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[tinyjo]

This, about the Sexual Orientation Regulations, made me really sad. All the examples the opponents of the bill gave, like hoteliers liable to prosecution for refusing a double room to a gay couple, were things that I thought "But that's what I would want to happen!". I think I may be a lefty pinko liberal.

On the other hand, this, about a new random radio station launching in Oxford, sounds quite interesting

Comments

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

All the examples the opponents of the bill gave, like hoteliers liable to prosecution for refusing a double room to a gay couple, were things that I thought "But that's what I would want to happen!".

Quite. I have so little time for those protesting it's not even funny.

[knirirr.livejournal.com]

All the examples the opponents of the bill gave ... were things that I thought "But that's what I would want to happen!"

It would be delightful if people were so pleasant to each other that they would be happy to overlook their own biases, though I fail to see how forcing the appearance of such pleasantry will actually promote the real thing.

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

It rarely changes the opinions of the current generation but it can have an effect on the next.

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

But surely, not always for the better? - cf the rise of the BNP, on the back of governmental promotion of race equality/multiculturalism, which they would read as force, causing them to want to kick against it even harder, iyswim.

I can't understand why an hotelier would refuse the money to be made from a double room let to a gay couple; but then, a) would they actually want to stay somewhere where the welcome was so unwelcoming? and b) it'll be the hotelier who loses out on revenue - especially given how fast bad reviews travel on the web these days.

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

> would they actually want to stay somewhere where the welcome was so unwelcoming?

Sure -- in fact, in the past, there was often little choice. The satisfactions it provides are to do with visibility, promoting tolerance and forcing change. After all, the registry office wasn't a very welcoming place for gay couples up till recently, but this year there's been a stampede in that direction.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't want to stay somewhere unwelcoming, but if my choices are:

rule out numerous vacations and chances to visit people because no hotel will put me up

or

deal with some people being mildly rude or disapproving, but get to enjoy my life

then yes, I might stay somewhere that didn't want me.

In fact, I travel places where people don't want me all the time. I'm legally blind, and I tend to make people uncomfortable. Just walking about and living my life I often make drivers highly uncomfortable. They see the cane and panic, often doing stupid things. Just yesterday, I was waiting at a light to cross, not even off of the sidewalk, when a car stopped at a green, waited, it turned yellow, then red, then I crossed. I wish the driver hadn't done that, but there wasn't much I could do. I crossed properly with the light.

Someday I will have a wheelchair. I'll be one of the most difficult combinations for people to wrap their heads around or know how to deal with - a blind female in a wheelchair. There will be places more okay with that and less okay with that, but really, I don't expect anywhere will ~want~ me. But I don't want to let that keep me from living where I want to live or let that keep me from going places. I'm sorry that my existence makes others uncomfortable, even when they wouldn't need to act any differently because of me, but I'd rather they learn to deal than I constantly limit my options to cater to their discomfort. I'd have to seriously warp my life and give up on so many things people take for granted to do that, and I would imagine the same is true of a homosexual couple. And why should they?

[knirirr.livejournal.com]

The adjustment of attitudes over one or more generations is an interesting point. Do you think that the use of legal force to achieve that adjustment is more effective (presumably quicker) than social pressure without the legal force?

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

I think that it's often quicker although it can also be more painful during the transitional period; it's a case of balancing up those things.

[knirirr.livejournal.com]

Thanks.
Do you think there is any difference between this matter and freedom of association? For example, most people would probably agree that it is up to a homeowner to decide who they would invite to their home to stay or for a dinner party, and who they would not. Why should this freedom not be allowed if money changes hands for the bed or the food?

[applez.livejournal.com]

I can't help being amused by this question. I know this question is specifically for this issue and British society in particular, but I think the question was definitively answered by the civil rights movement in the US (and for the US) for a different host of discriminatory 'traditions.' Boycotting played its part in moral suasion (with little larger financial impact, when the market was already profiting from an apartheid system that had traveling bluesmen sleeping in their cars or bus stations, not hotels), but ultimately corrective legislation was required.

[yalovetz]

This isn't legislating people's personal opinions, it's legislating the provision of goods and services. I don't care what the hotelier's personal biases are so long as I get a comfortable room to stay in for the night.

[knirirr.livejournal.com]

so long as I get a comfortable room to stay in for the night.

Why should a hotelier be forced to give you a room if he doesn't want to?

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Because he advertised available rooms. Similarly I wouldn't want it to be OK for him to refuse a room to a black person or a Hindu and, in fact, it isn't. Why should there be special provision for discrimiating against gays?

[yalovetz]

Because selling goods and services (such as hotel services) is a critical component of an economic system. An economic system is a mechanism designed to distribute resources. I want my economic systems to distribute resources as fairly as possible.

It wouldn't be all that problematic if just one person wanted to refuse to sell just me just one item because they didn't like me personally, or had some obscure personal prejudice against me. But when their prejudice is based on widespread prejudices reinforced in and by the rest of society then their refusal to sell me that item becomes part of a larger pattern where lots of people who are like me in certain ways are refused service by many different vendors in many different circumstances and over an extended period of time. This larger pattern constitutes a societal prejudice that has become systemic (as in, embedded in the overall economic system). Legislation like this is a way of trying to remove that large scale prejudice from the economic system we use to distribute goods and services, not necessarily about changing individuals' personal preferences.

[white_hart]

Polly Toynbee has a piece on the subject in today's Guardian.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I haven't really poked around the whole Comment is Free thing as much as I might. I'm amused by stuff like this, in a joy-of-slapfights sort of way.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

It's the home of slapfights and people looking for slapfights to comment on.

:)

[white_hart]

I only ever tend to read Polly Toynbee and Zoe Williams there, but the comments do tend to be slapfight-a-go-go.

Although that can happen in the best regulated of locations...

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

I love the endless stream of people who read Zoe Williams purely in order to complain that her columns are worthless, and a trivial waste of electrons - which does make you wonder whether they should be getting their kicks elsewhere.

[nuttyxander.livejournal.com]

There is much much better. From the comments on Monbiot's bit beating up Blair for his not flying is "a bit impractical really" comment the other day.

Perhaps George would care to explain why he crossed the Atlantic and then cris-crossed continental North America by plane on his recent book tour, rather than using a ship/train combination?

Was it perhaps "a bit impractical actually" to fit all those cities into the short timescale using ground transport.

Hypocrisy thine name is Monbiot.

[iruineverything.livejournal.com]

hurray for leftie liberalism! it depresses me deeply that people are still dumb enough to think it's their religious right to be bigotted bastards...

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

"But that's what I would want to happen!"

Even sadder, I thought "But, surely they are already liable for prosecution if they don't do those things?"

I feel so naieve.

sexual orientation bill

[(Anonymous)]

Have to say I enjoyed this thread Jo. Nice to see you having to justify your statements. Have to say I think you can never change prejudice by legislation it tends to go underground and unspoken, and that in my lifetime people were willing to put up signs saying "no blacks,no dogs, no Irish". I suppose I think that if you're worried about who is going to use your services then your're in the wrong business, but of course you could always just say there was no room available. I having a law telling people what to think a good idea? - as usual I can see both sides of the argument.

Re: sexual orientation bill

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

I think Zac's right that the American example is a good one her - civil rights legislation 40 years ago has really changed things - not all the way but significant progress.

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

I think I may be a lefty pinko liberal.

You make that sound like such a bad thing. :D

But yeah, I think their attitude is really shitty. =( I'm still upset at my state for passing Measure 36, which defines marriage as being valid only between a man and a woman. >.< It's like our society has taken one step forward and five steps back with respect to gay acceptance. It's really sad. =(