Everybody Discriminates

by May 19, 2014Culture


Doug Wilson is as sharp and prophetic as any Christian could be on the same-sex marriage debate:

Never forget that discrimination is inescapable. Why are people going along with this ludicrous claim that same sex mirage is marriage? Well, it is because Americans have been taught to hate “discrimination,” as though discrimination is a thing out there all by itself. Discrimination is not a stand alone characteristic. I would discriminate against people who take away liberty; they discriminate against people who exercise it. But everybody discriminates.

Right on. And it makes me think of something Stanley Fish said that has simply never stopped ringing in my ears:

A supposedly neutral principle such as “free speech”— just like “fairness” and “merit”—rather than a concept that sits above the fray, monitoring its progress and keeping the combatants honest, . . . is right there in the middle of the fray, an object of contest that will enable those who capture it to parade their virtue at the easy expense of their opponents: we’re for fairness and you are for biased judgment; we’re for merit and you are for special interests; we’re for objectivity and you are playing politics; we’re for free speech and you are for censorship and ideological tyranny. (The Trouble with Principle, 16)

In Fish’s view, this leaves us to muddle through with majority rule. But a Christian can step into the fray and say, “Look, everyone! Look up! There really is Someone sitting there above us! He can tell us what justice is, what fairness and merit and discrimination are! Let’s ask Him!”

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