With the furor in the new and on the net over Arizona’s SB 1062, ‘Turn away the gay’ bill, there has been a lot of talk, discussion, argument, and name calling over the issue of people who run businesses and want to have those business conform to their personal moral standards. So, here I am wading into the minefield with my own idiosyncratic ideas.
First off, let’s take as a given that forcing someone to act in a manner directly opposed to their deeply held moral map is a touchy proposition and one that should be handled with deft care and an eye to personal freedom. Few among us would consent if the government forced up to kill a puppy to get out tax returns.
That said I do think there is a qualitative difference between your personal actions and the actions of a business, even if it is a business that you own. Your business is not you. A business does not have a deeply held moral map, it is an artificial construction not a person.
So how would I cleave this knot?
Let’s look at businesses and their owners in terms of how the assets are different in terms of protection.
Subject A as a private person decides to host a free carnival for the neighborhood. There is a spill of a slick oily mess, and though warned about it, Subject A does nothing. When a person slips, falls, and breaks their neck from this danger, Subject A is in danger from a civil suit, a civil suit that take everything Subject A owns, cash, stocks, their home, in restitution for the damages to the person with the broken neck. Subject A and their assets are fully at risk for their action and fully responsible for their actions.
Subject B form a business, an LLC or some other artificial construction for the purpose of throwing their neighborhood carnival. They too have a slippery oily mess, they too are warned, and they too do nothing. The person falls, breaks their necks and the business is at rick of lawsuit. The lawsuit can take everything the business owns as part of a damages award, but the business owner has their personal assets protected, but the shield that is the artificial construct the ‘business.’
Any lawyers among you will see that this is a gross simplification by a layman, but the concept is clear, Subject A was operating entirely from the personal sphere, while Subject B was operating from the public one. Subject B utilized laws passed to protect and shield business owners, putting distance between their business and their personal property.
In my opinion, and what I think should be legal opinion as well, any business that utilizes the public sphere, LLC laws, incorporation, and so on are ineligible to claim personal moral codes and restrictions. They are not their owners and by taking advantage of public laws in their benefits they surrender any claim for discriminatory practices.
If you take the protections of the public trust, such as incorporation and the like, I feel you are bound by the public trust, which in American mean practices of nondiscrimination. Forego the advantages of a artificial creation, such as incorporation, and as far I am concerned you can hire and exclude anyone you like.
Jim, dear, you have missed the point of the law Arizona has put in place (or, rather, failed to put in place, since I understand the Governor vetoed it.)
The businesses were being given the right to refuse service to people who were openly gay. It is not the same thing as who one hires, but instead is who one serves.
A business should serve any potential customer. This is simple, common service. What was attempted to be put into law was similar in many ways to segregation (and worse) in the South. As you know, businesses in the South used to be required to either not serve black people (African Americans) or to serve them in a separate (usually inferior) area from their white customers. This was the intent of the Arizona law – to allow a business to refuse service based on someone’s sexual preference. I would go further and say someone’s ASSUMED sexual preference since few people go about announcing said preference. (You don’t walk into a restaurant and announce, “Hi! My name is Jim and I am straight.” Neither do gay men and women make such announcements.)
To me this is the pure stupidity of the law. Very few business relationships require knowledge or information about the sexuality of either person in a business relationship. Unless you are ordering a wedding cake and want two men (or two women) on the top, there is almost no time in a business relationship when sexual identity is relevant. When I buy food at a restaurant, no one needs to know my preferences in bed. If I go out with my husband, fine. If I go out with one of my female friends, fine. Or, if I was in Arizona and out with female friends, would a restauranteur say to me, “I’m sorry. We don’t serve Lesbians.” and leave me to say that I am not and never have been gay? How foolish is this? I am shocked that valuable legistlative time has been wasted by all this nonsense, truly I am.
Well you know if you don’t want to work for said company you don’t have to. And how does moral apply to immoral practices. Why should I. That creates a company conform to my workers. I reward them by paying them to perform as I need or I could hire robots to do the work. Guess you did not see that. Gays are ok but in a professional atmosphere of a company banging a co worker on a table in the middle of a 5 star restaurant won’t bring in more customers.