Hacker News Reader

Comment by arrrg | Hacker News Reader

Are you arguing that all currently protected classes (e.g. race, religion, sex) should be abolished? That would to me be a logically coherent and non-bigoted (well, sort of, at least if the belief that the market can solve this problem and the belief that it is a problem is behind it) view of current policy. One I disagree with, but also one I can respect.

However, that’s not typically what the argument is about. Those who are opposed to this are often not opposed to other (either some or all) protected classes. That, to me, seems like an untenable view. You cannot have religion and sex as a protected class but not sexual orientation.

If I look at the protected classes I see one very obvious and big gap and that’s sexual orientation. It’s unquestionably incredibly bad policy to selectively exclude that (that is, if you are not a bigot).

View on HN

>Are you arguing that all currently protected classes (e.g. race, religion, sex) should be abolished?

Yes.

Realize that it's a reactionary position to take, but it just seems right. If someone wants to run their business with bigotry, so be it. I won't respect them, but I'd respect their "right" to do so.

I realize that there counter argument is that I've never lived in a time in which such regulation was needed, I never experienced Jim Crow, etc - and of course today Jim Crow still exists, in a way, for homosexuals.

But it just seems like another case of "two wrongs make a right." Forcing others to adhere to our own moral preferences seems fundamentally and deeply flawed. There must be another way.

> Forcing others to adhere to our own moral preferences seems fundamentally and deeply flawed.

I bet you're fine forcing others to adhere to your own moral preferences re: burglary, assault, rape, and murder.

That a slippery slope can be drawn, doesn't mean it actually exists.

A "better way?" Oh my. I bet you think there is a TechCrunch style "disruption" to be made here. :)

Forcing others, particularly at the barrel of a gun, as libertarians are fond of saying is what laws are. Perhaps you believe we shouldn't force people away from murdering or robbing others? If restaurants poison the food of customers, the market will work it out? This straw man is no sillier than the idea that preventing discrimination is as reprehensible as the discrimination itself.

Maybe we should swap out religion for sexual orientation. At least the latter is genetic (like race and sex).

You'd be setting up a straw man that presumably you don't want with this caveat. There is already some evidence that sexual orientation is not fully genetic in all cases. The real position, that I take, is who cares if it's genetic. 'Genetcism' has become the modern day naturalism, and like it's fore barer gives no insight to morality.

Indeed. Geneticism dumbs down the discourse to a paternalistic "but they can't help it!".

This is both trivializing and infantilizing. The central premise of geneticism is that these things are wrong, and the only reason we shouldn't discriminate against these people is because they can't help but be wrong.

The argument then becomes that we shouldn't discriminate against people for something they can't change - the chief implication that, if it could be changed, it should.

That whole line of argumentation is horseshit and concedes the most important point of all to the fundamentalists: that one's sexual orientation or gender identity can be morally reprehensible.

> The central premise of geneticism is that these things are wrong.

What? The central premise of geneticism is that genetics underpins the majority of human attributes and behavior. (Note: I do not personally believe this.)

Right, but geneticism is only ever applied to the controversy re: orientation and gender identity in the context of choice. Its importance in this debate is purely to rationalize "wrong" behavior - and thereby cement the belief that it can be wrong.

Notice that arguments that homosexuality is genetic is preceded by arguments that homosexuality is a choice. Instead of defeating the thoroughly shitty notion that homosexuality is inherently wrong, the argument is instead steered towards "yeah, but they can't help it".

Without the choice angle, geneticism would just be a footnote. Whether or not orientation and gender identity are genetic is entirely irrelevant to the morality debate, and its presence in the debate predicates upon the assumption that, if it weren't genetic, the morality of the situation changes.

This stretches beyond the sexuality debate, of course. Whenever the argument is made that we shouldn't discriminate based on things people can't change, the implicit baggage argument is that if we could change those things, we should.

The correct rebuttal is "there's nothing wrong with being gay/bi/black/yellow/red" not "but they didn't choose to be gay/bi/black/yellow/red".

> The central premise of geneticism is that these things are wrong

Then I deny the existence of 'geneticism' as you apparently define it, and say it's a strawman argument against the notion that anything is determined or influenced by genetics.

I'm mostly apathetic on this issue. My comment was more of a roundabout way of saying that I don't think religion should be a protected class.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com