By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
sc94597 on 27 March 2015
Edit Thread
ofrm1 said:
sc94597 said:

There are no laws in many states preventing Chic Fil A from not providing service to gay people, yet they still provide services to gay people in those states. Why? Because they know if they didn't they'd lose a lot of revenue and their competitors would gain market power. A company doesn't have to fold for its owner/owners to be hurt by poor choices. Large companies like Chic Fil A aren't in the business of losing customers or forcing people from buying their food. They are in the business to make money and gain market power. Discrimination was only so debilitating in the southern states because the southern states forced everyone to do it, making it cheaper and less harmful for the people who wanted to do it and much more harmful for those who didn't want to do it.

If their motive was to focus on maximizing profit, the CEO wouldn't have said anything on the issue as making statements like that is a big risk financially speaking. So this libertarian notion that personal beliefs do not affect a business's decisions and that the free market will weed out bigots is just false.

Also, this notion that discrimination in the south was only a result of de jure segregation is also patently false. De Facto discrimination still occurs today. The video I linked mentions Bob Jones University and how it wasn't until 2000 that they finally dropped their prohibition on interracial dating. Clearly the free market sucked at coercing them out of the market. You know why? Because there's still a ton of bigoted people in America that will support these bigoted businesses, and unless the government uses coercive force to stop them, those bigoted businesses will stay in business.

I've had this exact discussion dozens of times and I'm tired of having to argue against something that is really only an idealistic, academic discussion and has no effect on the real world. The real legal system places a priority on people's right to equal treatment under the law over a person's right to discriminate. That's just the fact of the matter. Arguing whether that ought to be the case really doesn't matter because it's not going to change a thing, and anyone who thinks pragmatically rather than on principle comes to the conclusion that it should. Since no one ever changes their mind on this issue, there's really no point in continuing.

It seems to me as if the company reprimanded him for it. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/18/1285691/-Chick-fil-A-CEO-now-regrets-dragging-the-company-into-anti-equality-morass The backlash seemed to have worked in that case. Also, as you notice even in states where there are no anti-discriminatory laws for homosexuals discrimination is not at Jim Crow levels, nowhere near that. My state - Pennsylvania - doesn't have anti-discriminatory laws for sexuality and I've never heard or read an instance where somebody was outright prevented from shopping somewhere here. Workplace discrimination might exist, but the laws barely work for that either because it is so covert. 

I didn't say it was only caused by de jure segregation. I said it was so debilitating because of de jure segregation. People had no other alternatives. All businesses were mandated to have seperate facilities for blacks and whites. Compare the northern states, which didn't do this but also didn't have anti-discrimination laws (or at least some of them didn't.) Sure blacks and whites were segregated, but not anymore than say varying ethnicities of whites were. Much of the workplace discrimination ended in the 1930's with the Congress of Industrial Organizations integrated African-Americans into their unions. Please substantiate your claims with evidence. Where is this widespread discrimination in states with no anti-discrimination laws for sexuality? 

Actually in today's legal system some states have anti-discrimination laws for sexuality and others do not. So it isn't that abstract and theoretical.