Anti Gay Bigot, Jesse Lee Peterson Unintentionally Shows Us Why His Free Market Absolutism Is Wrong
Jesse Lee Peterson is one of those anti gay, pro big business Republicans ( or at least I’m guessing he’s a Republican, I’m not sure, but he’s definitely far right. )
Attempting to defend the “rights” of business owners, Jesse Lee Peterson said one of the dumbest things I’ve heard someone say trying to defend an absolute free market. As Right Wing Watch pointed out,
Last month, Jesse Lee Peterson wrote a column for WND suggesting that if anti-gay Christian business owners are going to be required to serve gay customers, they ought to do so by informing any gay customers “upfront that they would take their money and donate it to a conservative Christian law firm to fight against same-sex marriage.”
Shortly after posting that column, Peterson discussed this “solution” on his radio program and, during the course of that discussion, declared that business owners should be free to discriminate against anyone they choose. As such, Peterson said, it was wrong civil activists to launch sit-ins and protests against racially discriminatory business owners during the Civil Rights Era.
Yeah that’s why blacks in the south did sit ins at private business because their feelings were hurt by signs that said whites only. Yeah that explains why freedom riders were willing to go to jail and risk their lives, to put an end to segregation. If Peterson actually did live in the south during Jim Crow, he must have either been too young to remember or he must have had it better than most African Americans had it. Also unlike Peterson, I hope the day comes very soon when its also illegal not to serve gay people on the grounds that they’re gay.
There’s actually a pretty good commentary about why we need anti discrimination laws that was posted on the Troy Media website. Its about anti discrimination laws in Canada, but much of what it says applies to the US as well.
To understand why Canadians place such a high value on equality, we must understand the good that anti-discrimination laws seek to achieve. They are intended to protect human dignity, personal security and social inclusion. They also seek to ensure equal access to various services and material goods, without discrimination based on race, religion, sexual orientation, and the like.
Imagine that you are denied a job or an apartment because of your skin colour, ethnic origin or sexual orientation. We can all recognize that this is unfair; anti-discrimination laws are the expression of this basic realization.
Because human dignity is difficult to pin down, some people suggest that anti-discrimination law should focus only on the material harm that arises from lack of equal access to goods and services. While it may be difficult to define exactly what wounds personal dignity, we should not minimize damage to our sense of self-worth. Human experience teaches there is little that is more painful than being denied your individuality, which is what discrimination is all about.
Off course Peterson would tell you that’s not a big deal, and in the case of the gays he seems to think its a good thing that they would be denied service or employment based only on them being attracted to people of the same gender.
He probably agrees with Bryan Fischer’s nonsensical belief that private business owners being required serve gays is “slavery,” minus the “mark of the beast thing” maybe. Kyle Kulinski had a pretty good response to that, and what he said about the unfairness and unjust nature of allowing anyone to arbitrarily discriminate against anyone also applies here.
Peterson would rather see signs outside of private business that say “no coloreds” than have the day come when private business are required to take down their “no gays” signs. He would also rather have “no coloreds” signs than have the government interfere with the private sector at all. It is amazing on one level how he as a black man, who grew up in a place and a time, when anti black racism was not only tolerated but required by law, and doesn’t see how much better things are now that we are much less tolerate of people being mistreated based on their race. He would rather we live in a country, where he could be denied service anywhere, based only on the fact that he’s black. At least he’s more logically consistent than other homophobes who want us to make a special exception for their anti gay bigotry but nothing else.
