Preferences Undermine Equality

I have argued here on several occasions, such as here,

that the experience of watching the civil rights movement abandon colorblind equal protection in favor of racial preference not long after the colorblind standard was enacted into law in the 1964 Civil Rights Act has stiffened the resistance to what are now demands for equal rights for gays.

This past spring Washington state, not known as a hotbed of conservatism, refused again to add protections for sexual orientation to its human rights legislation. The current Washington “law against discrimination” bars discrimination against any person

because of race, creed, color, national origin, families with children, sex, marital status, age, or the presence of any sensory, mental, or physical disability or the use of a trained dog guide or service animal by a disabled person.

The state civil rights lobby worked long and hard, but ultimately unsuccessfully, for a bill to add “sexual orientation” to the list of protected categories.

Ironically (at least I think it’s ironical), this same lobby worked equally hard, and equally unsuccessfully, to prevent Washington state voters from passing I-200, a state constitutional amendment declaring that

The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

I wonder why proponents of barring discrimination based on sexual orientation didn’t attempt to add sexual orientation to the I-200 constitutional language above. Actually, that was a rhetorical device. I don’t really wonder. I suspect it’s because they don’t want to rule out the possibility of preferential treatment, as the Washington voters ruled it out for race, sex, and ethnicity.

But whether I’m right about that or not, I’m convinced that many voters believe its true, and thus that there are many voters who would support equal rights for gays if they were confident no preferential treatment would be demanded.

And one certainly doesn’t have to look hard to find evidence that that belief (mine and that of many voters) is not wild and crazy. For example, in his “Best of the Web” column yesterday, James Taranto pointed to an effort in Spokane, Washington, to create a “gay business district.”

[Melvin] Reguindin [“co-coordinator” of the committee] said the purpose of creating a gay business district, or “hate-free zone,” is to provide a supportive place where people will be comfortable being gay.

“It can look like those districts that are already established,” he said. “It would just be more gay.”

Said committee co-coordinator Bonnie Aspen, “We need to have a place where we can hold hands and have it be OK.”

Taranto asks:

Doesn’t the idea of a government-designated “gay business district” contradict the principle that sexual orientation is a suspect category, one on which it is (or should be) forbidden to discriminate? Would not an “Irish-American business district” or a “Jewish business district” be invidious?

To which good question I would add another: does the fact that “sexual orientation” is not a protected category in Washington state mean that it would be legal for the state to give preferential treatment to gay businesses, which of course would involve discriminating against non-gay businesses?

Say What? (2)

  1. Thomas J. Jackson August 14, 2005 at 1:47 am | | Reply

    So presumably if the city council has decided to designate a gay-friendly zone, the rest of the city has a mandate to be gay-hostile?

  2. Preferences For Gays? December 15, 2012 at 2:37 pm |

    […] have argued here more than once (such as here and here) that many people oppose equal rights for gays because they fear that equal treatment, once […]

Say What?