Racism and Discrimination

I know that some people including people who are gay  think that you shouldn’t discriminate against gay people, because they can’t help being gay. “It’s how they were made,” they say, or, “I didn’t have a choice.”. This may be true, although, we don’t know whether it’s a gene, or prenatal hormones, or whether there are “gay” brains or “straight” brains. It’s a weird argument, though, because you shouldn’t discriminate against people at all; whether or not they chose or were chosen shouldn’t make a difference. We don’t say, “Hey, let’s not discriminate against African Americans because they can’t help being African American.
 A lot of people are trying to frame the gay rights debate around whether or not you have a choice, including me at times, but that does not matter. We should not use whether you have a choice to be the way you are as a reason not to discriminate, we simply should not discriminate.

That does not mean we necessarily have to like everyone for who they are. You can still say you do not like Christians, but they should still have the same rights you. You should not deny them housing, or physically attack them.
So why do we try to determine whether it is acceptable to discriminate against a person based on whether they have a choice to be who they are?

I think part of the problem is that we like things to be in black and white and if you take the theory of not discriminating against anyone and apply it against a lot of what ifs it falls apart. This is especially true when you take it and apply this question against criminals. Therefore people try to follow a two phased question. First do you find that person to be moral? Secondly if that person is not moral does that person choose to be that way?

I think that is where the big conundrum is. What is the threshold at which you should deny someone equal treatment? The only way to stop the discrimination is to raise a certain group of people above this threshold that people have set, and that threshold will vary for everybody.

http://youtu.be/Fh1fA46TsRU