Carl, Tor, I understand you all's position. I understand you're not advocating bigotry but rather prefer more of a voluntary system of fairness and reason. If one out of 50 businesses discriminated, than that still leaves 49 to visit, and I'm fine with that. The problem is hate is very much a human trait. We are, by our nature a vile and brutal species, we love drama, gossip, and conflict, and above all, we love to hate.
The problem is this hate spreads. One business in town turns into two, then four, then eight, then sixteen, so on and so forth. Before you know it you're having to visit 50 different stores to purchase 50 different items because each one takes an issue with the other 49 items you're trying to buy.
We have to have laws to keep things fair. If not for the various civil rights laws of the 60's the south would still be very much segregated today. What's a real shame is the civil rights movement happened exactly one CENTURY after the blacks were "freed". It should have NEVER taken so long. But why did it? Simple: The lack of any real legislation that had any teeth to put a stop to the segregation and other unfair practices. We freed the African slaves in the 1860's but never passed any real legislation to require the public to treat them like equal members of society, and what followed was a hundred years of discrimination.
Yeah, I'll admit, you pass a law requiring businesses to treat LGBT poeple fairly, yeah: it's going to piss off a fair number of bigots, but you know what, in ten to twenty years it won't matter. A generation will come to pass and it will be just something we discuss in history lessons. I do truly believe that if we just leave it alone and simply use the more voluntary system of "being kind and decent to one another", then I fear it will take another CENTURY or longer, and ultimately a
new civil rights movement to finally set it right.
Human beings just don't love by default. We have to be TOLD to.
I too see us charging towards 1930's Germany, but I just don't think that the LGBT crowd is leading us there... I see a different "leader" charging the way... But I won't go there on this thread...