The Right to Discriminate

Browsing the news today, I was pleasantly surprised to find an organization from New York sticking to their guns and refusing to cater to the politically correct gay tolerance groups.

Reuters published the article titled, “NY St. Pat's chairman compares gays to neo-Nazis.” Despite the heated headline, the actual story is best summed up by a quote from the article,

“In an interview with The Irish Times, parade committee chairman John Dunleavy defended the organizers' decision to bar the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization from participating in the biggest St. Patrick's Day party in the world.”

It seems that the issue comes down to whether private organizations have the right to discriminate. In 1995, the Supreme Court thought so, when they ruled that Boston parade organizers had the right to exclude gays and lesbians.

"If an Israeli group wants to march in New York, do you allow neo-Nazis into their parade? If African-Americans are marching in Harlem, do they have to let the Ku Klux Klan into their parade?" said John Dunleavy.

Although I’m sure there are a few people who can’t get past the analogy (as in, *gasp*, I can’t believe he compared gays to neo-Nazis), I think he has a legitimate logical argument.

In this day and age of tolerance, it seems that some people cannot abide uniqueness or the idea that someone might believe something different. They want everyone to be one big happy family. One big happy cloned family. You can’t exclude anyone. You can’t offend anyone.

Private organizations should and do have the right to exclude whom they wish. Private organizations should have the right to discriminate. Imagine what a prochoice parade organizer might say if they were forced to allow a prolife group to march in their parade.

In his article, “The Right to Discriminate,” Scott W. Sixier said, “Discrimination, then, is vital to the proper functioning of the market economy. It is a process of differentiation-a process by which we demonstrate our preferences…If some people make decisions which we view as immoral, the way to change these values is by peaceful persuasion. The solution is surely not to impose our values on others.”

It is for these reasons that I grateful to John Dunleavy for being willing to swim against the political correctness current. If I were to sum Dunleavy's comments up I would say, “Hey, this is an Irish Catholic parade. Gays and lesbians are not following a path which we consider morally right. We are making the free market decision to exclude them.”

Don’t let your liberties get taken away. Stand up for what you believe. It’s your right.