Gen Con Takes Stand For Inclusiveness

This rather breaks all my rules, in that I'm reporting on politics, and regional politics at that. That said, Gen Con, the hobby's largest American convention, intersects with this particular example, so it's hard to ignore; and this is an RPG news blog, after all. Plus, I agree with the sentiment, even if I'm doubtful about its actual effectiveness given the current contract. Gen Con has written to the local politician in its home city of Indianapolis, USA, threatening (kind of - they're contracted to stay there for five more years whether they like it or not) to consider moving elsewhere if a local law relating to businesses being able to refuse custom to same-sex couples is passed.

With multiple recent articles in just the last week (Monte Cook Games & Thunderplains, Green Ronin's Blue Rose), the subject of inclusiveness is not one that anybody can afford to ignore. However, the vitriolic comments these topics give rise to make discussion on them difficult at best.

Here's the letter they wrote.

​

 

[pdmiller]

You cover a lot of ground there. Let me respond to the points you make one by one:

• "I believe the goal for our culture should be to have no classes" - I'm not sure what to make of this, exactly. The goal is everyone should be the same, homogenous mass? Or that everyone should be judged based on their own actions?
• "Equal opportunity (not outcomes) should be guaranteed for everyone." Fair enough.
• "That includes the opportunity to determine which transactions you wish to participate in." You really need to stretch the meaning of the word "opportunity" to make that fit, and if you do make "opportunity" into such an over-riding absolute, does that include the opportunity to commit other crimes, as well?
• "The more you start building rules and laws around classes, the more permanent the divisions become." How so? If you prohibit persecution of transsexuals, are they likely to disappear?
• "Identity politics and collectivism perpetuate conflict and division." If people weren't already divided and in conflict, there would be no need of specific rules, for the same reason there isn't a burning need to prohibit discrimination against left-handed people. Or are you arguing prohibiting business from denying service will itself increase hatred of that class? If so, I'd argue that the opposite has been demonstrated to be true, for example, racism in the deep south is less now than before the civil rights movement. If you have a counter-example, I'll listen.

Uriel, thanks for your thoughtful response.
*No I don't think everyone should be the same homogenous mass (unless everyone somehow wanted to ). Equal opportunity virtually guarantees this would not happen.
*Exactly how did you arrive at the conclusion that I am advocating freedom to commit crimes? I am saying that deciding not to commit to a transaction is NOT a crime, nor should it be. When you mandate that someone must transact with someone else, you remove that person's freedom.
*When you prohibit behaviour you do not abolish it. You drive it underground where it prospers. Prohibition is a good example. Making guns illegal in Chicago has not worked either. Success in these matters is about changing attitudes, and the weapon for that is free speech, not compulsion.
*The racism in the deep south was always unsustainable. It was irrational and therefore would not persist. The civil rights movement is a great example of what I am talking about - expose the hypocrisy and it will become ridiculed and unsustainable. Ban it outright and you will ensure it persists. Racists are entitled to their views, but through the magic of free speech they look more and more ridiculous as time goes on.

 

[Grimstaff]

Fair enough. That was overly-glib, and I apologize.

No harm done, mon frer! If we were experts on rhetoric, we'd be politicians, not fellow game-nerds

 

[Zaruthustran]

So there is only one grocery shop in this hypothetical city/state/country?

The genius of the free market is that someone will always fill a need. If idiots don't want to sell you groceries, someone else will. There's money in it.
The difficulty only arises when the law mandates discrimination.

The problem with that notion is that there's no historical evidence. In fact, that evidence disagrees.

Before the Americans with Disabilities Act, how many businesses provided wheelchair-accessible access to their goods and services? Ramps and elevators are expensive to install and maintain. Retrofitting bathrooms costs a bundle. Most potential clients aren't in wheelchairs; it makes good business sense to not provide those facilities and amenities. It's good business, and it's horrible lack of human decency.

So, the ADA was created and passed into law. Because of that law, businesses HAVE to accommodate the class of people who have disabilities. It's terrible business, and it's the law. Because people with disabilities merit access to the same goods and services as everyone else.

The free market would never have allowed the ADA. Many businesses and lobby groups fought against it, because it's completely counter to cold hard dollars and cents analysis.

Fortunately for human society as a whole, those businesses failed in their opposition. The market was ignored, and human beings were listened to. This is the ideal situation, and why we need anti-discrimination laws like the ADA.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Because I'm busy, I didn't address the clothing issue.

Refusal of service based on attire is legal. Dress codes are legal. I myself have been refused service in a bar due to my clothing.

But clothing is changeable with minimal negative impact to the person being refused service on that basis. One's race religion, or as we are discussing here, gender or sexual identity is NOT so mutable.

Our laws (mostly) recognize that refusal of service on such grounds is a societal problem that the free market does not protect against, and so protects their fundamental constitutional rights with a little extra vigor.

 

[Osgood]

Thank you Gen Con for taking a stand against bigotry. I love having the con just the next state over, but if it has to move it has to move.

 

[Paraxis]

As a straight white male, who also happens to be conservative and texan I find the concept of a business being able to discriminate against an entire class of people barbaric and ridiculous. Businesses need to have licenses, government oversight for work safety, and fair wages, the government already has rules in place to tell businesses what they can and can't do for the betterment of society, this is no different.

