🚀 go-pugleaf

You see, the issue really isn't about homosexuality or acting on a 
prejudice--it _is_ about reserving the ability to take and act on what should 
be private decisions based on ones values. Certainly, it would be wrong to 
force people _not_ to rent to gay folks or not to hire them. What it seems 
most don't understand is that it is equally wrong to _force_ people _to_ rent 
to gay folks or to hire them, too.

Two distinctions have to be made:

One is that the *instigation of force* is wrong. It's wrong to start the 
physical fight, and it is wrong to be the first to cheat. You have $10 and I 
have $10 dollars. I don't give you my $10. Have I _hurt_ you in any way? Is 
there something that you _had_ that has been taken? Nope. You is where you 
was--no better, no worse. Moral: not providing you with something is _not_ the 
same as taking something away. Not providing you with rental accomodation or 
hiring you is _ simply not giving you something. That's different from 
stealing--that's when you _had_ something but you don't anymore. 

You don't like how some people will behave, so you tell the government to pass 
a law making it so people have to do what you want. Fine, you now have what 
you want. Sometime later, a number of folks change their mind--so _they_ vote 
to make it against the law _to_do_ what you want. What can you say about it? 
Not much...it was _you_ who decided to give the power to the government  
rather than protecting the right to make your own decision.

Who's been burned lately? Well--one sort of ironic one was... the anti-porn 
feminists were really astonished and upset when they realized that the laws 
they had supported and insisted on having passed  meant _their_ erotica (porn) 
was subject to the same narow-mindedness they were foisting on men. Ooops.

This is not meant as a slam against feminists--they are certainly not unique 
in this regard. All sorts of lobby groups and issue-based organizations on the 
right, the left and much of what passes for the center are all running around 
hell-bent to get the government to make other folks do what they want them to 
do. And to do so, they are _losing_ the right to act on their own decisions. 
The subject matter is now the province of the state--it has been removed from 
the arena of free choice.

The state can just as easily pass a law making it mandatory that people _must_ 
not rent to homosexuals as it can to make it mandatory _to_ rent to 
homosexuals.

The point is: start taking control of your own life and stop working so hard 
to control the lives of others.

I have no interest in forcing bigots to rent to me or to hire me. Those 
cretins might end up a democratic _majority_ some day--it's happened before, 
and I sure as hell don't want _them_ having power over my rental accomodations 
or job prospects.

Ron