www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Government regulation in our lives

Again no one is saying repeal the Civil Rights Act. Dr. Paul(s) is not, I am not and neither is Fr. Deacon. No one wants segregation or racism. It is a message foreign to the Gospel. I am sad to the fact that some people in the South, as you claim, would want to return to Jim Crow, sad cometary on our society and its lack of Christian principles.

Also, it is not naive to think the free market would force a racist establishment to either close or change its policy. If no one comes to your place of business you will either adapt to survive or you will find yourself starving. Very simple. Will it work every where? I suppose not, but if you want to expand and make money then being a racist is not a good business model, not now or fifty years ago.

But government telling private citizens and enterprise who they can and can't serve is a dangerous slope.. why stop there at small business or big business? Soon the Church will become a target (if it is not already) for government regulation. You must marry X and X because it is a government regulation. Or Catholic Hospitals will have to follow Federal Regulations and laws on Abortion or lose funding. Trust me its coming.

The constitution sets limits for government. Telling Americans how to run their business or any other aspects of their lives is not the governments job. If some one disagrees with you or is a racist you can't force them to believe like you. God gave us free will and doesn't violate ours so we can't violate others. We must show them the Truth through our lives not by forcing people believe like we do. That simply will not work and is ungodly.

I feel we will not agree on this so this is my last post on the topic. Asking your prayers my brother in Christ.

It already is, because the Church discriminates women (denies them their "right" to be priestettes) and homosexuals (denies them their "right" to "marry" in the Church). Also the Church endorses hate speech, because it tells that sodomy is a "sin".


The European Union defines the correct shape of bananas. I'm not kidding about that.

"Again no one is saying repeal the Civil Rights Act. Dr. Paul(s) is not, I am not and neither is Fr. Deacon. No one wants segregation or racism. It is a message foreign to the Gospel. I am sad to the fact that some people in the South, as you claim, would want to return to Jim Crow, sad cometary on our society and its lack of Christian principles."

But you are saying that businesses should be able to refuse service to anyone for any reason, without government interfence. Scandalous and perverse to me, and no doubt to the millions of black Americans who are still alive and suffered when such perversions were legal. I'm sure an older black lady I work with who, as a child, once had to go squat in a bush to urinate while in public with her grandmother because there were no public facilities available to blacks in that part of town is thankful that businesses are no longer allowed to discriminate in that way. I also suspect that she agrees with me that your position is perverse and scandalous.

"Also, it is not naive to think the free market would force a racist establishment to either close or change its policy. If no one comes to your place of business you will either adapt to survive or you will find yourself starving. Very simple. Will it work every where? I suppose not, but if you want to expand and make money then being a racist is not a good business model, not now or fifty years ago."

History suggests that I am correct in stating that you are naive on this matter. Your line of thinking on this issue is not what brought an end to Jim Crow practices in this country. Court decisions an legislation brought an end to Jim Crow.

"But government telling private citizens and enterprise who they can and can't serve is a dangerous slope.. why stop there at small business or big business? Soon the Church will become a target (if it is not already) for government regulation. You must marry X and X because it is a government regulation. Or Catholic Hospitals will have to follow Federal Regulations and laws on Abortion or lose funding. Trust me its coming."

We have constitional protections for religious freedoms. We do not have constitutional protections for private businesses to refuse services to people on the basis of their skin color.

"The constitution sets limits for government. Telling Americans how to run their business or any other aspects of their lives is not the governments job. If some one disagrees with you or is a racist you can't force them to believe like you. God gave us free will and doesn't violate ours so we can't violate others. We must show them the Truth through our lives not by forcing people believe like we do. That simply will not work and is ungodly."

Why have laws against anything? After all, the murderer or would-be-murderer has free will. Are you saying that it is ungodly to force the one who would commit murder were it not for the fact that is against the law not to commit murder an ungodly thing to do? Why should we be making any effort to bring an end to legalized abortion? I'm quite sure you would not make such an absurd argument. So why permit racists to violate the dignity of others by refusing them service in the name of some misguided notion of freedom?

He is right. You should be able to refuse to let into your house, your company, your property anybody you want for whatever reason. Otherwise this is imposed social atomization, breaking of family and social bonds, which is a scandalous and perverse totalitarianism.

I bet you don't let everybody into your house, do you?


Ask hundreds of millions of victims of fascism, nazism and communism how nice is it when such "perversion" is illegal.


Natural law vs Marxism.

Dear Athanasius I am not even going to pretend that some of the points you make are valid, however I will suggest to you that the same type of thinking will end with the same type of anti-discrimination laws being applied to Catholic bookstores refusing to hire transgenders and cross-dressing individuals with piercings and tattoos.

We give the government power to limit private citizens rights at a great cost.

In the words of Berry Goldwater. “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."

Dear Deacon Borislav,

And I am not even going to pretend that your points are valid.

The sort of discrimination you would allow in the name of some perverse notion of freedom can, and indeed historically has, undermined the dignity of an entire race of people and worked to keep them in a permanent state of being second class citizens.

We are getting off track here, but let me observe that Jim Crow was not just a social attitude, it was the law, and a white business owner who wanted to serve black customers at the same counter as white customers would soon find himself in court. A white landlord who wanted to rent a room or sell a house to a black person in an all-white building or neighborhood would likewise face prosecution.

Jim Crow laws were not just local and state, they also affected the Federal government because progressive President Woodrow Wilson segregated Federal facilities (including the Armed Forces) by executive order.

Now, the principled libertarian would say the government has no right to interfere in private contracts or associations, so he would reject both Jim Crow laws and the Civil Rights Act, as well as affirmative action, which is, of course, a perversion of the notion of civil rights in the first place, since rights accrue only to individuals, not to groups.

