In this week’s news, an allegedly “anti-gay” state senator was outed after being arrested on a DUI after leaving a gay bar in California. I hope we can all agree that driving drunk is objectionable and that frequenting gay bars, if that’s your thing, is not. One might be tempted, then, to conclude that people should care about the DUI and not the venue. But I suppose there’s no point in trying to wish away human nature.
What interests me in all this is the promiscuous use of the adjectives “anti-gay” and “hypocritical”. The senator seems to be charged with three counts of anti-gayness, with hypocrisy as an aggravating circumstance. First, he opposes anti-discrimination laws. Second, he opposes gay marriage. Third, he opposes an official day of recognition for gay rights activist Harvey Milk.
Now let’s take these one at a time.
- I share the senator’s opposition to anti-discrimination laws. If that makes me anti-gay, you can also label me anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-Republican and anti-economist, because I support your right to discriminate against those groups as well. I support your rights not to date economists, not to drink with economists, and not to hire economists. I do not believe that makes me anti-economist and I do not believe it makes me a hypocrite.
Now you might or might not think that the analogy between gays and economists, or the analogy between dating and hiring, is seriously flawed. We’ve had that discussion in comments elsewhere on this blog, I don’t propose to repeat it here. Here I’m asking you only to accept that some people (me, for example) find these analogies compelling and therefore share the outed senator’s position on discrimination law without bearing any animus toward gays.
Moreover, as far as I am aware, there is no known correlation between sexual orientation and susceptibility to argument by analogy. Therefore, a gay man who shares my position ought not be suspected of hypocrisy.
- Next, we have the issue of gay marriage. I am for gay marriage. I am for polyamorous marriage. I am for marriage between three gay men, two eunuchs and a bull dyke. I am for recognition and enforcement of pretty much any lifestyle contract that consenting adults want to enter into. But I also have dear friends who oppose gay marriage, and I am quite sure that their opposition is not motivated by animus toward gays.
I have one friend, for example, who has proved himself over many years to be one of the world’s great celebrators of diversity, but who opposes gay marriage because he fears that gays, moreso than straights, will game the system by marrying or unmarrying as needed to secure tax advantages. Straights might do the same, but they will do it less because they’re more likely to be locked into marriages through childbearing. I happen to think this argument is completely nuts. (For the record, I think my friend is absolutely right that gays will game the system somewhat more than straights will, and that that’s a bad thing. I just think he’s absolutely nuts to put quite so much weight on it.) But everyone I know believes at least ten things that I think are completely nuts. I do not jump to the conclusion that they believe those things because they are hostile or angry or anti-this-group-or-that. I think they believe these things because they are mistaken. (Or even possibly because they’re right and I’m mistaken.) And I don’t see any reason why gay people can’t be as easily mistaken as straight people. So I don’t see any reason why gay people can’t, like my friend, consistently, honestly, and non-hypocritically, oppose gay marriage, even while lamenting the hardships a marriage ban imposes on themselves, their partners and their friends.
Or take Megan McArdle (a/k/a Jane Galt), who I do not know personally, but who has moved me with a clearly heartfelt account of her reasons for equivocating on the marriage issue. I don’t share her equivocation, but regarding her motivations, I think it would be insanely uncharitable to take her at anything other than her word.
- As for the third issue, the Harvey Milk Appreciation Day, this is just, of course, a bit of silliness. There are all sorts of reasons someone might think the calendar is already too cluttered with Appreciation Days. I would not even vote for an Isaac Newton appreciation day, and whatever you might think of Harvey Milk, he surely did less for the world than Isaac Newton. Someone else might disagree. And again, I don’t see any reason why your sexual orientation should influence your opinion on this matter.
So I think it would be good if everyone lightened up on the accusations and on the schadenfreude. The twin tragedies here are that a man’s life has been upended and that we live in the sort of world where this kind of thing can upend your life.
It will be interesting to see if he still holds the same position on those issues now that he is out.
Im mostly with you on the anti-discrimination laws. I do see a purpose for them, as well as quotas for minorities. These laws, if they have an expiration date, can be used to redress wrongs inflicted upon different groups. The only way I would support them is if they had expiration dates, but since they never do I vote against them.
I still think the best way to fix marriage is to remove it as a legal status. We can have civil contracts for all the things that people use marriage for now, but much clearer legally.
We can’t have civil contracts for all the things that people use marriage for. Tax law, immigration law, inheritance law, the list goes on and on.
