Anti-discrimination law
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Original Question
An Anti-discrimination law to protect gays is proposed. Someone opposes it.
Mr. A: “There are victims of discrimination because of their height, but do we need an Anti-Short Stature Discrimination Act? There are victims of discrimination because they are fat, but do we need an Anti-Obese Discrimination Act?”
is there any fallacy? Thanks.
Answers
3On the one hand, “anti-discrimination” laws at any level interfere with people's free association. So long as a person does not initiate physical force against another, each person has the right not to interact with any other person for whatever reason — be it a correct or incorrect reason. This falls under the individual rights concept.
On the other hand, under purely democratic concepts, whatever the majority wants becomes the law of the land. In such case, there becomes a natural conflict among people belonging to different groups to vie for special treatment.
This is yet different if we are dealing with government actions toward the populace because government necessarily deals with force. In such case, nothing more than a general statement that all people are equal under the law should suffice. Anything beyond that is to grant special privilege.
As pointed out above, this is a Weak Analogy and also a failure to understand the rationale behind such laws. They're typically based on necessity, dependent on each country's history with civil rights and access to opportunity. Discrimination against LGBT people in a country may be at the threshold for legal and political action, leading to an anti-discrimination law.
Of course, there are multiple ways to oppose such a law - a lot of laws claim to be "anti-discrimination", but are they really ?
Perhaps the discrimination of this kind (gays) is so prevalent that a separate act is warranted in which case this would be a weak analogy . If the discrimination against short/obese people is just as problematic, then either a) it is a strong analogy and Mr. A made a valid point or b) Mr. A justified the need for laws for these other kinds of discrimination.
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