Notes: This series of Facebook comments took place on a post on the wall of a gay friend that I believe was related to Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a law passed by Indiana to prevent government from substantially burdening the free exercise of religion. The law, which arose in part as a reaction to the Colorado Masterpiece Cake Shop case, passed into law the day of this thread. I engaged in response to another commenter who’s content was acerbic and anti-gay. This series of comments is a good example of the kinds of discussions with strangers I had on Facebook when I was most involved with the platform. The consistent failure to actually change any minds through all this engagement (as evidenced here) is one of the reasons I ultimately left the platform. I posted on the same topic in a comment on another thread a few days later. (DL, June 14, 2023).
[Commenter 1 Name Redacted], I hesitate to engage you simply because I’m not sure it’s going to get us anywhere profitable, but silence can be its own form of complicity, so . . .
1) The formulations “degenerate minority” and “degenerate sexual deviant” are not an indicator of an open minded clear thinker. Your expression is dismissive and muddy. It basically comes across as bombastic namecalling. Perhaps you could have written something like: “You shouldn’t get extra rights at my expense simply because of your race or your sexual preference.” In this way you could have made the same point without unnecessarily raising the temperature level of the conversation and offending many of the people you’re ostensibly trying to dialog with.
2) In regards to the larger issue of private property and individual rights versus public rights and priorities in a free society:
I subscribe to the concept of the social contract. That is to say, as members of a freely self-governing society, we undertake certain commitments to one another. In essence, we willingly agree to give up some of our autonomy in exchange for the benefits and protections of combined effort.
For example, I give up the ability to drive anywhere, wherever, however willy nilly in exchange for well managed public roads. I accept and submit to rules regarding speed, turning behavior, alcohol consumption, seatbelts, texting, functioning headlights, etc. in exchange for a safer, more reliable transporation experience.
The same applies in every facet of our collective life. There is a give. And there is a take.
In regards to the public marketplace, I accept rules regarding fair and equitable trade for all in exchange for police protection, protection from unfair competitive practicies by more powerful competitors and banks, easy access to my customers and suppliers provided by the public transportation infrastructure, etc.
No one of us can exist as an island as efficiently, effectively, or pleasantly as we can if we work together.
The gift—and the art—of democracy is learning to live together in cooperation and peace with people with whom we may strongly disagree.
The only alternative is the resort to force—whether it be the police baton or the guns of war.
Yes, [Commenter 1], it is private property . . .
. . . private property that benefits from electricity, and police protection, and road access, and sewer lines, and garbage collection, and civil defense, and water, and noise ordinances, and a host of other protections and services that are paid for, implemented, and maintained by the community as a whole.
Gays and other minorities are part of the community that makes it possible for you to run a business on your private property. They are among the people walking the beats, and running the generators, and picking up the garbage, and fixing the water mains, etc. Without their contribution to the community (and to you), you couldn’t run your business.
A private property owner should not expect unfettered access to the benefits of community membership without making conncessions to the community that provides those benefits.
Are you suggesting that the electric company should be able to shut off your power, the city shut off your water, the cops block access to your driveway, etc. if they decide your views are too bigoted for the community?
Because that’s the logic of what you’re proposing . . .
That water of yours is pumped by private pumps, and those are private generators powering your lights.
[Commenter 1], in reasoned dialog it’s customary to respond in a clear and articulate way to the arguments made by the other side. You’re not doing that. I’ve addressed you respectfully and directly in a point-by-point fashion. Your response has been to simply re-serve your same claims with a side of passive-aggressive ad hominem.
Please review my last two lengthy posts and respond directly to the arguments made therein. Otherwise, for my part, you may consider yourself utterly ignored.
[Commenter 1], your atomistic approach to social relations is not sustainable or scalable in a free society.
Think of Kant’s imperative: Act in a way that you could wish all others would act.
If everyone acted as you do, you’d be so much worse off than you are now! Do you use an iPhone? Tim Cook is gay. Do you listen to the Nutcracker? Tchaikovsky was gay. Do you watch sports? Star Wars? Listen to rock and roll? Black people everywhere!
This is like the strict separation of American Fundamentalism, but ten times worse!
