Religious Freedom

As frequently annoys several of you, I think that economics should always and in every respect be subordinate to moral philosophy. I think that permits a great deal of freedom to pursue one's economic interests, whatever they may be. Still, when they come into conflict, I expect you to do what you think is right, not what you think is likely to make you more money. Those two things may line up, of course. When they don't, duty and virtue have priority.

I am thus inclined to view threats of economic boycotts if we do not surrender religious liberty principles as strong evidence in favor of the validity of the proposed laws. Similar evidence lies in the court rulings that bankrupt families which have tried to assert, however politely, their refusal to surrender their moral objections in favor of physical wealth.

It's not a question of agreeing with their interpretation of their faith. Some of you may; I know at least several of you do not. That is fine. We have room for disagreement.

What is important is the correctness of their priorities. When someone tries to use economics to force you to abandon morality, you are correct to stand on morals and refuse to consider economics until your moral concerns are satisfied.

The moral concerns themselves may be right or wrong. Under the First Amendment, that's not a public concern. Moral concerns arising from religious interpretations are for the religious individual to decide. Even if you think they are wrong to believe as they do, what they are certainly right about is standing up for what they believe is right instead of for what they believe will make them wealthy.

Those who would use wealth to subvert faith are not virtuous. Those who would use wealth as a lever to try to force others to abandon their faith and their morals ought not to win the day. Laws that strive to protect people from their machinations are wise laws.

If you really need a cake you will find that there are many more bakeries in America. If the wedding gift you really wanted was to force the religious to kneel before your moral opinions, that is a right you do not and ought not have.

9 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Well put. I started by disagreeing with you, because I occasionally choose on principle not to give my custom to a business which takes a moral stance I disagree with, and I want to communicate that to them.

You have not fully convinced me to change that, but I take the point and will think about it.

Grim said...

So, to boycott an immoral practice can also be the right priority: say you aren't buying blood diamonds, even though you could sell them at a good profit. There you have one side acting on morality, and the other acting on economic interest simply.

What we have here is a case in which moral values are in conflict. One side -- the rich and powerful side -- is trying to win by leveraging its advantage in money. That side is saying, "We have an interest in punishing people with money if they don't kowtow to our views. If you make it impossible to punish them individually, we'll punish the whole state instead."

That side is being aggressively coercive. They are shouting that the other side can only be motivated by hate, but their actions show that they believe the other side can really be motivated by money.

It strikes me that the side that thinks money ought to be enough to motivate their opponents to abandon their values must view their opponents with contempt as moral beings. I find it gratifying that their opponents are not living down to expectations.

I also think an alternative motivation to hate for the other side is simply the wish to live according to your principles. A third, also valid motivation: a wish not to be pushed around.

MrSparkle said...

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, well that's a moral issue right there! That legal system is totally nuts and out of control; as a point of reference a gay couple were refused lodging by some religious plonkers in the UK, and the business was fined £3600 for committing discrimination, still quite a lot but not cruel.

Anyway this argument can't go one way with the right to boycott. If a person can refuse to serve mohammedans, negros, fags, veterans, or reds, then those respective communities must be free to highlight that to others who wish to take their own high falutin' moral stances.

Or, that couple can save their prejudices for like-minded at thumpin' Sunday services and serve people without discrimination at their place of work.

Grim said...

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, well that's a moral issue right there! That legal system is totally nuts and out of control[.]

I agree completely.

This seems to me like a good place for making room for each other. There are plenty of bakeries in America. Most of them couldn't care less why you want the cake. It's not very much at all like the Jim Crow situation to which it's so often analogized: there are no laws forbidding them from doing business with you, and neither is it the case that a majority of businesses would refuse if they were permitted to refuse. Everyone can live the way they want, and everyone will still be able to get cake.

douglas said...

I mostly agree- but I thought your opening was odd-
"As frequently annoys several of you, I think that economics should always and in every respect be subordinate to moral philosophy. I think that permits a great deal of freedom to pursue one's economic interests, whatever they may be. Still, when they come into conflict, I expect you to do what you think is right, not what you think is likely to make you more money. Those two things may line up, of course. When they don't, duty and virtue have priority."

I don't think that's framing the disagreement properly- You think it's wrong to raise prices during disastrous events, and some of us do not think it's improper necessarily- at least not enough to pass laws against it. We're both being true to our duties and virtues as we see them. I too would like that others would subsume their economic interests at least a bit during such situations, but others moral systems may not agree with mine- what then? Pass a law making them conform to mine? What if those who disagree aren't in the majority, or at least not in power? They should be made to conform? I think there are valid arguments that in fact there is good that can come of prices rising during times of great demand and scarcity, and it is actually beneficial in certain ways, and so the argument for the 'common good' is not clear cut. Besides, the 'common good' is often the Trojan Horse for many a harmful scheme- how do I know it is not so here, guised in good intentions or not?

And what of the man who deems profit as the most moral imperative? I disagree, but he’d be well within the bounds of your rules above- just not as you’d like him to be.

Herein lies the trouble we face, I think. When we agree less and less, as a society, on what is morally right and wrong, we begin heading down the road of libertarianism toward the end which is anarchy. If no one is subject to the rules of any other, it is just so. Social bonds require a certain level of commonality on moral issues. This is why those who decry the erosion of our common moral grounds are right to be greatly concerned, not just for our souls, but for our republic. If we cannot persuade our neighbors to more or less agree with our moral standards, what future do we have?

