Same-Sex Marriage and the Threat of the Golden Rule

by Doctor Science

Legal and social barriers to same-sex marriage equality in the US are crumbling with startling speed, faster than anyone predicted 20 years ago, or even 5. Catholics Andrew Sullivan and Ross Douthat, and Eastern Orthodox (former Baptist, former Catholic) Rod Dreher have been having a conversation about how the losing side should act, and how they should expect to be treated. Dreher, in particular, feels that conservatives (or "trads") in certain professions (law, the media, entertainment) face significant social stigma for their religiously-motivated attitudes, and that in time there may be legal constraints on them for their beliefs.

What Dreher is afraid of is the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule looks like really simple, even milquetoasty, kindergarten-level morality: "Do as you would be done by". But it is also a threat, especially to people who have been in positions of power or privilege and then lose them.

If you've treated people badly, if you've scorned, despised, and harassed them, then you've laid down a precedent about how you "would be done by". If the tables turn, why should expect anything other than your own medicine?

All the participants in this conversation admit that religious groups have, in the past, treated non-straight people really badly, to a degree that it is right to call "persecution". Dreher says:

Losing privilege is not the same as persecution, of course, but neither is gaining privilege a guarantee that you will be fair to the losers. And though it is right that those on the losing side of a culture war should try to be proportionate in their response to defeat, it is unfair and unrealistic to expect them to accept without protest whatever terms that the victors may impose on them.

What he doesn't want to notice is that active persecution would be "fair", in the sense of the Golden Rule.

The trouble with this sort of eye-for-an-eye fairness, of course, is that you end up with the whole world blind. The victors have to be merciful, to treat the losers better than they themselves were treated when they were on the downside -- to set up a situation where the Golden Rule means we all learn to respect each other, whether we deserve it or not.

But just because we respect each other doesn't mean we need to respect every *behavior*. As Henry Farrell points out,

Bigotry derived from religious principles is still bigotry.

Indeed, John Holbo pointed out in the comments there that the word "bigot" originally meant a religious hypocrite, so you might say that religious bigotry is the most authentic kind.

Comments

[Countme-In]

Only bald libertarians who secretly long to be dominated and whipped by a prostitute who dresses up like an IRA auditor with the "Ballad of the Alamo" played full volume during the festivities,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbX1JKknS04

[Countme-In]

IRS auditor.

IRA auditors would only be today on St. Patty's Day.

[hairshirthedonist]

St. Patricia's Day?

[thompson]

Only bald libertarians who secretly long to be dominated and whipped by a prostitute who dresses up like an IRA auditor with the "Ballad of the Alamo" played full volume during the festivities,

...and my hair is getting thinner every day. Unsettling vision of the future, to be sure.

[russell]

Could you elaborate on why you view it as a right to engage in business with a specific person?

I don't. At least in the sense of a constitutionally protected right.

However, I also don't see any particular right that a "public accommodation" business owner has to NOT engage in business with a specific person.

That being so, I'm fine with laws that say they must.

As a practical matter, I think we land at about the same place on the issue.

[Laura Koerbeer]

I hope Charleycarp will stick around.

[thompson]

As a practical matter, I think we land at about the same place on the issue.

We seem to, yes. And it also seems I've beaten this particular subject to death. As always, it's enlightening and challenging to discuss these things.

For me, anyway. YMMV.

[Hartmut]

As long as hay can be made from it, the topic will get revived. And it's always useful to have several such themes available. Outrage rotation, you know ;-)

[CJColucci]

Where prostitution is legal, can potential customers be refused for any reason or no reason at all?

Now there's a fascinating question, and I wish I had the time to look into it. Federal law would not apply to solo hookers, since it defines an "employer" as, leaving some techniclities aside, an outfit with 15 or more employees. If Silky the Pimp runs 20 hos, there may be a question whether they are employees or independent contractors. I don't know how they run things at any of the legal brothels in Nevada, and I don't know anything about Nevada state anti-discrimination law. But one of these days, if I can spare the time, I'll definitely look into it.

[Hartmut]

Over here the question came up too when organized prostitution was still illegal. There was a cafe in Berlin that was known to to be the place where the ladies and the clients met to contract (literally and/or methaphorically) while the sex act happened in a house behind the one with the cafe. The (female) owner of the cafe was iirc also the owner of the flats in the house behind that she rented out to the ladies. The question was, whether she was thus running an (illegal) brothel and what would be the legal factors determining the answer. Iirc the whole thing became kosher with just a few tweaks of the model.
Legally the contract between a prostitute and client was nil and void by definition (sittenwidrig = legally immoral), so formally the sex act was not a business transaction but a (consensual) private one and the payment formally just a gift that a client could simply refuse to hand over (thus the strict cash first policy).

[Slartibartfast]

thus the strict cash first policy

Our colloquialism in the US for this kind of arrangement is, conveniently, "tit for tat".

I suspect that prostitution is still illegal in most places over here because people are afraid of the temptation for moral hazard. It'd be nice for the whole self-control notion to catch on a bit more.

We don't, after all, make alcohol illegal (anymore) because of the moral hazard.

Regarding substance abuse: I like the Louis Wu model of coping with/accommodating addiction. But I do realize that's fiction.

[CharleyCarp]

That's very kind, Laura.

[Ugh]

Hi Charley!

[CharleyCarp]

Hey, Ugh!

I don't know of any state that has a statute read anywhere nearly as broadly as the Unruh Act. DC includes personal appearance as a protected category, so I guess you can't fire someone for have dreads. Most places, though, it's pretty much like the federal scheme.