Ask This More Often: “Is It Fair To All Concerned?”

Good old-fashioned discrimination has been on my mind these last few days. Maybe the recent anniversary of the Civil Rights Act is the impetus. Or, more likely, maybe it’s because you can see vestiges of societal discrimination in the news 50 years later.
Discrimination has existed for as long as humans have. It’s built into our biology. For example, without discrimination of visual clues, we wouldn’t be able to focus our attention on working, driving and interacting. Similarly, our ears pick up thousands of sounds at any given moment, but because of aural discrimination, sounds that are “noise” are filtered out so we can hear what we want to.
As members of society, we often make personal choices that prefer one individual or group over another. You may, for example, find someone more attractive than I do, for a host of reasons, and decide to hang out with or marry that person. I may, for example, choose to ignore football (a sin to many) and act in ways to keep away from it.
But personal preferences go beyond choices when prejudice denies one group of people the ability to participate in an activity available to another group. This is where discrimination becomes wrong — because it causes one group of people to be superior to another for one reason or another. In America, our framing documents are based on the non-discriminatory concept of equality — from “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence to the various freedoms outlined in the U.S. Constitution and its amendments.
Although it took our country a long time to shed the shackles of a lot of discrimination, particularly racial, it’s still around as women and people of color face glass ceilings in terms of wages and power. It’s still around for immigrants who often are treated more harshly than others and for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people, who face unequal treatment regarding new forms of families and how they can interact with loved ones in hospitals and at the end of life.
So taking this all into account, let’s take a quick look at discrimination that’s in recent news:
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Episcopal Church. LGBT people essentially were segregated by the Episcopal Church in the coastal areas of South Carolina before the diocese split. New Bishop Charles VonRosenberg, who heads the Episcopal Church in South Carolina for parishes that didn’t break away from the national church, made headlines this week for letting priests know they could conduct same-sex blessings if they wanted to. For many, it wasn’t that big of a deal because the national church dealt with the issue a few years ago and the local diocese finally was coming into the 21st century now that breakaway churches obsessed with the issue are now gone. Still, it’s a good first step for the continuing diocese, which needs to do more to heal years of wounds caused to LGBT parishioners.
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Bar closings. In Charleston, the city council is considering a resolution that would require newly-opened bars to close at midnight, instead of 2 a.m. like those now open. This proposal seems blatantly discriminatory and, if passed, likely will be challenged in court as “unequal treatment.”
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Hobby Lobby. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow corporations to be exempt from a law based on religious objections means those companies may refuse to cover some contraceptives for female employees as required under the Affordable Care Act. Many women see the ruling as blatantly discriminatory, in part because of how it restricts women from getting other health benefits that accrue from contraceptive care.
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Harrell v. Wilson. S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson won a constitutional victory this week to investigate any wrongdoing, which in the case mentioned involves allegations of improper ethical conduct by House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston. In one sense, the ruling is a win for anti-discrimination because it allows Harrell to be treated like everyone else, not just reviewed by his House peers.
Rotary Clubs around the world follow a four-way ethical test, which includes the question, “Is it fair to all concerned?” In ridding our state of discrimination, public officials should ask that question more often.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. He can be reached at brack@statehousereport.com.