http://www.salon.com/2014/02/18/libertarians_who_dont_understand_liberty_why_the_kansas_anti_gay_bill_is_absurd/
Kansas’ latest effort to promote discrimination against gays has managed to reopen discussions about the nature of the state’s role in so-called private discrimination. Although conservatives and libertarians like to pretend economic discrimination does not involve state action, the reality is that the state is almost always involved as the background enforcer of such discrimination.
To understand why this is true, a short jaunt through our country’s history is necessary. For a long time in this country, white homeowners in a neighborhood would place racially restrictive covenants on their houses to prevent the houses from being sold to non-white people down the line. In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelley v. Kraemer that courts could not enforce these racially restrictive housing covenants, effectively neutering them as binding contractual instruments.
The most interesting thing about the Shelley case is the reasoning the Supreme Court used to arrive at its decision. On first glance, the decision might seem a bit strange. Why can’t a group of private white citizens come together and make private agreements with one another to not sell their homes to non-whites? What’s unconstitutional about that? That’s just freedom and liberty, isn’t it?
Indeed, the court explicitly held that the agreements are themselves constitutional. The problem is that the agreements do not enforce themselves. It is the state, through its court system and the police, that is charged with actually booting out a black person who comes into ownership of a house in violation of a racially restrictive covenant. And when the state acts as the enforcer of the covenant, that enforcement action involves racially discriminatory state action that violates the Constitution.
the republicans have recently called Pres. lawless but we know they accuse him of things they do.
http://civilrights.findlaw.com/discrimination/race-discrimination-applicable-laws.html
Although later courts weaseled out of it somewhat, the reasoning in Shelley is profoundly insightful. Things we often call private discrimination aren’t actually very private at all. The state, either by threatening force or actually using it, is the muscle that actually carries out most of the “private” economic discrimination in our society.
remember they want to send legislation back to the states and we have another result of doing that in red states, obviously it doesn't matter what we think they will do their dirt and claim victory ans atates rights do states right usurp individual rights of American citizens and did the majority of voter vote for this or just another "we know what's best, live with it".
This fact is important to remember as the state of Kansas considers enshrining into its law the right of public accommodations like hotels, movie theaters and restaurants to discriminate against couples in same-sex marriages. Under this law, a manager who spotted a same-sex marriage party dining at his restaurant is empowered to refuse them service and demand that they leave.
In his never-ending quest to be on the wrong side of history on all things LGBT civil rights, Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner took to Twitter to defend this legislation, perhaps hoping that he will get a mention in future documentaries about the bigotry of this period.
Carney’s reasoning for why the state should empower this kind of public accommodation discrimination draws deeply upon his inner college freshman. He remarks that he is the defender of liberty and he just wants to get the state out of forbidding things.
discriminating against other Americans does not not make a defender of liberty it makes a defender of racism and bigotry, call it what it is and the picture will look different, and the news will sound different.