Steve, I agree there tends to be excessive hysteria over these things, with labels attached far too easily and given far too much weight. On the evidence presented here alone, you cannot conclude hypocrisy, or anti-gayness. Nor can you rule it out. You can take each point and assign a probability of anti-gayness / hypocrisy. In each case, if you are anti-gay, you are more likely to 1) oppose anti-gay discrimination 2) oppose gay marriage and 3) oppose Harvey Milk day. So the more of these boxes you tick, the greater the chances of you actually being anti-gay. Box number 3 probably tells you the least, as there are probably more non anti-gay reasons to object to this. You tick 2 out of 3, (one of which is box 3, which tells us little). The person of which you speak ticks 3 out of 3. With no further information, we can say he is more likely to be anti-gay than you are.
It would be difficult to attch numbers, but I would guess that the chances of his being anti-gay from this informatiomn alone would not be very high, as there are sufficient reasons apart from anti-gayness to tick these boxes.
If we had more information, then we could refine our conclusions. If he voted for anti-racist legislation and against anti-gay legislation, then we can increase his probability of being anti-gay. We could reduce it if he voted against both. From your stratements, you are against both, and therefore your chances of being anti-gay are reduced. I don’t know what his position is.
I would like to add that many apparently non anti-gay arguments can boil down to anti-gay. For example, your friend’s very strong emphasis on the “working the system” point could be motivated by anti-gay feeling, and using this as a justification (of course it might not be).
Harold: Thanks for this comment; I think it is dead on correct in every detail.
In the case of my friend, of course, I believe I have a lot of relevant information that isn’t easy (or appropriate) to include in a blog post.
Lukas, Ill address your two point, then we can work on the rest of your list.
The first two are quite simple
When it comes to tax law, we should stop discriminating against people because of marital status. Single people should be taxed the same as married couples.
Immigration law should be severely overhauled, and having marriage as a ‘ticket to immigration’ should be removed. Please note, I married a Canadian and used this system. It’s a mess, and marriage shouldn’t be a part of it.
Inheritance law could be easily fixed without marriage. Simply having a will negates any marriage contracts claim on property. In absence of a will, inheritance would just follow the genetic lineage.
Couples that wish to share joint property can form a contract to do so, just like non-sexual partners do today.
The legal concept of marriage is an anachronism, and needs to be put out to pasture.
Steve,
I always appreciate your level-headedness on these kinds of issues. I am a libertarian with streaks of both traditionalism and utilitarianism derived, possibly, from my Christian faith. I have also argued, much to the dismay of my Christian friends, that if marriage were strictly a private affair with no sanction by the state, then the arguments for or against would be moot and that such a state of affairs would probably be the best condition to promote a peaceable society.
The problem is that not only is marriage sanctioned by the state, it is an institute that is deeply embedded in the laws at the federal and state level and across the spectrum of civil, criminal, tax, employment and family law. Those that strongly favor “gay marriage”, in essence, want to win the argument about what, semantically, marriage is. And they want to force individuals and institutions to conform to that definition.
As an example, I have a friend that is the founder of a multi-billion dollar corporation and is also a deeply committed Christian. He provides generous pro-family benefits such as flex-time, education grants, health care, etc to his employees. What would my friend do if the government required that his company extend benefits equally to all civil unions? I have posed this question to my friend. He said he would conform to the law by eliminating any benefit that would require him to conform to a definition of marriage that he believes is false. He expects that corresponding wages would have to rise but without the benefit of the tax deduction on health care expenses. On net, it would negatively affect his bottom line.
Regards,
Steve
Well, Bart, Jason Kuznicki has said it better than I could.
Sure, you could change all of those situation. But would it be a good idea to remove this practical bundle of contracts and default arrangements that serves most people quite well, most of the time?
It appears that everyone here would like to destroy marriage as we know it. Whether or not that is a good thing, it says nothing about whether the state senator is a hypocrite.
@bart.mitchell, I agree with you. I think the government should only provide civil unions, and those should be available to any consenting adult who wishes one. Marriage should be reserved for churches, and I’m fine if specific religions want to discriminate and say they don’t want to marry, say, an American to a Canadian. For example, some religions won’t sanction a marriage to a person of a different religion. To me, that’s fine, those rules are between the religion and its congregants.
