> Courts continually hold that a business must serve persons they don’t like or agree with.
In the US, at least, generally only when the act at issue would discriminate on a specific, enumerated, legally protected basis that applies to the business and business transaction in question, and if the business does not have some right (including its First Amendment rights) that trump the specific application of the law in question in the context of the actual act at issue.
The exception is for the fairly narrow set of businesses to which stricter neutrality regulations apply, like phone companies, but that’s a very small set of businesses.
Yes this. If I want to I can kick every Republican or MAGA hat out of my cafe with no legal risk. But I can't kick them out because they are Christian / Muslim or Black / White or Gay / Straight. Some of these things are considered to be outside of the control of the individual. They are innate. You can't choose if you're white or gay or to some degree Christian. If you're thinking that the religious exception feels weird given the rest on the list, I'd agree. But at the same time religious indoctrination in childhood when a child has literally no recourse but to follow what their parents say puts them at a major disadvantage to coming to terms with reality. If I acknowledge that a fundamentalist Christian growing up in the US would be just as likely to be a fundamentalist Muslim were they born in a different country really puts into question the "choice" aspect of religion. Some folks manage to escape it, but for most the social and cultural aspects and risk of ostracization keep them in the fold.
That's sadly dismissive of an actual problem. In matters of sex crimes, men are effectively assumed guilty until proven otherwise, and even if they're eventually found innocent they get their lives destroyed. The bar is much, much higher for female rape to be considered realistic.
The accusations might be true but it doesn't really matter until it is found as such in a court of law. Trial by media is an aberration, the modern equivalent of medieval shaming practices.
OJ Simpson was not found guilty of murder in a criminal setting, yet he was still a pariah.
It took years from the first public accusation for Harvey Weinstein’s case to come to trial. Was it wrong for his production company to fire him before a judge had rendered judgement?
> Was it wrong for his production company to fire him before a judge had rendered judgement?
Yes. One's support for universal rights is really tested when the accused is clearly Not A Nice Person.
Imagine of being accused of rape, even though you're totally innocent, and your employer (or your customers) suddenly dropping you. Would that be fair?
No, it wouldn't be fair. But I'm not going to get angry at something that rarely happens.
Instead I'm thinking of about all the women who'd have had to work alongside Harvey Weinstein in your hypothetical, while knowing he had abused people they themselves knew.
To make this personal: I discovered CSAM on my boss's laptop. I reported it to my employer and he was fired before he was found guilty. My boss worked with children almost every day. I don't want to imagine a world in which he would have been allowed to hang onto that job.
That's a safeguarding measure that is very specific to certain jobs. Does streaming a YT video put any woman at risk of harassment? Obviously not. Can a film producer be kept away from potential victims, with a bit of effort from the employer? Probably yes.
Working yourself up in a rage is not what one should do when discussing law. Before you know it, you'll be doing things that history will probably condemn you for later on.
> That's a safeguarding measure that is very specific to certain jobs.
Safeguarding from what exactly? If they're innocent until proven guilty, there shouldn't be any safeguarding necessary. By your earlier argument, saying "you can't work with kids anymore" is rushing to judgement.
Life is not one and zeroes. Safeguards are just insurance policies, taken out in specific circumstances to insulate from potential risk which might well never materialize. Just because a driver is insured doesn't mean he's ever crashed or going to crash.
Thats a really frustrating example because there is a lot of evidence, and over literal years- yet nobody came forward which allowed him to be a predator for decades.
How can the law help if nobody is coming forward? I do not understand.
Your argument about guilty until proven innocent still doesn't stand though.
Johnny Depp was the quintessential counter-example of this, dropped by everyone and smeared publicly by the media; until his PR team with the help of the law cleared it up (a little too well in my opinion).
> The letter of the law allows anyone to be guilty of rape, in the U.S. at least
That actually varies based on jurisdiction, some states have separate laws with different offense names (often with similar conditions and punishments) for different kinds of sexual assaults, and still have “rape” being specific in the same way that it is in Britain, in some states and the federal system, “rape” is not a specific offense named in statute but is sometimes used as an informal name for some offenses. (E.g., in the federal system, the title of the relevant section including, but not limited to, the common law definition of “rape” is “sexual abuse” [0], and the word “rape” does not appear anywhere in it.)
As an example, Trump was found civilly liable for Sexual Assault but could not be found liable for Rape because the jury found he only penetrated the victim with his fingers and not his penis.
Absolutely not. You can sue for being discriminated against based on a protected class (as said in the sibling comment), but otherwise the entire internet hinges on platforms being able to ban people who they "don't like or agree with" since they usually disagree on 'how much spam is acceptable' or 'whether hardcore porn should exist on YouTube.com'.
