"Most citizens would agree that it is wrong to deny taxpayer-financed, 'public' housing to anyone based on the color of their skin or the number of children in the household," he wrote.
"Should it be prohibited for public, taxpayer-financed institutions such as schools to reject someone based on an individual's beliefs or attributes?," he asked in the letter. "Most certainly. Should it be prohibited for private entities such as a church, bed and breakfast or retirement neighborhood that doesn't want noisy children? Absolutely not.
"Decisions concerning private property and associations should in a free society be unhindered. As a consequence, some associations will discriminate," he continued. (Link)
I confess some naivete here - I really wasn't aware that there are Americans who see the world this way. At it simplest, laws represent a society's moral baseline and the lawmaker's challenge is to balance individual liberty with the agreed on code of acceptable behavior. And it's done all the time.
Laws protect the vulnerable from harm. As a society, for example, we've agreed that violent crime and molesting children is unacceptable behavior. We strive to protect the vulnerable from harm, from violence, from humiliation, from discrimination. Those laws define the type of society we strive to be. Some laws are passed just with the hope they make us a better society.
It's hard to imagine the kind of country we'd have if Rand Paul had his way.
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