The fact is, if all these minorities you so categorically despise and dismiss (and their friends, family, and supporters) were to treat you the way you treat them, you would have no business and live in impoverished darkness.
At the root of it, I see a benighted form of pride. You see yourself as strong, independent, and superior. A man above the crowd.
The sad reality is, you’re as dependent as any man or woman on the good will of others, and yet refuse to acknowledge it.
And in regards to the issue of the disparity in crime rates, education, public assistance, single motherhood, etc. between middle-class white America and urban black America, you seem to chalk it all up to race.
White Privilege is a thing. You should read Ta-Nehisi Coates. A firebrand, but at the core, he touches on the real, generational affects of racism in America.
Your efforts and hard work in life have benefited from so many privileges, exceptions, built-in hand outs, and bonus power ups that poor urban blacks don’t get.
The fact that you pat yourself on the back for getting them is laughable and sad and infuriating all at the same time.
[Commenter 2 Name Redacted], there is always a benefit in speaking truth in a calm and rational way, even if it’s just for the practice and for the sharpening of ideas that come to the writer and sympathetic readers.
I know my own framing of these issues has benefited from this thread.
“A contract requires some forbearance by both parties.”
[Commenter 1], you ARE both parties. A business is also a consumer!
The business depends upon essential goods and services to keep the doors open and the lights on.
Again, are you proposing that the privately-owned utility companies that prop you up should have the right to cut you off for any reason or no reason? They are private companies that currently are legally required to service you if you have the money to pay.
Should the situation change? Should these companies have the same freedom of association you speak of?
Look at it this way, [Commenter 1].
One thing this ultimately comes down to is freedom of speech and freedom of thought in a self-governing society. These freedoms must be protected by all and for all, or self-government falls.
But it’s not enough to simply protect unpopular or offensive speech from legal recrimination; they must also be protected from popular recrimination—not just from the hangman’s noose, but from the lynch mob’s noose as well.
Without the kind of minority protections in the marketplace you’re arguing so strenuously against, minorities of all kinds (whether of race, or sexual preference, or religion, or other ideology) would have to fear exclusion from the marketplace if they spoke up or acted (or existed) in unpopular ways.
If freedom of speech is truly to be a part of a society, it’s not enough that I be free from the fear of arrest and prosecution for speaking up, I need to be free from the fear of market exclusion as well.
What good is my freedom of speech if it means I can’t get arrested if I speak up, but instead my power gets cut off and I can’t buy groceries? Surely you can see the chilling effects that would have on minority speech. You have some pretty unpopular ideas. How would it be for you if people who didn’t like them could refuse you business across the board?
I’ll use as an example the Sigma Alpha Epsilon guys at Oklahoma University and their racist chant. There have been serious, perhaps life-long repurcussions for them. The N word and racist talk is the closest thing to illegal speech in our society. You can easily lose your job for it, be expelled from school for it, and be marginalized in many ways.
But thanks to minority protections, even if your customers refuse to come to YOU for business, they can’t refuse you coming to THEM. And perhaps even more importantly, because they CAN’T refuse you, they themselves can’t suffer recriminations for doing business with you. Because that’s what would really shut things down. Even somebody otherwise willing to do business with you would be afraid to do so because they might be tainted in the popular view by association with you. (The mind fills with examples from the bad old days.)
As I think about it, I can see this is a vital principle of freedom. I am free in how I choose to spend my dollars, but the market is freely open to all, which means I am free to SPEND, but also to SPEAK.
This system seems to me to be a great compromise between the individual and the community in a free society, and one which I think in the long run will work out much better for you than otherwise.
Also, and for the record. This . . .
“Wildly errant personal attacks in lieu of substantive argument are indications that you realize you’re in the wrong and on some level you feel bad about it. I’ve seen this with self-hating liberals a thousand times.”
. . . is total bullshit.
The hallmark of clear thinking is precision coupled with the tight integration of verifiable grounds, whether evidentiary or rational.
Your writing here has been characterized by imprecision, baseless and/or unprovable assumptions, and a lack of grounds; through it all runs a deep arrogance and disrespect for others.
I tire of you.
Go back and reread what I have written. Respond in a thorough, clear, orderly and grounded fashion. Feel free to message it to me to spare the others.
Otherwise, I have done.