[314] in peace2
Re: Supreme Court Upholds Discrimination Against Gays
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John S Reed)
Mon Jul 3 08:39:51 2000
Message-Id: <200007031239.IAA15117@nerd-xing.mit.edu>
To: danah@acm.org
cc: Gregory D Dennis <gdennis@MIT.EDU>, peace-list@MIT.EDU,
bostonrnr@egroups.com, jreed@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 02 Jul 2000 13:22:19 EDT."
<Pine.OSF.4.05.10007021317070.11003-100000@ml.media.mit.edu>
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Date: Mon, 03 Jul 2000 08:39:44 -0400
From: John S Reed <jreed@MIT.EDU>
>
> I object to saying that a church/synagogue is a public accommodation. The
> BSA is not entirely private (although I think it soon will be), but I
> would object to their uses of public accomodations such as _schools_, not
> churches. I do not feel as though a church is open to _anyone_ and I also
> believe that as much as it is not practiced, there should be a strict
> separation of church and state.
>
Churchs and other religious organizations receive special privilege in being
exempted from taxation and as such I have no problem with them being subject
to special requirements. On the other hand the constitution does call for
separation of church and state so perhaps it's consistent with the
constitution that they be allowed to discriminate as well as be exempt from
taxes. Yet the government clearly intervenes in religion when certain
practices like human sacrifice, ritual child abuse, or even harmless ones like
the consumption of peyote are outlawed. These laws technically violate a
completely strict separation of church and state. But I believe they ( the
first two examples, not the peyote one ) illustrate that a completely strict
separation of church and state is innappropriate. Maybe the constitution
should be revised to reflect the reality that some limited government over
site of religion is good.
Given the reality of government interference in religion is it necessarily
that bad if churches are subject to certain anti discrimination regulation?
> Which makes me wonder about the meaning of "public accomodation"... Aren't
> public accommodations considered to be publicly governmentally funded? Or
> what about places such as hotels? Where is the line? Can a hotel
> discriminate?
>
legally hotels and certain other businesses are not allowed to discriminate.
I believe there are some thresholds in terms of the size of the operation, and
level of interaction with the public that makes them subject to these
restrictions. But i don't know the details. Again I personally have no
problem with businesses being subject to these restrictions. I say if they
want to discriminate then cut off their access to all publicly funded
infrastructure ( sewage, garbage collection, power, roads etc. ) and see how
well they operate. I think they'll realize pretty quickly that perhaps it's
better just to stop discriminating.
> Danah
john