The word “hypocrite” is misused regularly in the press. For example, if I believe that a certain tax break should be removed, but I take advantage of it because it is there, I am likely to be accused of hypocrisy. This is wrong because I oppose the tax break for EVERYONE–if it is there and others take advantage while I don’t, I’m a fool, or at least an altruist. A hypocrite is one who opposes the tax break for others, but not himself. This distinction seems lost on people.
What I find funny are the people (possibly fewer today and usually overly-religious folk) who used to say gay marriage should be opposed because it would hurt children. They would say children do better with both a female and male around. If this is true, then you’d think these people would call to outlaw divorce (or force marriage) if you have children under a certain age with someone. Since they don’t call for these changes, people who make these types of comments in my opinion are not consistent in such a way as to show they’re antigay. Of course, I’m not really sure how one would measure whether children do “better” under straight vs gay parents, but that’s not really the point here.
Surely the reason he voted the way he did was not that he was anti-gay but that a large number of his constituents were. Whether his vote was then out of a sense of duty to his constituents or (more likely) out of fear of losing his job is something only he can answer.
“I share the senator’s opposition to anti-discrimination laws. If that makes me anti-gay, you can also label me anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-Republican and anti-economist, because I support your right to discriminate against those groups as well. I support your rights not to date economists, not to drink with economists, and not to hire economists. I do not believe that makes me anti-economist and I do not believe it makes me a hypocrite.”
The government is justified in prohibiting certain types of discrimination because they are prevalent and irrational. If you disagree with anti-discrimination laws, then you either reject the premise that the government ought to regulate prevalent irrational behavior, or you reject the premise that discriminating against protected classes in certain circumstances is irrational.
In the same way that laws regulate the amount of capital that banks must keep in reserves, or that prohibit people from committing suicide, the government regulates the reasons people may have for discriminating against others in certain instances.
Why would we want a government, which would grant a right that allows people to make irrational decisions? Discriminating against people based on race, religion, or sexual orientation is irrational; it leads to bad outcomes because some people mistakenly believe that they can make a good judgment about a stranger based on one of these traits. For example, we know that not hiring someone solely because they are black or gay is inefficient, and yet some employers do it (and it was much more common before anti-discrimination laws) because of a deeply ingrained superstition. At the very least, discrimination based on one of these factors is a strategy that has long out-lived its usefulness. Keep in mind; our anti-discrimination laws only prohibit a few very specific discriminatory acts, which do not include dating or drinking. We can discriminate against potential mates while dating based on sexual orientation because that is probably rational discrimination.
“But everyone I know believes at least ten things that I think are completely nuts. I do not jump to the conclusion that they believe those things because they are hostile or angry or anti-this-group-or-that.”
I don’t think most people are correlating the senator’s policies with his motivation; they aren’t arguing that because his policies are bad for gay people, then we know it is more likely that he is motivated by anti-gay feelings. Instead, they believe that it is the policy itself, which is “anti-gay”. Endorsing a homophobic theory is, by definition, homophobic. A homophobic person is one who believes a homophobic theory. Therefore, if an idea or theory is homophobic, then anyone who accepts it is homophobic.
Calling the senator anti-gay is justified because his policy is inherently homophobic. Essentially, the premise of his policy is that “gayness” has a negative effect on the world; by getting married, gay people will somehow damage the institution of marriage. This is a homophobic idea.
In my mind the more salient and debate-worthy issue here is with regards to ones right to discriminate. Surely any libertarian would agree that as an owner of a private enterprise I should have the right to hire and fire whomever I want. It is also silly to think that any body should have the right (and I’d like to see how they’d propose enforcing it anyways) to think whatever we choose to about certain people or group of people.
But where do words fit in with regards to personal liberty? Should I have the right to refer to everyone by racial slurs if I please, even if it hurts their feelings? On the contrary, does the other guy have the right to prevent me from referring to him in certain ways by claiming that otherwise benign phrases are racial slurs? Surely restricting free speech in any way for the benefit of social graces is a violation of freedoms, but how is one to judge what constitutes such speech and where, if anywhere, a line can be drawn to prohibit objectively offensive behavior that does not directly impede liberty? Also, if words like the n-word are so offensive, should not they be banned by all people regardless of the addressee or intent?
Daniel: So if I have an irrational aversion to dating, say, Asian women, ought the government step in and require me to ignore racial characteristics in choosing my dating partners?
I realize you said this:
Keep in mind; our anti-discrimination laws only prohibit a few very specific discriminatory acts, which do not include dating or drinking.
But you also said that when discrimination is irrational, it should be prohibited. So does it follow from your criteria that dating ought to be included in the acts that are covered?
