Freedom of Association

Hello there again readers, and welcome back to Coffee Break Liberty, a blog where we tackle books, news, and many other things under the sun where liberty is a guiding principle. If this is your first time here we would like to extend a special warm welcome to you and hope you enjoy yourself while here.

This week the Supreme Court gave an opinion on; if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protected the LBGT community from being fired from a job because they fit into any of those categories. The majority opinion was that yes, the LBGT community is protected by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. What was surprising to many is that Justice Gorsuch, a President Trump pick, was the one that wrote the favorable opinion. This isn’t the main thing we want to go over though here at CBL. In short, we agree with the Supreme Courts interpretation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That said, we still strongly believe that anti-discrimination laws are just as bad as discrimination itself.

As libertarians and liberty-minded people, we believe that property rights are one of the main pillars in the ideology. From the simple idea of property rights you get to extensions, the first being that you have self-ownership, simply you own yourself. From there we can make the short hop to the non-aggression principle, simply where we will not initiate acts of aggression towards others. With the basic understanding of these ideas, we can see that trying to force someone to do something they don’t want to do violates their self-ownership. Forcing someone to associate with someone violates their self-ownership. Forcing a business owner to keep employees that they don’t want to for any reason is a violation of their property rights. Anti-discrimination laws violate a business owners property rights and self-ownership.

Additionally, in this case, it is the business owners job, not the employees. Any employee can quit anytime they want to and leave the firm high and dry while an employer doesn’t have that same freedom to fire an employee, yet it is the employer that is providing the job, not the employee. Forcing the firm to keep people on that they would much rather not is a violation of their property rights as the job is their property, not that of anyone else.

The concept of freedom of association is that no one should be forced to associate with people they don’t want to. We saw this case take place with the Christian baker a few years ago and baking a cake. He did not want to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. In short, it is a violation of his rights to force him to associate with people he doesn’t want to. Now he may be a pretty awful person but that doesn’t mean his rights are subject to be infringed upon. It is a human right to be able to deny association with others. Just as that baker should not be forced to associate with people he doesn’t want to; neither should any other business owner.

Discrimination is an ugly thing, how we wish people weren’t so petty; sadly though some people are. Some people will unfortunately judge others and discriminate against others based on their gender, religion, race, or whatever. Some people just suck. That said you can’t legislate morality. No matter how many laws are passed you can’t make someone a better person. We want to be tolerant of others bottom line. A world where no one discriminates against others based on things like sex and color of their skin, among other things, is what we should all want. Sad thing is though, as we have said, not everyone will think that way, and forcing those that don’t like people for petty reasons like those listed above doesn’t fix the issue, if anything it probably makes it worse. Ever heard of two people that can’t stand each other for petty reasons like that just all of a sudden turning it around? Hardly, if ever right? Another way to think of it too is why would YOU want to be forced to associate with someone that doesn’t like you based on the color of your skin or gender? That never sounds like a fun time. Our right to choose who we associate with is just as important as the others. Our freedom to associate is crucial to our well being.

Thank you for reading, and please don’t forget to like, and share!

Keep that coffee warm for us!

LWS

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