A little while ago before the RFRA blew up, I was crucifying
some people because they were against gay marriage, and I’ve seen many
arguments about the bill on both sides, but most of it doesn’t really seem
relevant.
Let’s start with why we should support gay marriage. It begins with the right of free
association, but I don't mean in the constitutional sense. The Constitution could never contain a list of all human rights, so I do not use it as a basis for whether something is a right or not a right. At best, the Constitution is a good start. I mean in the literal sense, who we, as people, associate with. Everyone gets to decide who
they want to associate with. Furthermore,
we get to decide the nature of the association, such as if we want to be
friends or not friends, if we want to be married or not married. Some people may argue that certain things
that people believe are rights are really privileges. The reason the argument for privilege and
against a right isn’t valid in this case is because the freedom of association is derived
from the freedom from aggression. As
long as you aren’t acting with unwelcome force on a person, then you are within
your rights to perform that action. When
we choose the nature of association with a person to be a marriage association,
same or opposite sex, we are not acting with force against anyone, therefore we
have the right to that marriage. If your
religion requires you to oppose gay marriage, then you are free to choose those
associations for yourself, and gay individuals are free to choose their
associations for themselves. If you
petition the government to ban gay marriage, you are asking the government (the
ones with the fines, jails, and guns) to act with unwelcome force on gay
people. And don’t try to hide
discriminatory belief behind democracy, as a vote for a politician that forces
their views on people, denying their right to free association, is your
responsibility. You’re ultimately
guilty.
Now that we’ve established why urging your government to
discriminate against gay people is despicable, let’s move on to whether people
(such as the religious) should be allowed to discriminate. If we go back and ask our friendly
neighborhood right to freedom of association, much to the dismay of the
wonderful activists who were on the freedom of association bandwagon just a
moment ago, we get the same answer, and that is that you have the right to
associate with or refuse association with anyone. You can base your decision on some rational
things like are they kind, ethical, or skilled, or you can base your decision
on things that shouldn’t matter, like sexuality, skin color, or religion. Let’s be clear, if you do base your decisions
on things that shouldn’t matter like a person’s sexuality, skin color, and
religion, then you are an a-hole. You
are 100% a dick. No, you cannot
discriminate with love. The whole love
the sinner, hate the sin thing is used way too much to hide discrimination. If you preach this and you support gay
marriage bans, then you have failed to love the sinner. You are free to be as much of an a-hole as
you like, though, until you cross the aggression line. After that, the government can act to protect
a victim’s right of freedom from aggression, but until that happens, the
government must refrain from interfering or else the government itself violates
our right to freedom from aggression. If you are petitioning the government to ban individuals from discriminating, then you are asking the government to use unwelcome force in order to deny individuals their right to freely associate, which is also a dick move. As much as I would like to sit around and only bash anti-gay people all day until my ally status reaches infinite proportions, we cannot do this. Our enemies will latch onto this hypocrisy, and it ultimately damages our cause. We have to be right all of the time. If we want to freely associate, we have to tolerate others to freely associate.
Long story short version.
You can discriminate, but if you do then we, as individuals, will
boycott you and your business. The
government cannot discriminate. The
government, however, must protect your right as an individual to discriminate
(or to not discriminate). If it doesn’t
protect our right to discriminate, then we all are denied our right of freedom
of association. All human rights depend
on the right of freedom of association.
We must tolerate the discrimination from individuals to ensure that we
are tolerated by government.