Now should businesses be able to refuse service to individuals for a variety of reasons sure, disruptive behavior, poor hygiene, stuff like that. But because they identify as a different gender or are in a same sex relationship heck no.

I want to also point out that besides the LBGQT community another couple of groups are constantly discriminated against and places get away with it, I belong to both of them, the obese and the disabled. Refusing service to someone based on weight or handicap is just as bad as refusing service to someone because of race, gender, or religion.

 

[pemerton]

The Constitution protects negative rights, not positive ones.

The 6th amendment provides that, inter alia, a person accused of a crime "shall enjoy the right . . . to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."

I'm sure there's a reading of this out there that presents it as a negative rather than a positive right, but on it's face it is securing a positive right - to be supplied with witnesses, and with counsel.

 

[Ace]

Oh boy, here we go.

Actually, I'm impressed it only took 20 posts to get to the villain-du-jour.

This is a standards Leftist tactic called Disqualify and as an added bonus is entirely racist and sexist in that its assumed that a white male cannot understand certain issues. That's rubbish, the majority of the civil rights movement legislation including the legislation protection for GBLT people was passed and often crafted by straight white males.

These arguments and the attendant passive aggressive BS are why ENWorld rightly bans political talk. The problem is that everything has become political, Even our hobby has been infested with it which I resent .

As of now its mostly Left Wing Cultural Marxists rhetoric but I'd just as peeved if it was Social Conservative hoo-ha . I just want to kill some imaginary monsters and take their imaginary treasure and talk about mechanics and not have to hear about whatever hobbyhorse anyone is on, whether I agree with it or not.

I suspect this politicization of the hobby just means work for the mods and if I may be so bold, I'd like to suggest that anytime a thread with any probable political content shows up that the mods immediately lock it and allow no comments.

This way they can say "hey we at ENWorld think Gen-Con did a good thing" without a long thread of political back and forth that annoys everyone.

And to my opinion, I don't do cons and don't have any stake but as a business case I think Gen-Con made the political call they felt would best suit the corporations political beliefs and would exercise fiduciary obligations to their stakeholders as well.

 

[KirayaTiDrekan]

As a straight white male, who also happens to be conservative and texan I find the concept of a business being able to discriminate against an entire class of people barbaric and ridiculous. Businesses need to have licenses, government oversight for work safety, and fair wages, the government already has rules in place to tell businesses what they can and can't do for the betterment of society, this is no different.

Now should businesses be able to refuse service to individuals for a variety of reasons sure, disruptive behavior, poor hygiene, stuff like that. But because they identify as a different gender or are in a same sex relationship heck no.

I want to also point out that besides the LBGQT community another couple of groups are constantly discriminated against and places get away with it, I belong to both of them, the obese and the disabled. Refusing service to someone based on weight or handicap is just as bad as refusing service to someone because of race, gender, or religion.

You are right and I apologize for not thinking of and including those groups in my previous post.

 

[uriel222]

Uriel, thanks for your thoughtful response.
*No I don't think everyone should be the same homogenous mass (unless everyone somehow wanted to ). Equal opportunity virtually guarantees this would not happen.
*Exactly how did you arrive at the conclusion that I am advocating freedom to commit crimes? I am saying that deciding not to commit to a transaction is NOT a crime, nor should it be. When you mandate that someone must transact with someone else, you remove that person's freedom.
*When you prohibit behaviour you do not abolish it. You drive it underground where it prospers. Prohibition is a good example. Making guns illegal in Chicago has not worked either. Success in these matters is about changing attitudes, and the weapon for that is free speech, not compulsion.
*The racism in the deep south was always unsustainable. It was irrational and therefore would not persist. The civil rights movement is a great example of what I am talking about - expose the hypocrisy and it will become ridiculed and unsustainable. Ban it outright and you will ensure it persists. Racists are entitled to their views, but through the magic of free speech they look more and more ridiculous as time goes on.

Again, I'll respond to this point-by-point, if I may:

• I take it by "different classes", then, you mean something more akin to different castes? That is, there will be various distinct groups of people, but all of equal status? If so, then I agree that is a worthy goal.
• I jumped a step there. "Opportunity", in this context, is generally used to indicate a level playing field of sorts, not a wholesale freedom of action. For example, I'd argue that if a woman was unable to succeed in business because men refused to buy her products solely because she was a woman, then she was denied "opportunity", whereas prohibiting the men from discrimination only denies them the "opportunity" to discriminate. I then extended that prohibition on anti-social behaviour to another, in the sense that any law is, in some way, denying an "opportunity"
• Okay, Prohibition is a valid counter-example. Alcohol consumption was perceived as a social harm by one group, then only increased while prohibited, similar to the current "war on drugs". Fair enough.
• The racism in the deep south lasted a hundred years past the Civil War, but almost immediately began to decline after the Civil Rights Act, but I take your point that larger socio-economic factors may well have been in play.

If free speech were enough to guarantee a just society, then I would whole-heartedly agree that legislative protections would be less than ideal. The problem is, though, that changing ideologies and attitudes takes time, and not everyone has the good fortune to be born into an era permissive of their class. Should persecuted minorities simply have to endure systematic discrimination while society at large slowly comes around to according them the same treatment? Is the actual harm currently suffered by some to be outweighed by the speculative harm which might occur by protecting them?