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Personally, I think on that (on balance) it's preferable to have freedom of association. However, I can respect and understand the opposite view as long as it'

by wyager 9y ago

Personally, I think on that (on balance) it's preferable to have freedom of association. However, I can respect and understand the opposite view as long as it's consistent. A lot of people I know who were of the opinion that bakeries should be legally obligated to bake wedding cakes are now the same people defending cloudflare et al. for refusing access to critical infrastructure (not just cake!) for political reasons.

seabird 9y ago
This inconsistency completely rubs me the wrong way. There's nothing that pisses me off more than hearing people rail against a business's right to refuse service instantly double back when the company did something they like. These are not muddy waters where it's hard to tell you're contradicting yourself; people are outright encouraging things they'd otherwise argue against just because it's going their way.
danso 9y ago
Ask your friends, but I'm assuming that the cake baking cases that they argued about referred to sexual preference being a protected class. Political mindset is not a protected class. Assuming someone will ask, "Why do we talk about what is (law) rather than what could be (ideals)", you're perfectly fine to hold the ideal that political beliefs should not be discriminated against. But you probably aren't happy with just believing in an ideal, and so you want to know why political belief is not a legally protected class like age, religion, sex, race, etc. This means we have to include real world considerations, including legal history/precedent and the realistic implementation of law, when arguing whether political beliefs should get legal protections. To make a quick initial argument, I think political belief is hard to protect because it is nearly indistinguishable from any kind of belief. At that point, how sensical is a legal system after it becomes impossible to discriminate on any kind of assertive opinion? The line is already difficult and blurred with religion (which is protected because of centuries of prior belief and political situations), as we see in the case of a religious baker refusing to bake for gay customers. I'm not saying there's an easy or happy answer to this and similar disputes, just that protection of political beliefs would make things even worse without much benefit. The other thing to consider is that as someone who has political beliefs and wants to assert them, you have the entire U.S. political system to participate and effect the change you want. But being political is not necessary when following a religion, and in some religions, it's outright antithetical. These folks would have little recourse to petition politicians and lawmakers.
- wyager 9y ago
  Yes, your comment is correct but also tautological. A protected class is essentially defined as those categories by which businesses are not allowed to choose customers. It would be just as reasonable to include political beliefs as well as e.g. religious beliefs.
  - danso 9y ago
    It's not tautological. The legislative process in which certain classes were deemed protected was not a simple declaration. I'm not going to try to look up the history and issues that led to religion being explicitly protected in the Forst Amendment, but the American Disabilities Act was passed relatively recently enough to find contemporary accounts of the debate and controversy that preceded its passage: http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/07/26/ada.history/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/07/26/ada.history/index.html The outlawing of discrimination against disabilities is, IMO, very humane, and it's hard to imagine something like it being sponsored by a very liberal Senator and signed by a Republican president. That said, the law has required significant costs from society. California, which I believe has stronger disability laws, still faces big debate about the cost to businesses: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article142514304.html http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert... As accepted as ADA is by the status quo, that doesn't mean that the definition of disabled, or of the costs needed to fulfill the law, are easily understood. But I do think its issues and conflicts are relatively simple compared to a law that outlawed discrimination against political beliefs. How would that even work without getting quickly entangled with the First Amendment? Or even in implemented in everyday life. Business owners have no right whatsoever to fire someone for expressing beliefs that run profoundly counter to the business? Or to kick out a trolling customer?
    - wyager 9y ago
      > How would that even work without getting quickly entangled with the First Amendment? You tell me, you're the one claiming it's unacceptable to refuse to do business with certain kinds of people. > Business owners have no right whatsoever to fire someone for expressing beliefs that run profoundly counter to the business? You mean like a Christian business being unable to refuse service to people whose activities run counter to the tenets of Christianity? Remember, I'm not the one claiming forcing people to do business against their will is acceptable.
seany 9y ago
I think the freedom of association is preferable as well, as long as you deal with the possibility of monopolies the right way.
ScottBurson 9y ago
Since I'm one of those people, let me defend this position. Cloudflare didn't kick Daily Stormer off until DS started publicly claiming that the reason CF was continuing to serve them was that CF secretly agreed with DS's politics [0]. That was a lie and might even be cause for a libel suit. The analogy would be if the gay couple secured the agreement of the baker to bake them a wedding cake, then started announcing publicly that the reason the baker was doing that was because the baker was secretly gay. I don't think anyone would have a problem, at that point, with the baker telling them to take their business elsewhere. Being a member of an unpopular group doesn't give you carte blanche to abuse the goodwill of the private businesses that would otherwise be required to serve you. The actions of GoDaddy and Google in this case are less defensible, and indeed, I don't defend them. (If I understand correctly, GoDaddy kicked DS off their DNS service, so they went to Google, who not only refused to serve their domain but put it on hold, so they can't even use it elsewhere. I'm not aware that DS provoked either company they way they did Cloudflare.) [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
- sddfd 9y ago
  If CF was legally obligated to offer their services to them, such a claim wouldn't hold water. I'm not saying CF /should/ be obligated to provide the service to everyone. I'm just saying if they were, then speculation about any implied agreement would go away.
  - ScottBurson 9y ago
    No business is legally required to serve customers who defame and disrupt their business. The law only requires that the same standard be applied to customers who happen to be members of protected classes as is applied to everyone else.

