4 ms·

Speech is voluntary. Having been born a black or a jew (at least for the genetics) is not. Edit: more generally, this is something you are vs something you di

• bobthechef 6y ago
  That something is voluntary is irrelevant. It's a question of harm. If some group of people were to have green skin, and green skin emitted deadly substances on its own, then this would be involuntary. Should you ban such people from bars, etc?
  • jusssi 6y ago
    Taking a wider interpretation of the harm principle: Discriminating people for what they are (deadly skin emissions aside; I challenge you to come up with a real-world example) doesn't feel fair, neither to those who are being discriminated against nor the population in general. Unfair constructs in the society are likely to cause overall harm in the long term (if nothing else, the society is unlikely to extract the full potential of those who feel unjustly treated by it). So you'd have to have some benefits that are greater (or greater harm avoided) than the likely harm to justify causing that harm. So voluntaryness is not irrelevant, with a footnote that there might exist a case where it needs to be weighted against other factors.