This Is Very Disturbing!

The majority of people think it is okay to discriminate against us, but they are against discrimination by race.

Americans don’t think businesses need a religious excuse to discriminate
LGBTQ Nation
By Alex Bollinger
December 21, 2017

A new study published in Science Advances found that Americans don’t really care if a business is discriminating because of the owners’ “sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Brian Powell and other researchers at Indiana University conducted a study of 2000 people to tease out people’s attitudes about discrimination. Participants were presented with a scenario of an engaged couple going to a wedding photographer and being turned away.
[…]
Overall, 53% of people thought that discrimination should be legal when it’s against the gay couple, and 39% said it should be legal to refuse to serve an interracial couple.

But people didn’t really care if a religious reason was given or not: about the same percentage of people thought it should be legal to discriminate based on religious disapproval or non-religious disapproval.

This is very troubling, it means that we have a lot of work to do to make people realize that all discrimination is wrong.

They thought it alright for a small business to discriminate but not the large box stores,

What participants did care about was the type of business that was discriminating; they were twice as likely to say that a sole proprietorship should be allowed to discriminate than a large chain store.

They justified their beliefs by…

Instead, those who favored discrimination made a private/public distinction and often assumed that the free market would take care of the problem.

“It’s the idea that people who treat different groups differently ultimately will be penalized,” he said. “Ultimately, the market would wipe out discriminatory businesses.”

Wishful thinking.

For one thing is you are in a state that is anti-LGBT you might not be able to find any place that wants your business if you are LGBT. Also minorities be definition don’t have any power, they don’t have financial resources, and they don’t have a political voice.

We need to educate the public that discrimination affects everyone and that the market place will not correct itself.

Also we need to educate the public that believing it is wrong to think it is okay to discriminate against us but not because of race… that thinking is itself discriminatory.