by wyager 9y ago

seabird 9y ago

This inconsistency completely rubs me the wrong way. There's nothing that pisses me off more than hearing people rail against a business's right to refuse service instantly double back when the company did something they like. These are not muddy waters where it's hard to tell you're contradicting yourself; people are outright encouraging things they'd otherwise argue against just because it's going their way.

danso 9y ago

Ask your friends, but I'm assuming that the cake baking cases that they argued about referred to sexual preference being a protected class. Political mindset is not a protected class. Assuming someone will ask, "Why do we talk about what is (law) rather than what could be (ideals)", you're perfectly fine to hold the ideal that political beliefs should not be discriminated against. But you probably aren't happy with just believing in an ideal, and so you want to know why political belief is not a legally protected class like age, religion, sex, race, etc. This means we have to include real world considerations, including legal history/precedent and the realistic implementation of law, when arguing whether political beliefs should get legal protections. To make a quick initial argument, I think political belief is hard to protect because it is nearly indistinguishable from any kind of belief. At that point, how sensical is a legal system after it becomes impossible to discriminate on any kind of assertive opinion? The line is already difficult and blurred with religion (which is protected because of centuries of prior belief and political situations), as we see in the case of a religious baker refusing to bake for gay customers. I'm not saying there's an easy or happy answer to this and similar disputes, just that protection of political beliefs would make things even worse without much benefit. The other thing to consider is that as someone who has political beliefs and wants to assert them, you have the entire U.S. political system to participate and effect the change you want. But being political is not necessary when following a religion, and in some religions, it's outright antithetical. These folks would have little recourse to petition politicians and lawmakers.

wyager 9y ago
Yes, your comment is correct but also tautological. A protected class is essentially defined as those categories by which businesses are not allowed to choose customers. It would be just as reasonable to include political beliefs as well as e.g. religious beliefs.
- danso 9y ago
  It's not tautological. The legislative process in which certain classes were deemed protected was not a simple declaration. I'm not going to try to look up the history and issues that led to religion being explicitly protected in the Forst Amendment, but the American Disabilities Act was passed relatively recently enough to find contemporary accounts of the debate and controversy that preceded its passage: http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/07/26/ada.history/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/07/26/ada.history/index.html The outlawing of discrimination against disabilities is, IMO, very humane, and it's hard to imagine something like it being sponsored by a very liberal Senator and signed by a Republican president. That said, the law has required significant costs from society. California, which I believe has stronger disability laws, still faces big debate about the cost to businesses: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article142514304.html http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert... As accepted as ADA is by the status quo, that doesn't mean that the definition of disabled, or of the costs needed to fulfill the law, are easily understood. But I do think its issues and conflicts are relatively simple compared to a law that outlawed discrimination against political beliefs. How would that even work without getting quickly entangled with the First Amendment? Or even in implemented in everyday life. Business owners have no right whatsoever to fire someone for expressing beliefs that run profoundly counter to the business? Or to kick out a trolling customer?
  - wyager 9y ago
    > How would that even work without getting quickly entangled with the First Amendment? You tell me, you're the one claiming it's unacceptable to refuse to do business with certain kinds of people. > Business owners have no right whatsoever to fire someone for expressing beliefs that run profoundly counter to the business? You mean like a Christian business being unable to refuse service to people whose activities run counter to the tenets of Christianity? Remember, I'm not the one claiming forcing people to do business against their will is acceptable.

seany 9y ago

I think the freedom of association is preferable as well, as long as you deal with the possibility of monopolies the right way.

ScottBurson 9y ago

Since I'm one of those people, let me defend this position. Cloudflare didn't kick Daily Stormer off until DS started publicly claiming that the reason CF was continuing to serve them was that CF secretly agreed with DS's politics [0]. That was a lie and might even be cause for a libel suit. The analogy would be if the gay couple secured the agreement of the baker to bake them a wedding cake, then started announcing publicly that the reason the baker was doing that was because the baker was secretly gay. I don't think anyone would have a problem, at that point, with the baker telling them to take their business elsewhere. Being a member of an unpopular group doesn't give you carte blanche to abuse the goodwill of the private businesses that would otherwise be required to serve you. The actions of GoDaddy and Google in this case are less defensible, and indeed, I don't defend them. (If I understand correctly, GoDaddy kicked DS off their DNS service, so they went to Google, who not only refused to serve their domain but put it on hold, so they can't even use it elsewhere. I'm not aware that DS provoked either company they way they did Cloudflare.) [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/

sddfd 9y ago
If CF was legally obligated to offer their services to them, such a claim wouldn't hold water. I'm not saying CF /should/ be obligated to provide the service to everyone. I'm just saying if they were, then speculation about any implied agreement would go away.
- ScottBurson 9y ago
  No business is legally required to serve customers who defame and disrupt their business. The law only requires that the same standard be applied to customers who happen to be members of protected classes as is applied to everyone else.