Josh, if you would listen to what those people say, then you would understand that (1) many of them do say that no-fault divorces are granted too easily, and (2) your inference is illogical anyway.
People date or don’t date based on who they find attractive. If you want to make an analogy with employing someone, then “being attractive” is like an essential job requirement. Not employing someone who doesn’t meet essential job requirements is not irrational, and isn’t discrimnatory. Just like not dating people you don’t find attractive isn’t discriminatory.
But it would be most unusual for things like race or sexuality to be essential job requirements, which is why excluding people from jobs based solely on those characteristics is discriminatory.
Steve, I don’t think we can know that your aversion to dating Asian women is irrational. It is pretty clear that a business owner that refuses to serve only black people will suffer as a result. It is unclear whether you will suffer as a result of discriminating against Asians. Maybe there is something about Asian women that is distinct and makes them unsuitable mates for you. However, there is clearly nothing about black people that is distinct and makes them less worthy of service.
Daniel: Or maybe I just have a distaste for Asian women. Is that distaste sufficient to justify my choosing not to date them?
Daniel, your assumption that any given person will “suffer” as a result of not serving black people is also faulty. They only suffer in terms of losing what YOU, Daniel, believe to be reasons for operating a restaurant (doing business, making a living, serving food…etc). What if they operate a restaurant in order to serve as a haven for people who remind them of their dead parents, who were white. You are in no place to judge what actions are rational and irrational from the perspective of someone else whom you know absolutely nothing about.
The Senator himself obviously feared discrimination, or he would not have been in the closet (or perhaps he feared his wife). He assumed that he would get fewer votes if he was known to be gay. I think he was probably correct. Should not voting for gay candidates be added to the list of banned activities?
I do not share Steve’s belief that anti discriminatory laws are wrong, but find it hard to come up with a consistent formula to determine what should or should not be controlled. Thinking aloud here, often it is useful to stretch the point to extremes to see if it makes things clearer. Employment. Take an extreme view – it is possible that all employers are from a discriminatory majority. Without legislation, the minority starves and their contribution is lost – bad outcome. Dating: It is a logical impossibility that all potential daters are from a discriminatory majority. There must be members of your minority for you to potentially date, so nobody is entirely prevented from dating by discrimination. This provides a logical difference between dating and employment, allowing legislation in one but not the other. I don’t find it entirely satisfactory, but it is a start.
Josh,
People like, say, Gary Becker?
Harold, from a practical standpoint, the legislature could not regulate your choice of partners because that would certainly violate your First Amendment rights, among others.
Lou, I agree with you that someone could be in business for other reasons than making a profit; that is why there is a general exception for private clubs. If you have a private club, you may discriminate for any reason that you like. But what if I am not in banking to make a profit; my father didn’t believe in capital reserves and I don’t want to have them either. Should I be allowed to take an extreme risk?
Steve,that would be sufficient because I don’t think it is knowable whether your tastes in women are rational.
Daniel:
I wrote: Or maybe I just have a distaste for Asian women. Is that distaste sufficient to justify my choosing not to date them?
You wrote: Steve,that would be sufficient because I don’t think it is knowable whether your tastes in women are rational.
Okay, then. So let’s continue to assume I have a distaste for Asian women. Is that distaste sufficient to justify my choosing not to hire them?
I have no idea what it means for a taste to be rational, and if you’re going to use that terminology, I think you ought to explain what you mean by it. The usual way economists think about these things is to say that our tastes simply are what they are, and an action is rational if it’s a good way of satisfying your tastes. Within that setup, if I have a distaste for Asian women, then it can be equally rational for me to choose not to date them and to choose not to hire them.
You should be allowed to take extreme risk so long as you are rewarded for it or bear the losses for it as the case may be. Not having capital reserves is just fine…personally I would never deposit my money in a bank that did not keep reserves, and that in and of itself should be a sufficient policing mechanism such that the supply of banks that do not keep reserves (and offer higher returns to depositors to compensate for the lack of liquidity) would satisfy the demand for depositors willing to take on more risk and bank there.
Daniel: There are practical limitations on what can be legislated for. Steve earlier asked whether dating ought to be included (even though it can’t be for practical reasons.) I am attempting to justify from principle my feeling that employment or renting appartments is a valid area for legislation, whereas dating is not. So far, I have a hypothesis that only areas where it is possible in principle to totally exclude a minority are valid areas for legislation. This would exclude dating. It might not stand up to too much scrutiny.