I would think that slavery, Jim Crow were always Unconstitutional. It took a Civil War and civil rights amendment to make that crystal clear. Slavery and Jim Crow was what undermined the dignity of an entire race and kept them in second class status. What someone thinks or feels can't be legislated. And by legally imposing the feds will on people only engenders more hate and anti gov rhetoric.

I have not advocated Marxism, and it is irresponsible of you to suggest that I have.

Your comparison of American anti-discrimination laws to fascism, nazism, and communism is absurd.

Also, there is a difference in allowing individual citizens to choose who they will allow to enter into their homes than there is in allowing businesses to refuse to service people on the basis of their race. If I refuse someone entry into my home, what harm is done to anyone? On the other hand, if we allow businesses to refuse to service people on the basis of their race, you can literally endanger the ability of an entire people to survive. Imagine the following scenario: You are black living in a rural area that operates according to Jim Crow. The only grocery store is owned by a white family that wont serve you, the only gas station is owned by a white family that won't serve you (but that doesn't really matter since no one will sell you a car, and that doesn't really matter either because no one will give you a job in which you can earn enough money to buy a car), the only bank is owned by a white family that won't open an account for you (not that it really matters, since you have no money to begin with), the only physician is white and will not treat you, the only hospital will not treat blacks. The scenario I just set out, while perhaps a bit exaggerated, is a perfectly reasonable one to ponder given the history of race relations in America. What you, Deacon Borislav, and Nelson Chase are advocating would allow such a thing to happen. I find it perverse, scandalizing, and counter to the dictates of the teachings of Christ concerning love of neighbor. I am deeply troubled Christians would take such a position in support of such a twisted, un-Christian notion of so-called freedom.

Stuart,

Fair enough. However, who elected the politicians who implemented Jim Crow as a matter of law, and not just as a matter of social policy?

Ryan

Creating permanent antagonisms in the society by introducing an artificial taxonomy of oppressed and oppressing groups and pretending that there's a permanent class struggle that should be solved by a violent revolution or, in modern version, by anti-discriminatory laws is the essence of Marxism. It's all anti-Christian and based on hate and envy.

The effect of such thinking is creation of privileged, untouchable groups that can terrorize rest of the society by their threat to accuse of "discrimination" whoever they want. Just think how the sodomite lobby behaves.

Christian social science teaches that social groups that form a society are in a harmony, every group has its duties and responsibilities, a vocation. And all these groups need each other, because a capitalist needs workers, and workers need capitalists and so on. It's a simplification, because groups intersect, of course. Their interests are not contradictory and they have a right to self-government. We know how a Christian state should work from the principle of subsidiarity. Creating anti-discriminatory laws is a blatant violation of this principle, because it simply makes some groups hostages of another groups, which condemns the society to permanent internal struggle, and further attempts to solve problems that just deepen them. And that's what Marxists really love.

What you are advocating is essentially anti-Christian and founded on hatred of one group aimed at another. It has its origins in deism rather that Christianity. It just negates natural law, the order that God established in nature. When you throw God out of nature one of the few options you have is to put omnipotent state in his place. And the state is also a very, very jealous god, that will not stand the discrimination of women, homosexuals and aborters in the Church.

And refusing to service people on the basis of the color of their skin is not hate?

BTW, in the American historical context, there is not artificiality to people being classified as oppressed on the basis of their skin color being something other than white.

And the effect of not having anti-discriminatin laws leaves a permanent underclass of those who are subjected to the discrimination of those in power.

Furthermore, there already was permanent internal struggle in America among various racial groups prior to anti-discrimination laws, or to the rise of Marxism. As far as I'm concerned, your argument about Marxism in this context is absurd, and I believe that you are slandering me by accusing me of advocating Marxism. Furthermore, you are slandering me by accusing me of hatred.

Also, what about God's law or natural law makes it acceptable for people to discriminate against others on the basis of their skin color?

Finally, your comparison of the possibility of the interference of th state in the internal affairs of religious groups to the protections afforded by the state to groups against racial discrimination is like comparing apples to oranges. They are two different matters.

Apparently the Vatican endorses the use of anti-discrimination legislation in regards to race. Is the Roman Catholic Church Marxist?

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/s...g-st_doc_20020128_martino-racism_en.html

Persons have been successfully sued even the the FHA didn't apply. If it's based upon race, it's actionable.

I find the view that businesses should be allowed to discriminate on the basis of race perverse regardless of who advocates for it.

While you certainly have the right to advocate against government regulation of private business, you are on the losing side of American jurisprudence. It's well established, a settled matter, and upheld by the courts. And I find it to be absurd to compare the balanced, reasonable, and what I believe to be necessary amount of regulation of business in America to dictatorships or socialist systems.

And as I have asked in the past, do we really want a society where businesses have no government regulation or oversight? I am glad thay the physicians who treat me, my wife, and son are regulated. I am glad that the manufacturers of the medications my wife and I take are regulated. I am glad that there are food safety laws. I am glad that restaurants have sanitation standards imposed upon them by the government. I am glad that the airlines have safety standards imposed upon them by the government, etc., etc. I would not want to live in a country that did not have regulation of business. And I suspect that I'm in the majority on this question.

BTW, nowhere have I accused anyone on this forum of calling for a repeal of the Civil Rights Act. However, you and two other participants in this thread certainly have stated repeatedly your opposition to legislation banning businesses from discriminating on the basis of race.

Finally, was Pope Paul VI socialist, or Marxist, or advocating dictatorial systems when in "Octogesima Adveniens" he spoke of the necessity of anti-discrimination legislation?