I can't remember the last time the Ku Klux Klan was actually in the news. Maybe it's because I live and work in and around New York City, but the KKK, I mean the actual KKK, it seems to me has become a relic, a cipher, more of a symbol than an actual organization of actual people that does any actual things anymore.
Now, of course I know that the Klan still exists, is still designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and is still dedicated to awful ideas and to doing awful things, and I'm not in any way trying to minimize or ignore its very real history and its very real victims. That's not what this is about.
As the debate over whether "religious freedom" is a legitimate excuse, justification or grant of permission for commercial actors to inflict economic harm on gay people rages on, it seems I can't read or have a conversation about this topic without someone invoking the KKK. No sooner do I or does someone else ask the question, "Is it OK to inflict economic harm on gay people because your imaginary friend told you to?" or something similar, than someone races immediately and as fast as they can into the arms of "the Klan," and asks something like, "Is it OK for a print-shop owner to refuse to print hateful racist literature for the Klan?" as if that question somehow answers, or even helps answer, the former.
I've spent plenty of time and effort recently exploring the question of whether commercial discrimination inflicts economic harm on its victims, whether anti-discrimination laws inflict any harm on the perpetrators, and whether the latter excuses, justifies or permits the former, so I'm not here to have that conversation again. Looking for principled distinctions between similar yet not identical situations and outcomes is a healthy thing; it's what the law does. There should be principled distinctions between similar situations that call for different outcomes, and it's important to understand what those principled distinctions are (like the "trolley problem" I keep mentioning from law school Torts).
What I find interesting here is this apparent breathless, breakneck race to invoke the Ku Klux Klan, "the KKK" or "the Klan," specifically, as an immediate, automatic, generic, reflexive and ubiquitous avatar for any actor in any analogous hypothetical situation, as a means of understanding the principles underlying discrimination and anti-discrimination measures. Why the KKK? And why is it always a "print shop owner" in a position to "discriminate" "against" the KKK by "refusing" to print their "hateful" or "racist" "literature"? Even if this is not the only analogous or pseudo-analogous situation we can think of, why is it always, seemingly, the first? Why is it so ubiquitous?
Why is "the Klan" always the stand-in for the LGBT customer?
Why is the stand-in for the LGBT customer always "the Klan"?
I think these last two questions are what bother me the most, viz., using what practically everyone agrees is a loathsome and offensive hate group (but again, why this particular one?), a relatively small private club which many people would at first blush have no problem with anyone refusing to serve or do business with, as a stand-in for an entire community of several million people. The inescapable implication is that the LGBT community, or any particular gay person, is just as loathsome and offensive and dedicated to the pursuit of hate and evil as the KKK, and therefore deserves to be treated the same way by those who loathe them and are offended by them. There is always an underlying implication in the "religious freedom" argument that LGBT people somehow deserve to be mistreated, and to have economic harm inflicted on them, by "Christian" merchants who find them loathsome and offensive.
I'm not saying that anyone invoking the KKK in a counter-example is necessarily defending the KKK, trying to compare or equate the LGBT community with the KKK, or trying to imply that gay people are just as loathsome and offensive as the KKK. I'm just wondering why that particular outfit apparently has to be named as an actor in any counter-example used to illustrate why discrimination against gay people by "religious" merchants is or is not excusable, justifiable, or permissible.