Grim said...

Your last paragraph, Douglas, is exactly correct. It's a problem that concerns me a great deal.

MikeD said...

I do not object to your conclusion, only to the argument in the middle. You say that it is right and proper to boycott in favor of morals, but wrong to do so in opposition to them. The problem is, the other side has their own morality as well. You or I may not agree with it, but it is a moral system they follow. If your argument is that they have no right to boycott in favor of their own morals, because we don't agree with them, then we are guilty of doing that very thing you say no one should have a right to do... force others to kneel before your moral opinions.

I agree with you in the idea that no one should have the right to compel someone to abandon their religious or moral principles. But nor do I think anyone has the right to FORCE someone to do business with an entity they find morally objectionable. How would you propose to even do so in the first place? If someone in Ohio declares that they are boycotting Indiana over this law, do you think we can force them to do business with Indiana because they're "boycotting wrongly"? How would you prove that they instead chose to do business with someone in their own state because of their boycott rather than simple convenience? Or that they chose to vacation in Illinois instead of Indiana, do we establish national quotas requiring a certain percentage of citizens from each state to spend tourist dollars in each other state as a form of equability?

No, I will stand with you against actions such as Connecticut is taking (banning taxpayer funds from being spent on official business to Indiana). That's actually close to violating the US Constitution, as the States are not actually allowed to engage in sanctions against each other. But asking that individuals be banned from boycotts? That's a bridge too far, and one impossible to actually enforce.

Grim said...

But nor do I think anyone has the right to FORCE someone to do business with an entity they find morally objectionable. How would you propose to even do so in the first place?

Well, by having a court compel them: if you had control of the judiciary, you could as readily force Apple to invest in Indiana as force a baker to make a cake for a gay sacrament. You only have to prove your case to the satisfaction of a sympathetic Federal judge, not prove it in a philosophical or mathematical sense.

The law shouldn't permit me to force Apple to invest in Indiana, nor bakers to make cakes for sacraments they view as immoral. This is being treated as blind prejudice, but I think it is an understandable view: if you buy the argument in the Summa Theologica, a gay marriage would be the exact equivalent of a black mass, a perversion of a traditional sacrament so that it celebrates and structurally supports sin (lust, according to ST II.II 154.11 corpus) instead of a religious virtue.

I can totally understand why a baker who takes traditional Christianity seriously might want nothing to do with participation in a black sacrament. The idea that the law should compel him to do it -- that there should be no protection for a religious freedom to refuse on moral grounds -- shows the degree to which our society has stopped taking religion seriously. People won't even imagine that he has anything other than a blind prejudice at work.

As for asking that individuals be banned from boycotts, though, I wonder where you get that from what I wrote. I said it was immoral to prioritize money over morals, not that it ought to be illegal. I said that the people who were preferring economic gains to morality were bad people, but nothing about people who are pursuing their own moral vision. I take it Apple's CEO is using his company's might to try to enact reforms in society that comport with his own gay lifestyle; I assume he thinks (as most people do) that his own chosen lifestyle is good. One might debate whether he is doing his duty to his stockholders in using his position in this way; one might also debate his hypocrisy in using his economic forces to hurt Indiana for supporting religious freedom while engaging merrily in Saudi Arabia, where gays are not denied service in a bakery but actually executed.

Even so, it's a different case from what we're seeing in the RFRA debate in Georgia. There the argument that has persuaded Republicans in the House to table the bill is not that the gay lifestyle is good; it's that protecting religious freedom might cost some tourism businesses in the state some money. The lobbyists aren't advocating a moral vision in contrast to the traditional vision, they're just valuing profit over moral concerns. They're free to lobby, but I think a good person ought to reject that argument as unworthy.

MikeD said...

As for asking that individuals be banned from boycotts, though, I wonder where you get that from what I wrote. I said it was immoral to prioritize money over morals, not that it ought to be illegal.

I misunderstood then. I apologize. In general, I take a dim view of government compelling anything from anyone (except in cases where they are compelling people not to deprive their neighbors of life, liberty, or property). There can be, and are exceptions, but I do not find boycotting another state (Constitutionally dubious, as it is) a proper governmental action. A foreign government? Less problematic for me. Sanctions are appropriate against nations and people not of the society. I do not buy the big-L libertarian argument that we cannot enforce our own borders, make war on other nations, or otherwise treat other governments as "not us".

So as I said, I agree with you that attempting to compel someone to act against their conscience by law is an abuse of power and should be shunned. Regardless of who is involved. But, it has been known to open the libertarian position to charges of "racism" for stating the state shouldn't ever be able to compel a bigot from serving someone from a group they are bigoted against (the lunch counter protests being the example most jump to).

While I empathize with the impulse to punish the racist, I do not feel that it is a proper governmental role. Sorry, but that's my opinion on the matter. I don't like having to defend racists, but either your principles of limited government interference mean something in all cases, or they do not. Frankly, I am very glad that the Civil Rights movement triumphed over Segregation. I just happen to think it is a shame we had to use the power of government to compel it. And I'm not enough of an ideologue to claim that there was another (or better) way to achieve that goal. But in that particular case, I do find it to be the lesser evil.