The Lessons of Arizona

On the events in Arizona in recent weeks, in which the governor vetoed a bill that would have allowed businesses to decline service to people on religious grounds, J. Neil Schulman has summed up the stakes quite neatly in a piece called "The Trap of Politics." A sample: 

Once legal compulsion is established in principle to be used in compelling a private business to serve any customer regardless of the proprietor’s beliefs, ethics, or esthetics — any request for service where there is no right of refusal makes the proprietor a slave to the customer.

But here’s the other thing. Decent people who object to the right of refusal being invoked on the basis of various bigotries — skin color, ethnic origin, religion, or sexual preference — would rather live in a legal and political system that outlaws certain rights of refusal rather than working against such bigotry relying completely on the tortoise-slow uphill climb of argument, picketing, boycott, and writing novels, plays, and movies that combat bigotry with mind and heart.

Attempting to use the blunt instrument of force that is government to achieve social goals is rarely a good idea, if ever. Whichever side won in Arizona – either the cause of religious freedom or the cause of gay marriage – the losing side was fated to be embittered rather than accepting, as any victim of a bludgeoning is likely to be. The governor's action did not create sympathy and understanding, and allowing the new law to take effect would not have created sympathy or understanding, either.

Only what Schulman describes as a "tortoise-slow uphill climb" ever generates true change. Using the jackboot of government to force a change only generates anger and resentment.