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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

[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.

[knirirr.livejournal.com]

Why do you find it amusing?
When you refer to corrective legislation are do you mean the creation of new laws to restrict and regulate social in ways of which you approve, or the removal of old ones that restrict and regulate them in ways of which you disapprove, or both?

[applez.livejournal.com]

Well, given the choice between legislating a social norm to allow minorities to hire a room at market price from a hotelier like any other customer, or a police state to keep order on a restive population well down the cycle of violence - the decision was clear.

As I said, this was clearly the state of US society at the time.

Incidentally, none too dissimilar extremes played out in the Castro after the Harvey Milk murder trial.