You Can’t Have it Both Ways

Within the comments this weekend was a truly fascinating discussion between Musicguy and myself over the differences between personal liberty and discrimination. Fascinating on more than one level– so I thought I’d share it with you in case you missed it. The original comments took place on the post “An Omen of Things to Come.”

(When I started writing this I expected it to be short, but it turned out to be one of the longer things I’ve written. So, I’m breaking it up into three posts.)

To start this off, let me try to clearly articulate my position:

I believe that when it comes to private businesses they should be allowed to determine who they hire and who they serve, etc. based on whatever criteria they wish, knowing full well that they will reap the full retribution of the press, of boycotts, etc. but I do not support government involvement in this area.

That being the case, some may argue that I inadvertently support discrimination, since I’m arguing for the right of any given person to exercise discrimination against another person.  Which took my brain in a weird association game…

Can There Really Be a Pro-Choice Position?

The one level that I find the discussion fascinating has to deal with what Musicguy said in this comment:

I’ll make you a bumper sticker that reads, “I support discrimination based on race and sex”. Let me know what kind of looks you get.

To set it up, I just got done saying that I would support the rights of a KKK restaurant owner to not serve black patrons as well as support the rights of those that would protest the place– and I extrapolated to say that I support the rights of those people that I disagree with doing things that I disagree with as long as it was with their own personal business. In terms of working with a public resource (such as the postal service, court system, school buses, etc.) I would not support this simply because it’s the public’s money and all should be equal before the law. I’ll get back to this.

The point is the quote above. I’ve made the argument before that Pro-Choice = Pro-Abortion simply because Pro-life supports choices except abortion and Pro-Choice only adds one choice. But Musicguy’s comment actually took the same logical approach to the topic of discrimination.  He claimed that I support discrimination simply because I’m pro-choice when it comes to business. Truth be told, I have no problem with any man or woman– we’re all equal before God– so I personally do not support discrimination, but the right for people to discriminate.

So, is there a difference between supporting the right to discriminate and supporting the right to abortion?  Are they equivalent to supporting discrimination and supporting abortion?