Sarah Sanders kicked out of Virginia Restaurant

[_canpakes]

As i alluded to in my post, the shirt/shoes policy is solely due to health regulations and not "ambiance".

Noting that a person could be just as dirty or clean with a shirt or without, and noting that there are some subtle differences between the two sexes, I'm betting that one could identify another reason for a ‘shirtless or shoeless’ policy, especially considering how many folks are too uptight to even tolerate the sight of a breastfeeding woman in public.

[Guest]

And they can be defined neutrally. It doesn't matter who you are otherwise, if you are being a jerk in a restaurant then the owner has the right to refuse you service. It applies to everyone equally.

If you can make the same neutral argument to justify refusing Sanders service, please do.

Kicking someone out of a store for being a jerk treats everyone equally in the exact same sense that kicking someone out of a store for aiding putting children in internment camps does.

This is the kind of hyperbole that gets into subjective territory where you have to create a moral gatekeeper rather than having a neutral, equally applied condition. Sanders is the spokesperson for Trump whose zero tolerance policy led to terrible outcomes I deeply oppose. I wasn't for Obamas approach in 2014 and I don't think that it is analogous to what Trump is doing but there is a clear partisan line that would define whether or not someone felt the actions crossed beyond basic concepts of human decency in both cases. The idea that what is going on is putting kids in internment camps isn't the same as someone coming into an establishment and behaving in a way that would get them kicked out for disrupting the business, creating unsafe or unhealthy conditions, or what ever other criteria you would put up against the moral judgment.

Your example parallels arguments overturned in the past, and closely followed today, that assume a certain kind of prejudicial "normal person" exercising "good judgment". The line between discrimination and justly refusing service is defined by your belief in your superior judgment and anyone who has equally good judgment would concur with your decision. Just as jurisdictions made laws that were overturned because they assume as a given any decent human being would know when a person is being a culty creep disturbing the peace or that anyone getting married is free to do it in the godly, Biblically sanctioned way.

As you say yourself -

You just have to grapple with the fact that some moral opinions are right and others are not.

When moral opinion is your criteria, you're already down the wrong path.

[_honorentheos]

And right on cue, here come the attacks on public accommodation. Such being the bedrock of so-called religious liberty types.

i thought my quip was pretty overt....even i am a little surprised at how deep the presuppositions are running.
Do i really come across as a champion for the shirtless and shoe-less diners out there?

No. You came across as sarcastically putting up an argument against the idea of public accommodation that is usually the starting point for making the argument they unjustly infringe on religious liberty. The shirtless and shoeless being stand-ins for some other class of person you sincerely believe a business ought to be able to refused service for reasons tied to more narrow moral views than public health and safety.

[_EAllusion]

This is the kind of hyperbole that gets into subjective territory where you have to create a moral gatekeeper rather than having a neutral, equally applied condition.

I think you need to define "neutral" here, because I offered a neutral, equally applied condition. All you need to do to have equality in this case is treat everyone according to the same criteria. You can tailor that criteria however you want and preserve its neutrality and equality.

Your example parallels arguments overturned in the past, and closely followed today, that assume a certain kind of prejudicial "normal person" exercising "good judgment".

No it doesn't. I think almost everyone can be wrong about proper reasons for discrimination and improper ones. I just think there exist proper and improper reasons for discrimination and people are persuadable creatures about what is and is not right. So do you, as does everybody, but you seem to think your moral opinions are so self-evident that they aren't even to be considered moral opinions. This is not a virtue of your stance, but a crippling flaw.

When moral opinion is your criteria, you're already down the wrong path.

You've offered nothing but moral opinions. Any statement about what people ought to do or what the law ought to be is necessarily a moral claim. Oughtness is inherently, definitively moral. The position that it is Ok to kick someone out of a restaurant for showing up naked, but not because they are black is nothing but a moral distinction. The word "Ok" is can be only given persuasive force with moral justification.

[_honorentheos]

Using the term internment camps is not neutral, and is the kind of language that one agrees with if they view Trump's actions as accomplishing this. It leaves it to a person's bias to determine if Sanders qualifies or if the establishment could refuse to serve anyone who was supportive of Obama because of his actions being construed to be internment camps.

I keep coming back to the concept of the moral gatekeeper required in your argument that exists external to the rule but rather functions as the decider to whom the rules apply. When left to examine the question of whether or not Sanders could justly be refused service in an establishment where public accommodation is considered a right, the argument that it is justified relies on discrimination based on one's own views as to the politics and behaviors of Donald Trump. It makes the political views of a particular side the moral framework used to judge whether or not she should be treated differently. We're left with the clear problem that this turns the concept of public accommodation into political ping pong.

If applying the civil rights act as gatekeeper, as was done regarding same sex marriage before such was nationally recognized, cannot serve as the neutral gatekeeper we turn the concept into a joke rather than a foundational premise on which to stand when defending civil rights generally. I guess I'm not up to the task to take it much beyond that, but to me there is an obvious issue when comparing the arguments being made to defend refusing Sanders service and arguments for refusing service to others who most on this board would probably agree deserve protection in order to ensure public accommodation.

