Gay-haters’ free market hypocrisy: How Arizona bill backers are changing their tune

[DonViejo]

When it comes to LGBT discrimination, the right says let free market decide -- until it gets an anti-gay CEO canned

MATT BRUENIG

In February of this year, Arizona considered passing a law that would give explicit permission to businesses to discriminate against people involved in gay marriages. In the run-up to the eventual veto, conservative pundits largely supported the bill, arguing that anti-discrimination laws are liberty-infringing and overly blunt instruments for tackling the ongoing animus against gays in society. Instead, as has been their line since the Civil Rights era, conservatives implored that people take the battle out of the courts and legislatures and into the market and civil society.

The two most elegant explanations of this view at the time came from Cato’s Ilya Shapiro and the National Review’s Kevin Williamson. According to Shapiro, “while governments have the duty to treat everyone equally under the law, private individuals should be able to make their own decisions on whom to do business with and how – on religious or any other grounds. Those who disagree can take their custom elsewhere and encourage others to do the same.”

While reaching the same conclusion, Williamson noted that “genuine hostility toward gay Americans is today a distinctly minority inclination but one that still should be challenged.” Nonetheless, Williamson continued, “it is a far healthier thing for that challenge to take place on the battleground of civil society rather than in the courts and legislatures” because “civil society has the ability to distinguish between an honorable disagreement and ill will.”

These are nice-sounding arguments, and many conservatives certainly held them up as emblematic of their position at the time, but in reality almost nobody actually believes in them.

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http://www.salon.com/2014/04/07/gay_haters_free_market_hypocrisy_how_arizona_bill_backers_are_changing_their_tune/

[Heidi]

1. The free market doesn't protect anyone's human rights.

The right knows that. It's healthy for the right in that it allows bigotry to flourish without legal ramifications.