Hemphill: A few words about the meaning of freedom

I favor an individual’s right to discriminate for anyone of any race, creed, color, or sexual preference, and I favor an individual’s right to discriminate against any race, creed, color or sexual preference.

It is an old, recently discredited concept called “freedom.”

I discriminated for two black males when I introduced them into my first two Kiwanis Clubs in San Diego in the early 1970s, and I discriminated for two women when I introduced them into my Kiwanis Club a few years later. All were identified only by their first initials because the national organization would not approve their membership otherwise. I did these introductions into Kiwanis because all the candidates were qualified, other than their skin color or gender, and I did so without the prior approval of the members of the two clubs. All candidates were approved unanimously by the members.

I opposed the Fair Employment and Housing Act in California, arguing that any law that demands protection for “race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, ancestry, familial status, disability, or source of income” and has been further deemed to cover renting to families with children, and to associates of people in the above categories is a massive intrusion into personal liberties!

And it is all so unnecessary — not that it is ever the purview of government to reduce freedom except in protecting against force or fraud — but, as I argued decades ago against the passing of the government force to attain integration, if every freedom-loving individual in California would simply sell their individual home to a member of the protected classes, every neighborhood would have been integrated with everyone — except perhaps Martians — within a year without the massive removal of freedoms of everyone, without lawsuits, discrimination panels, real estate courses, etc.

In today’s general political context, liberals prefer equality to freedom, and conservatives prefer freedom to equality.

Of course it is not quite so simple. Some liberals recognize the problem with equality over freedom, and some conservatives would want to reduce freedom by mandating religious practices. As someone who was marched to chapel as a Boot, and marched to chapel again as a Midshipman at Annapolis, I understand their reasoning — but we have now granted freedom to practice, or not practice, religion.

Not so, our other morally held concepts. Those freedoms are regularly stomped upon. The Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, was just the most recent small business hit by the anti-freedom forces. Bake shops have been the targets in Colorado and Oregon, although when bake shops owned by gays have refused to bake a cake in the shape of a Bible with a message that homosexuality is a sin, there was no punishment. When a Muslim-owned bakery refused to bake a cake for a Christian wedding — again no punishment.

Equal justice? Hardly. But tacit admission that minorities are permitted to discriminate. (This was confirmed by the Colorado Civil Rights Division which recently ruled on the case of Azucar Bakery in Denver.)

Freedom for some.

I sent my donation to the Memories Pizza, not because of religious freedom, just freedom!