I am not sure where the private sphere ends and the public sphere begins in non-discrimination. Clearly no one thinks that a racist should be allowed to exclude blacks from his circle of friends, say. But if the racist owns the only food store in town, most agree that the racist should not be allowed to exclude black people from buying food there. What about associations of racists–should they be allowed to exclude blacks? I guess it depends on what the association does. If it is a bridge club, okay, if it is a neighborhood association, not okay. Can anyone articulate the dividing line for me?
Sorry, that should read “Clearly no one thinks that a racist should NOT be allowed to exclude blacks from his circle of friends, say.
Can we apply my criteria here? Racist friends – does not totally exclude blacks from friendship therefore no legislation. Only food store: can totally exclude blacks from food therefore legislate.
Associations of racists:-is it possible in principle for the associations to be solely in the control of one group? If it is just a group of people, this does not prevent others from associating, so no legislating. If it uses limited facilities, such as golf course, then it can totally exclude minorities, so legislate. This seems to be working. The key here is in principle. There could be more than one golf course, but it is possible in principle for all golf courses to be owned by one group.
Neil, I don’t see your point. What’s the difference between a group of friends and a neighborhood association? All the latter represents is the former except replace friends with “people who own property in the same area”. Fundamentally there is ZERO difference. Same with the food store. No one has a natural right to transact or associate with other people…that would necessitate the use of force. Lucky for all of us the invisible hand guides us to that socially optimal outcome.
If anyone could articulate the dividing line for you, he’s probably too smart to be reading this blog. Kudos to the man or woman that is able to put together a set of social laws that we can all agree on. The simple dividing line is that we all have the right to pursue our own interests so long as we don’t violate the right of others to do the same. In other words, everything is kosher as long as it doesn’t force people into action (or lack thereof) and all exchanges are voluntary. Forcing a merchant to sell a product to someone doesn’t work. Neither does forcing a property owner to sell to someone he doesn’t want to sell to.
Well, Lou you think that there is no dividing line, so you can state it clearly. Most people think that there is a dividing line, and I think societal regulations and conventions are based on there being a dividing line. I’m just wondering if anyone has any idea what the dividing line is, if there is a dividing line. Perhaps it has something to do with public goods. The marketplace is a public good, so if a racist wants to use exclude in the marketplace, as Lou suggests, regulations (and most people’s ethics) say no. Public goods are for everyone.
Neil, under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, places that hold themselves out as “public accommodation” are prohibited from discriminating against protected classes.This usually includes hotels and restaurants, although there are lots of exceptions. Private clubs are exempt, but they must be exclusive in some way. There are also Constitutional considerations- the government may not discriminate against protected classes either, so the neighborhood associate would likely not be able to. Individual states may expand civil rights legislation and further prohibit discrimination.
Steve, don’t you think it is possible that personal tastes can be irrational or at least inconsistent? What if I think that I love all men, but I hate Socrates? I could think that all men are created equal, but also that non-whites are inferior. The human mind is susceptible to faulty logic and inconsistency on a deep level in my experience.
Harold:
Can we apply my criteria here? Racist friends – does not totally exclude blacks from friendship therefore no legislation. Only food store: can totally exclude blacks from food therefore legislate.
This cannot be the right criterion. If we applied it in a town with *no* food stores, it would follow that the government can require you to open a food store; after all, by not opening one, you’re excluding *everyone* from food.
In the town with one food store, we have one food store owner who supplies food to *some* people, and a remaining population that supplies food to *no* people. It seems to me that in that town, everybody is equally refusing to sell food to blacks, i.e. everyone is equally excluding blacks from food. So why pick on one particular guy?
After re-reading my posts, I agree that I was unclear. What I mean by “irrational” is a general logically inconsistent idea or false belief related to a logical inconsistency.
Steve said: “It seems to me that in that town, everybody is equally refusing to sell food to blacks, i.e. everyone is equally excluding blacks from food. So why pick on one particular guy?”
Because that particular guy decided to make a living by using the market place–a public good (the food itself is, of course, a private good–he has no obligation to sell food to people who cannot pay.) If no one in the community decides not to sell food, then they all starve together or be self sufficient, but if someone decides to sell food, then he must sell to everyone.
I’m having trouble today. That should read, of course, “If no one in the community decides ___ to sell food”
Steve (at 6 down) Your Christian friend who runs the Multi Billion Dollar Company reminds me of some parables from the bible.
