Fairness????

The going thing in local governments these days is the passing of “fairness ordinances” having to do with discrimination, real or imagined. These ordinances usually prohibit discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations on the bases of ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity.

Essentially, the ordinances award perquisites to certain classes of people that have first been taken from other classes of people. For instance, a property-owner is deprived of choice in the matter of renting accommodations, while applicants are given the right to sue the owner if they feel aggrieved (being turned down) in the process. The owner is not allowed to make a judgment on either past experience or current information regarding the applicants. The government controls his property whether he likes it or not.

Under these ordinances, the factory-owner is required to hire people approved by the government (perhaps even ex-cons guilty of serious crimes), assuming the applicants are qualified, and not on the basis of his experience with certain classes of people or information regarding them or even personal choice. He may be forced to hire a person who is lazy or actually unqualified but qualified according to government, and will find it nearly impossible to get rid of that employee, who is unproductive and represents expense, not profit.

A landlord may prefer not to rent a furnished apartment to homosexuals because he doesn't want it or its appurtenances affected by their behavior, which involves unnatural uses of body orifices and organs. There's nothing filthier or more unsanitary than anal and oral sex or other creepy sexual exercises that impact beds and couches or even the floor. The ordinance, however, removes the owner's right to exercise his prerogatives.

Or, either he or other tenants may feel uncomfortable in the homosexual setting, with other tenants actually moving out, thus costing him financially because the government has taken control of his property and decided to whom he may and may not rent even though exercising his standards does no harm to anyone. He could end up losing his investment. So-called “fairness ordinances” are not fair to all, especially those who stand to lose financially because of them.

Gender identity is now a real problem with regard to “fairness.” Suppose someone operates a boarding house for men and is approached for accommodations by a lady who says she actually is a man. Simple? Just tell her to go away. Not so simple...not in the age of enlightenment.

It's now official at Atherton High School in Louisville, Ky., that an obvious boy who says he's actually a girl may now use the girls bathrooms and locker-rooms. The school-based council approved that permission almost unanimously. Neither the school-board nor superintendent nor any parent nor another student has any say in the matter. He can probably play on the girls basketball and softball teams but not on those of the boys.

The ramifications of this action totally lacking in common sense are evident. Any boy or girl who says (no certified proof necessary) that he/she is of the opposite sex cannot be denied the same privilege, no matter the obvious evidence to the contrary. The fact that this might offend maybe half of the 1200 other students does not signify...the minority MUST rule. Perhaps the process could be slowed if the boy is required to wear a dress in order to exercise his privilege but that probably wouldn't do more than just make him a curiosity...or bully-bait.

According to the prevailing governmental requirements accruing to political correctness, the Atherton fiasco will spread to other schools, where voyeurism by both sexes will get more attention than any academic subject. One can imagine all the senior boys claiming to be girls just for the fun of it. The bathrooms will become orgy-centers as the boys and girls get their exercise and break up the monotony of school.

This won't happen on a large scale and never in most schools but it points up the fallacies connected to fairness. One man's fairness is another man's infringement upon personal liberty, but the minority, no matter if as pronounced as in the Atherton case, will always win the day...until political correctness is replaced by common sense constrained by law to protect minorities while allowing the majority to have at least some modicum of freedom.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark