head around that for a moment. Exactly what would "pushing your lifestyle on the boys" mean in the case to these two women? Would it mean turning the boys into lesbians? Exactly how would that be possible? And if the boys were turned into "lesbians" wouldn't that mean they would be interested in girls? Isn't that precisely what the Boy Scouts are trying to foster. along with helping old ladies across the street—provided they can prove they are heterosexual, though hopefully not with the Boy Scout in question. How stupid do you have to be to think a lesbian can force her lifestyle on a male?

It is no surprise that the Mormon cult made the Boy Scout's their youth group and it is alleged that one in nine scouts now is from that sect. This means the church, which is very antigay and was the main force behind Prop 8 in California (while dishonestly hiding their role), has a great deal of influence over Scouting. For the record the Scouts will also discriminate boys who are atheists or gay as well.

I think the Scouts have the right to be bigoted and stupid. They have the right to exclude anyone they want. Similarly, other people have the right to think the Scouts are a despicable organization unworthy of any support. That sort of voluntary refusal to deal with one another is perfectly acceptable. I believe in the freedom of association. That also means the freedom to NOT associate.

That said, the matter is complicated when the Scouts line up looking for tax-funded handouts. When the Scouts, or any other group of uniformed bigots, received subsidies from the state that means the little SOB's are using the power of the state to take, under threat of force, money from unwilling individuals to fund their organization. When they do that, it is no longer a voluntary relationship. It is more akin to rape, which I don't think is a value the Scounts are teaching. The Scouts must be free to teach kids Mormon bigotry if they wish. Other people must be free to boycott the Scouts as well. But the Scouts have NO right to seek state funding or subsidies. And when I say "state" I mean government at all levels—as in "the state."

So the Scouts ought to lose ever club house they have if it is provided by any level of government. No government agency should be involved with the Scouts. There shouldn't be a penny of tax money used to promote the Scouts anymore than tax funds should promote any private club that discriminates. There ought to be a complete separation of state and Scouts. They should only be funded by people who share their values and that isn't me.

Markets vs Politics: Lessons in Intolerance

Yesterday I blogged about intolerance exhibited before children, or I should more accurately say intolerance or bigotry imposed upon children. Two things brought it up. First, was a story that Barbara Branden told me not long ago. The second was an incident at a water park in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. See this entry for more details.

Lava Hot Springs Park is a government-owned “recreation” center that announced a family discount. It then told a lesbian couple and their children that they don’t count as a real family and won’t get the discount. The park used state marriage laws as the excuse for that. When they got some flack over the unequal policy they announced that they would solve it by stripping all families of discounts. You should note that they are doing this over a few dollars.

After posting on this case yesterday, Scott Pearhill, the president of the local Chamber of Commerce, posted a note in our comments section. He wanted everyone to know that the Chamber “which represents more than 70 local businesses, recently published a statement in which the Chamber welcomes all people to Lava.” He then said: “Thanks very much for your work to promote justice and kindness in our world.”

What the local Chamber of Commerce said was that they were asked about their views toward “gay and lesbian visitors” and that the Board of the Chamber unanimously agreed that “we want all to know that we hope this isolated incident won’t dissuade visitors from exploring our community and, indeed, the rest of Idaho. The Lave Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce feels that all are welcome in our community and we look forward to showing them our Idaho hospitality.”

On one hand we have a government-owned park making a same-sex couple and their children feel especially unwelcome while the Chamber of Commerce, that represents 70 businesses in the area, is going out of its way to tell people that they welcome everyone as visitors in their community. I am not the least bit surprised by this. Consider what I wrote on this blog in May, 2007:

Today around the world the issue of rights for gay men and women is hotly debated in government. Moves to extend rights to gay couples are fiercely resisted by politicians in almost every country. Almost unnoticed is the fact that business—ranging from multinational corporations to small companies— are implementing policies which recognize gay relationships. If anything government’s tend to act against bigotry only after the private sector has already stepped in to eradicate it. The nature of politics is inherently conservative and resistant to change. But the private market thrives on innovation and change.

This is a perfect example of what I meant. Government is resisting change while private businesses are welcoming it. In regards to the debate on marriage equality I noted that where our society has evolved, our government has barely moved. I wrote:

What is happening now, with political bodies recognizing marriage equality, is that the civil institution of marriage is catching up the private, real nature of marriage. Society, the web of voluntary associations, has largely accepted marriage equality. Major corporations already recognize such relationships in terms of insurance and employment benefits. Even many churches, outside the Catholics, Mormons and fundamentalists, recognize or accept same-sex couples. Virtually all major branches of Society have evolved to accept gay couples. Not so the State. In that realm where the State has not exerted control marriage has already evolved. The anti-equality lobby has actually used state coercion to forbid private institutions from evolving. In essence, they are trying to prevent natural evolution through the use of top-down coercion. It can be argued that the individuals who are meddling with the institution are those using political control to prevent evolution of marriage in the social sphere.

