Sex-Orientation Discrimination Bill

[opebo]

Obviously Emsworth, Jake, A18 and the others here have never experienced discrimination before...

This is in no sense relevant.

Sure it is, Philip, as your views would change immediately upon a change in your interests.  If you were to be made a poor, you would become a socialist, and if you were to be made a black or a gay, you politics would no longer support discrimination.

[opebo]

Obviously Emsworth, Jake, A18 and the others here have never experienced discrimination before...

This is in no sense relevant.

Sure it is, Philip, as your views would change immediately upon a change in your interests.  If you were to be made a poor, you would become a socialist, and if you were to be made a black or a gay, you politics would no longer support discrimination.

Opebo - Philip isn't you, he has these things called 'principles'.

Unlikely, Dibble.  Anyway they've certainly never been 'tested', so I am not inclined to take them very seriously.

[opebo]

Aye - I'm vehemenently opposed to all forms of discrimination (and yes, I include affirmative action)

Dave

What about competence?  Isn't only hiring a person you perceive as competent a form of discrimination?

More often than not this 'perception of competence' is the result of class and racial or ethnic prejudices, though particularly class, dazzleman. 

[opebo]

It is if you hate freedom

If you love freedom and liberty, you should be overjoyed at the prospect of a whole group of people being liberated from the threat of discrimination

Maybe you should be overjoyed at the prospect of reinstituting slavery, since a whole group of people (slaveowners) would be 'liberated' from having to work.

So you're comparing homosexuals to slave owners now?

The argument is that, just as slaves were forced to work against their will, bigots are being forced to serve customers against their will.

Not at all Emsworth!  They may simply close their business if they do not wish to serve customers!

For someone who is always advocating that the option of ceasing work and starving to death demonstrates workers' freedom, it is odd that you don't see the same principle in operation with owners!

[opebo]

The point is that one is being coerced, and the other is not.

No, they are both being coerced in those examples - the owner being coerced to serve the black, and the worker being coerced to not consume the 'property' of the owner.