[_EAllusion]

Using the term internment camps is not neutral,

It's what they are. It already is a euphemism, and I don't feel the need to adopt a euphamism of a euphamism because it pleases a political faction that wants to use them. But the neat thing here is if you don't like that word, you can't change it to anyone you want - let's say happy camps - and the substance of what they are does not change one iota.

(If memory serves, the Supreme Court decision green-lighting Japanese internment camps also made this complaint, but it might've been a complaint about the term concentration camp.)

I keep coming back to the concept of the moral gatekeeper required in your argument

It exists in any argument for any position about whether businesses should or should not allow people to be served or be allowed to make those decisions for themselves. It exists for every single law. Rules for how people can or should behave are moral things.

Since you also have ideas about who businesses should or should not serve, or be allowed to, you are also proposing a moral gatekeeper in the form of yourself and those like-minded. It's just that you can't seem to recognize your arguments as moral ones too.

[_honorentheos]

Using the term internment camps is not neutral,

It's what they are. It already is a euphemism, and I don't feel the need to adopt a euphamism of a euphamism because it pleases a political faction that wants to use them. But the neat thing here is if you don't like that word, you can't change it to anyone you want - let's say happy camps - and the substance of what they are does not change one iota.

(If memory serves, the Supreme Court decision green-lighting Japanese internment camps also made this complaint, but it might've been a complaint about the term concentration camp.)

This idea that using internment camp is already a euphemism doesn't flip the switch to say, "Ah...yeah this is a subjective thing" suggests we're not going to bridge what seems apparent.

Look at how this is playing out in the public sphere:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lot-r ... ment-camp/

You suggest that it is a neutral criteria for judging whether or not refusing service to Sanders could be justified while implicitly being unable to avoid it being prejudicial partisan judgments that are required to justify it.

[_EAllusion]

I suggest you aren't using the word "neutral" clear fashion, and it is neutral in the sense of that the business owner can and probably does apply it regardless of the person's other traits. If by "neutral" you mean something like, "not taking a political side" then no it's not neutral, but why should it be? Making businesses serve blacks or allowing them to turn away naked people isn't neutral in that sense either. And better still, explain why should it be without using a moral argument. (Pro-tip: any explaination of why it should be will necessarily be moral, so good luck with that.)

An internment camp is a prison camp for prisoners of war, political prisoners, persecuted minorities, or aliens especially without or prior to a fair trial. What we are talking about is literally an internment camp, and the phrase is already euphemistic for concentration camp. Disputing its use is like demanding that we call practices that are clearly torture "enhanced interrogation" on the nonsense scale.

When people talked about the risk of Trump's victory leading to a normalization of previously unacceptable practices, this would be a good case in point. It's got you taking the side of people putting toddlers into internment camps in a rhetorical dispute over what to call internment camps so their defenders can obscure how bad what they are doing sounds.

[_honorentheos]

To my knowledge the historical cases where discrimination has been viewed as a right required the explicit description of the bias involved in the identify and message of the organization or establishment, and that they be a private organization. For example, the Boy Scouts withstood suits for being discriminatory towards females and homosexuals on the grounds their very identity was defined by being a organization for males and that their oath and other core beliefs included values that were contradicted by admitting homosexuals. Of course they've evolved to where they now admit both, but their right to limit who they associated with because to do so was considered infringing on their right to associate by definition as a male religion-based organization was successfully defended on multiple occassions.

The restaurant could not make this claim when attempting to argue that associating with Sarah Sanders as a customer would violate their rights. They are a public establishment that fits the general description where public accommodation is protected.

By definition, they have to be neutral in how they would refuse service. Putting up a sign that said they reserve the right to refuse service to anyone who associates with the President of the United States would be blatantly discriminatory as there is nothing about the Red Hen that suggests it's identity as an establishment is affected by associating with Sarah Sanders or any other associate of the President. Putting up a sign that says they reserve the right to refuse service to anyone who sends kids to internment camps would be discriminatory when they then point to it when they tell Sarah Sanders to take her business elsewhere because again there is nothing about their identity as an establishment that is affected by Sarah Sanders eating their chicken.

The concept of neutrality is built into their identity as a public establishment required to provide public accommodation. To be able to justifiably argue they could refuse to serve Sarah Sanders, they would need to show that her association with their establishment is a burden on their ability to be a public restaurant. Being unhygienic meets this neutral criteria that allows them to refuse service. Refusing to admit a group that would put them in violation of fire safety standards would be another example of a clearly neutral criteria that allows them to refuse service.

Making a public restaurant into a vehicle for public protest violates any reasonable concept of public accommodation.

[_Some Schmo]

Sadly, this country cares not for moral high ground. What they care for is BS.

Largely true, but that doesn't stop people from falsely claiming the moral high ground on the flimsiest of pretexts when trying to justify screwing over someone else.

And it just goes to show that the GOP and people dedicated to voting GOP are complete hypocrites. You could pick any day in Drumpf's administration (seriously - any day), and if Obama had done the same things Drumpf did, Republicans and their base would be apoplectic.

They're full for hypocritical crap.