Political power is inherently conservative, markets embrace diversity. Years ago Milton Friedman said: “The characteristic feature of action through political channels is that it tends to require or enforce substantial conformity. The great advantage of the market, on the other hand, is that it permits wide diversity.” Ludwig von Mises said that in bureaucratic management, that is political control, “the first step is to obtain the consent of old men accustomed to doing things in prescribed ways, and no longer open to new ideas. No progress and no reforms can be expected in a state of affairs where the first step is to obtain the consent of old men. The pioneers of new methods are considered rebels and treated as such. For a bureaucratic mind law abidance, i.e., cling to the customary and antiquated is the first of all virtues.

The British socialist, Evan Luard, correctly noted that “collective power is also conservative because within the democratic system, political parties and leaders are obliged to converge to a point near the average views of the majority.” Sir Samuel Brittan, years ago wrote an essay, Capitalism and the Permissive Society, where he outlined precisely why free markets undermine conservative social orders. He said that “both the political and economic philosophy and the capitalist practices of a century ago set in motion a train of events and ideas which eventually undermined the status-ridden convention society of the time and brought into being the more tolerant England of today.”

Classical liberalism was comprised of philosophical views about the individual and about economics. It supported individual liberty and the right of contract and it supported free markets, as opposed to politically-controlled markets. Those ideas, even today, are continuing to fuel the culture war. The classical liberals said that marriage was a contract between individuals and not a religious institution at all. Marriage predated religion and existed long before the church got involved with it. Christian writer, John Witte, describes the view of the Classical Liberals:

...the voluntary bargain struck between the two married parties. The terms of their marital bargain were not preset by God or nature, church or state, tradition or community. These terms were set by the parties themselves, in accordance with general rules of contract formation and general norms of civil society. Such rules and norms demanded respect for the life, liberty, and property interests of other parties, and compliance with general standards of health, safety, and welfare in the community. But the form and function and the length and limits of the marital relationship were to be left to the private bargain of the parties -- each of whom enjoyed full equality and liberty, both with each other and within the broader civil society. Couples should now be able to make their own marriage beds, and lie in them or leave them as they saw fit.

On the other side of the battle is another view, expounded by the authoritarian John Calvin, who demanded state control of marriage, in alliance with the church, in order to control sin. The Liberals like Jefferson, Locke, Spencer, and others, were promoting the contractual, limited-government theory of contract. This really was a battle between those who held an authoritarian view of marriage and those who held a libertarian view. Witte says that modern law is a combination of these conflicting views, or “traditions—one rooted in Christianity, a second in the Enlightenment.”

The business world, when it doesn’t have access to political power, is the market. It reflects the libertarian ideal of voluntary exchange and cooperation. For us libertarians there is no surprise that the marketplace is decades ahead of government in respecting the rights of gay people. It is driven by a need to satisfy customers. If business fails to satisfy customers it loses customers, unless the politicians come along and strip customers of freedom of choice.

In Lava Hot Springs the local businesses don’t want to alienate customers. They want to welcome everyone. The non-profit, state-controlled park doesn’t have to satisfy customers. It doesn’t exist purely on the basis of profit. They have no major incentive to treat people right. They can afford to be legalistic, bureaucratic and stodgy. They can ignore the realities of life since they are government controlled and owned and they don’t have to make a profit. They can treat people like shit, businesses can’t.

What I have never understood is why so many progressives and advocates of diversity believe that state control will make life better for those who suffer discrimination. It isn’t the private community that is refusing to recognize gay couples—it is the state. Only six states have recognized gay marriage. Hundreds of the largest corporations in the United States recognized those relationship years ago. Even when a radical progressive like Barack Obama gets into office he’s happy to screw the gay community around for months, refusing to keep his promises. What Obama won’t do, private businesses have done quietly and with little conflict for years.

Politicized-markets, such as this water park, are not conducive to innovation or diversity. They are less prone to tolerance and usually unwilling to embrace that which is new. Not so for competitive markets, where political control is largely absent. When Progressive push for more state control they are undermining the best interests of all groups who suffer discrimination in the United States. If Progressives understood the reality of the dynamics of liberal capitalism they would abandon their statism immediately. If conservatives had the intellectual ability to grasp how capitalism undermines the traditional social order they would all become rampant socialists overnight.