It’s a question of overreaching government vs. its citizens

Bono Film and Video, in Arlington, Virginia, refused to copy two “pro-homosexual” films from the 1960s for Lilli Vincenz. Ms. Vincenz then turned to the Arlington Human Rights Commission. The commission then ruled, according to Concerned Women for America, that Tim Bono, the shop’s owner, had, in vact, violated Ms. Vincenz’s civil rights, and required him to do the job, or else.

A few conservative bloggers are getting hung up on the details of this case, decrying it as an example in which the religious freedoms of a Christian was sacrificed to the agenda of those who promote homosexuality and same-sex marriage in particular.

I remember doing “word problems” in math classes when I was younger. Sometimes, they’d give you more information than you needed to solve the problem, and by giving you that information, the problem’s creator would manage to make the solution to the problem that much harder to find. That’s more or less the case here.

It doesn’t matter whether Tim Bono was right in refusing to serve Ms. Vincenz, and I am not addressing that question in this post*. It doesn’t matter if Ms. Vincenz is a lesbian, or whether she was promoting same sex marriage (incidentally, though, I can’t find any evidence that she was; the tapes she wanted copied were from the ’60s, long before that particular question had arisen). it doesn’t matter if Mr. Bono is a Christian.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one fact that matters here, and that’s the fact that Bono Film and Video is a private business, not a “public accomodation,” as the Commission describes it (granted, in their defense, it may be the legal definition of “public accomodation” that’s screwed up, not the actual HRC‘s members). As a private business owner, I fully support Mr. Bono’s right to refuse service to anyone he pleases for whatever reason he pleases.

I understand that this position opens me up to attacks, so I want to make something clear. If I learned that a company in town discriminated against customers purely on basis of their race, gender, or even sexual orientation, I would not do business with that company. I would encourage others to refuse to do business with that company. I might not have the energy to actively protest that company outside of their offices, but I would absolutely support those who did so.

I would not, however, support taking legal action against the company, because there are so many other ways that the battle can be fought, using only the power of the free market, not the power of government.