Boise’s Proposed Thoughtcrime Ordinance

 lewrockwell.com / By William Norman Grigg / November 17, 2012

“Law is concerned with external behavior and not the inner life of man.”

~ Justice Felix Frankfurter, West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette (dissent)

Ordinance O-36-12, a proposed municipal “anti-discrimination” measure being considered by the Boise City Council, would do nothing to protect people from acts of criminal violence. Instead, it would mandate the use of state-sanctioned aggression against business owners who refuse the commercial patronage of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.

If government has no authority to criminalize private behavior between consenting adults, by what supposed authority can it punish people who withhold their consent from a commercial transaction? Proponents of the ordinance intend to bury that question beneath a blizzard of bromides about tolerance and respect.

About a year ago, City Council President Maryanne Jordan was approached by two Boise residents who claimed to have been assaulted because they were gay. They also claimed that they were afraid to report the crime out of fear that they might suffer repercussions if they went public about their lifestyle. Jordan says this prompted her to devise a measure that would ban discrimination based on “sexual orientation and gender identity or expression” in housing, employment, and public accommodations.

Jordan didn’t disclose any of the details of the alleged assault during the November 13 City Council hearing on the proposed ordinance. In this sense the story told by Jordan is typical of what the Boise Weekly calls “anecdotal reports” that “suggest a recent increase in hate-based crime” against gays and lesbians. Those unconfirmed reports have allegedly grown in number since the last time the state legislature refused to add the category of “sexual orientation” to the state anti-discrimination ordinance.

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