Like, cast not the first stone. A camel can move through the eye of the needle before a rich man can get in heaven. Jesus talking to prostitutes and the lowest of the low. Etc etc.
Then again, a Christian who’s never read the bible or refuses to live by the teaching of Jesus is nothing new.
Tell him from me that his god is a myth and he’s a hypocrite.
Steve: There may be flaws, but there is a logical distinction between an association and a store owner, or a landlord and tennant. The store-owner and landlord can in principle monopolise supply. The association member and tennent cannot
From my vantage point overseas, it seems to me that anti-discrimination legislation should represent the American ideal. Without it there can be no true equality of opportunity, and without that people are not free to exercise their right to the pursuit of happiness.
Steve: “This cannot be the right criterion. If we applied it in a town with *no* food stores, it would follow that the government can require you to open a food store; after all, by not opening one, you’re excluding *everyone* from food.”
This is not the point. The point is to decide in what areas of activity regulations would apply. If there were no foodstores, you can still have a regulation saying “All food stores must not discriminate”. This is not the same as saying “there must be a food store”
I can see a problem with defining what areas can in principle be monopolised. Is it possible to monopolise all packs of cards, so a bridge club must be regulated? I would say not, but the distinction will become fuzzy. However, it seems to work beter than I had first thoght it would.
Interesting discussion. I’m just re-stating what has already been said in different terms. I think that what Steve L is advocating is essentially the libertarian position of upholding the voluntary choices of consenting adults, along with the attending notion of no legislation of morals. When he asks why then should a store owner be required to sell to blacks, he’s being internally consistent with these beliefs.
And it is here that we bump into the philosophical limitations of the idea that we are (or should be) unbound by any moral laws we haven’t chosen. Most would probably agree that not selling food to someone simply because of race is wrong. Most would probably also agree that it is proper that such discrimination not be allowed in our society. One explanation is that just by belonging to a community we inherit certain moral obligations that are not necessarily voluntary. Sort of like having to endure that extended visit from your in-laws…;-). We not only sell food to people different than us because we want to, we also sell it because our society has deemed that for the common good we must.
For the record, I love Asian women, but I don’t think anybody would claim there are non-voluntary obligations imposed by society requiring that one must date them.
This is a little off point, while still somewhat on subject, but I’ll never know why any straight man would be mad about someone being gay men or about gay men existing. As a straight male, I would absolutely love it if all of a sudden half of the straight men out there suddenly turned gay, while the lesbian population remained constant.
I can’t prove this, but it seems to me just from casual observation that there are more gay men (at least in the United States) than lesbian women, so that’s a plus for straight men if true.
Is it not true that discrimination is a market failure? It’s the imposed cost on to society of a company’s behaviour. This could be modelled like an externality cost. The people who are discriminated against will not get the job they are looking for, and thus impose a burden on society of either being misallocated to a suboptimal job or by living off the system. If this is the case, the government has a role to step in to correct the failure by imposing either a tax on companies that discriminate (if you don’t want to hire gay people, fine, but you’re still going to have to pay for them) or by regulating that they should be employed (the anti-discrimination law). This seems like a pretty textbook case for anti-discrimination laws to me, seeing as how they would be less distorting than the alternatives. If you argue that the government doesn’t have a role in market failures, I’d like to see your justification.
I also challenge your assertion about gay people having greater incentives to game the system. It’s the sort of thing you might be able to truly know if it wasn’t for the fact that straight people with children get divorced if gay couples could not adopt – but since they do and they can – how do you claim knowledge? Just based on intuition? Not good enough.
Navin: This could be modelled like an externality cost. The people who are discriminated against will not get the job they are looking for… This is a pecuniary externality, not a market failure.
Navin, your example only holds true if every employer discriminates.
This is late, but let me add a thought: I think it’s fair to call someone anti-gay if they oppose laws protection gays from discrimination, but they do NOT oppose laws protecting other minorities from discrimination. I assume that Senator Ashburn does not publicly oppose laws against racial discrimination (otherwise, it’s hard to imagine him getting elected).
I normally get along much better with someone who opposed *all* anti-discrimination laws on principled libertarian grounds (even if I disagreed with them), than with someone who supported laws against racial discrimination but opposed laws against orientation-based discrimination. I’ve met people in both categories, and people in the latter category are far more likely to harbor some animus towards gays.
You shouldn’t discriminate in your principled support for legalized discrimination :)
Bennett: Excellent point.