Is the recent eHarmony settlement another nail in the coffin of private property rights?
Posted on May 28th, 2010 in eHarmony | 6 Comments »
A law-abiding business getting shaken down by a political correctness lynch mob. Do people even understand that private property rights are part of every free society?
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2008/11/21/the_eharmony_shakedown?page=full&comments=true
Quirk is 100% wrong on who can and can’t discriminate. Maybe that’s a "quirk" in his personality, who knows.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
6 Responses
I keep seeing some who are gay saying they don’t want to push their values on us, and then some do. On the one hand, it is not right to discriminate, but on the other it is not wrong to have a business geared towards a certain group.
"This case is akin to a meat-eater suing a vegetarian restaurant for not offering him a rib-eye, or a female patient suing a vasectomy doctor for not providing her hysterectomy services."
That excerpt from the article sort of proves my point. Would I get the same consideration from a court if I, an omnivorous person, go to a vegetarian restaurant and sue because I wasn’t offerred a meal containing meat? No. If it is legal to have a vegetarian restaurant, it is also legal to have a christian dating service. The problem here is that because the gay-rights issue is so charged, this business has bent over backwards in it’s settlement. eHarmony did not discriminate any more than a vegetarian restaurant, or a specialist doctor, or even a gay bar. It is/was a place for like-minded people to go, just as in a gay bar. When there are numerous like businesses, and only one does not offer EVERY single thing every other business offers, then there is no real discrimination. There is no disenfranchisement of said particular group, because that group has numerous other outlets/resources. I think I will personally begin the process of going against this sort of thinking; that just to make a political point, a minority group can sue because others/another is/are not necessarily accomodating to the particular minority group.
Private property rights AND morality.
Wow, I was about to ask how a man who is so bigoted could ever be allowed to work as a journalist. Then I saw that it was a conservative website. Question answered.
The gays and their supporters are communists who are going to ruin this country. They say they want equal rights, but that fact shows how hypocritical they are.
I’m not quite sure how "private property rights" apply here. It’s an online dating service open to the public that (because of it’s Christian roots) refused to accept homosexuals. As a rule, no such business is allowed to discriminate.
For instance, Home Depot can’t refuse to sell someone a box of nails because they’re gay. Similarly, a car dealership can’t refuse to sell a car to someone because they’re Irish. Nor can a restaurant refuse to serve someone because they’re tall.
Now if eHarmony were truly a private "invite-only" type service, perhaps. But since they’re otherwise open to anyone applying, I’m afrid that "anyone" means "everyone".
update:
Please do educate me. Simply saying I’m "100% wrong" is hardly a valid argument. Care to point to a law on the books perhaps?
True, a public business can reject or remove customers for a variety of reasons, but sexual orientation isn’t one of them. Nobody has ever been (legally) thrown out a Wal-Mart just because they’re gay. Since eHarmony obviously couldn’t defend its policy, they lost the case.
Rather than laying blame on a "PC lynch mob" you might want to consider that they were simply on the wrong side of the law.
I’m with Quirk here. An online, multi-state business simply cannot discriminate on the basis of sexuality without running afoul of federal law. Any first year law student knows this.