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E-PrinceThe American Philosophical Association (APA) took a small but important step last week toward promoting non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in higher education when it announced it would censure universities that use sexual orientation as a basis for ...(back to the article)
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What mainstream colleges currently discriminate by sexual orientation in hiring? If anything, reverse discrimination occurs in LGBT/Victim Studies departments.
The military academies, for one.
And they don't care about the APA. This is a status play by the APA for higher standing among liberal intellectuals, not a serious attempt to swing policy.
Is the APA combating discrimination of the basis of sexual orientation, or also on the basis of sexual *practices*? It seems to me that, say, many religious colleges would hire professors who are same-sex attracted, but would not hire a same-sex attracted professor who, for instance, is living with his partner in an ostensibly sexual relationship. Would the APA condemn this sort of discrimination also? It's unclear.
Private universities (public places and publicly funded places are different) should be able to "discriminate" however they please, just like you can disallow any particular person from entering your home.
If I am racist against group A, I am perfectly entitled to refuse to eat at A-food restaurant. Purely based on racism, I can refuse to exchange my goods with A-people's services. Likewise, the A-food person who runs the A-food restaurant has every right to refuse service to me, a B-person.
It's the free market that sorts it out because a C-person will see that B-people are being denied service, so he opens up and A-food restaurant, taking business away from the original A-person
If people discriminate openly based on sexual orientation, they don't care if the APA wags a finger at them! And if there are people/institutions on the fence, they can always use "not qualified" because it's not going to be a super common occurence that the *only* qualified applicants are LGBT, and credentials don't always mean jobs for anyone.
Some distinctions, the relevant part of the APA’s new policy states:
“This includes both discrimination on the basis of status and discrimination on the basis of conduct integrally connected to that status, where "integrally connected" means (a) the conduct is a normal and predictable expression of the status (e.g., sexual conduct expressive of a sexual orientation), or (b) the conduct is something that only a person with that status could engage in (e.g., pregnancy), or (c) the proscription of that conduct is historically and routinely connected with invidious discrimination against the status (e.g., interracial marriage).”
Freedom works, banning employment for individuals engaged in multi-racial sex is illegal. I can’t see any reason to approve of the illegalization of that form of discrimination while still maintaining that institutions have a legal right to discriminate on the basis of LGBT issues. Nevertheless, the issue here isn’t about whether an institution has a legal right to discriminate. The question is whether a professional organization should condemn behavior that they find to be morally inappropriate. Some Universities believe that homosexual acts are immoral and ought to be prohibited at their institution. The vast majority of the members of the APA believe that this form of discrimination is itself immoral and demanded that the APA either stop advertising for these institutions or at least flag them as Universities that discriminate. If private organizations have the right to adopt whatever rules they deem fit, then the APA (as a private organization) also has this right. The very principle you employ in defending these Universities also entails that the APA ought to be able to determine the conditions in which it will do business with these institutions. In fact, the reason that the free market is supposedly able to deal with these issues is that private individuals or groups can place pressure on offending individuals by refusing to do business with them or placing restrictions on how those interactions will occur. Given that you believe these issues ought to be handled in the free market manner, I’m surprised that you aren’t citing the APA’s actions as an instance of how private organizations can place pressure without resorting to legislation.