Here’s the rub for me – I don’t think the government should be in the business of telling me who I can rent my rooms to. It’s one thing if I own an apartment complex, or have other rental property, to tell me I can’t discriminate (though I don’t agree with that either on a gut level) but to tell me I can’t discriminate when I’m bringing somebody into my own home (or apartment, or whatever) is wrong. But that’s what the law is. If I only want a roommate who is a homosexual Guatamalen(sp?) male between the ages of 23 and 34 in their second or third year of law school, I should be able to discriminate against everybody who doesn’t meet that criteria.
That being said, since roommates.com hooks people up with roommates, they need as much information as possible and sexual orientation is a piece of information that some people seeking roommates might be concerned about. The law needs to be changed so this ruling can go away.
This just provides more affirmation of my policy of never living with somebody. Sheesh.
The question is not discriminatory and requiring an answer is not discriminatory based on sexual preference. Refusing service for failure to answer is perfectly valid. Refusing service based on the answer could be problematic. Perhaps Roommates should have 3 categories – queer, straight and refused to answer.
Re-read the ruling. The court says a web site open to the public can’t prohibit services based on answers to questions that involve, here, sexual orientation, and by extrapolation, any protected Title 7 category like race, religion, etc.
Hardly ground breaking, particularly liberal, or nanny-like.
It in fact affirms immunities already granted that it customers volunteer personal information, there is protection from libel, slander or false advertising. So, simply ask the question, don’t mandate. The result will be that people looking for roommates will want to provide that information in order to better match with a room. Now that’s capitalism at it’s most elemental.
As an example, look at personal ads: SWJM seeks GHF couple for Passover tacos. That’s covered and protected all day in every corner of the USA, Kansas perhaps excluded.
This used to be a free country. It is indeed “nanny like” for the govt to interfere with the right of the people to associate with whom they wish, and avoid whom they wish wo avoid. If the ruling was in accord with the law, then the law is an @ss.
Look at the title of the article; it doesn’t say “Al must live with homosexuals.” The ruling doesn’t require you to share an apartment with anyone you don’t want to. It addresses the legality of a website requiring someone to reveal sexual orientation before agreeing to do business with that person. Try filtering out your emotions before you post.
If the site can’t ask the question and require an answer, it can’t tell Al if his potential roommate is a sodomite or not. Why is it discriminatory to ask the question and require an answer? If the person says I’m a sodomite and the site then refuses to do business with him, that’s discriminatory. But to simply require an answer so they can provide complete information so Al can make an informed decision is not.
So sorry to get emotional while discussing yet another example of freedom going down the tubes so as not to make sodomists feel bad.
My point is this: in a free country, the govt doesn’t force people to associate with people they would rather have nothing to do with. Please explain whether in your view this ruling,
A) enhances freedom
B) restricts freedom, or
C) has no impact on our ability to plan our lives
D) is perfectly in accordance with the 1st, 9th, and 10th Amendments.
Exactly, thanks Ned. Isn’t it odd that the 1st Amendment supposedly protects the vilest pornography on web sites, while at the same time forbiding the free flow of information on a web site. I’m sure this is what James Madison had in mind.
While I normally somehow find myself at loggerheads with Al, this time I’m kind of with him.
While I understand where the court is coming from with their ruling, roommates.com did not discontinue conducting business with people for answering the question one way or the other, they simply required an answer. Any discrimination would come from those advertising with/through roommates.com. What the website was doing was providing an affirmitive tool for its users. Simply requiring an answer to a question does not in itself constitute discrimination. You can equate the sexuality question with any other – gender for example. They can require that questions about gender be answered because some people are looking for a specific gender in a roommate; well, some people are looking for a specific sexual orientation.
I do believe in discriminating, because we have to. I don’t want a fighter pilot with bad vision. I don’t want a beat cop in a wheelchair (Family Guy’s Joe aside). I don’t want a female urologist (at least not at this point in my life). There are times when factors interfere with our desire to be “equal-opportunity”, and when it comes to sharing housing with someone, comfort is one of those factors.
Al, if you were on this site looking for a roommate and the question had three possible answers “straight, gay or refuse to answer” and you were very concerned that “refuse to answer” meant you might end up with a gay roommate, couldn’t you just look at the people who asnwered the question “straight?”
Yes you do Freedom and the website deserves the freedom to not do business with someone who makes it difficult to provide its service, in this case information to those seeking a roommate. Bringing it back to insurance, a company can refuse to write a risk who refuses to disclose the information necessary to properly underwrite that risk.
Sure, on someone else’s web site. But the owners of this site have a right to run their business as they see fit. Go start your own web site.
Liberals do not want freedom. They want to punish people who do not agree with them, even if that disagreement harms them not a whit. You would rather force these business owners to conform their business to your values even though you have taken no risk, you are not working fourteen hour days for this business, you do not have a second mortgage on your house to fund capital improvements – they do – that’s just tough.
So some perverts sued this business to make a point, and the 9th Circuit is the willing tool in this monstrous little game. That’s great. That’s what America is all about.
I agree, Al. My understanding, though, was that the website can still ask the question, they just can’t require an answer to the question in order to use the website.
On the one hand, knowing that someone has refused to answer the question sort of answers the question. However, the fact that a circuit court deems it their responsibility to intervene in such a trivial, private matter is disgusting.
While I agree there was a point in time when these laws were necessary due to a huge disparity in control of resources, I’m not convinced we need them now. I do believe that for the most part they’ve gone the way of the union – hanging around because we’re used to them but ultimately getting in the way.
Yes, we all have the right to discriminate, albiet with certain limitations since 1965. If you’re in the ins industry, you probably get paid well to discriminate. We also all individually, and in some circumstances en masse, have the right to freedom of association.
There are however, a few areas in the practice of those in alienable rights that Congress and the courts have identified as so egregious and pernicious that they need to be further defined. This was Title VII of the Civil Rights Code. Those are the limited and defined protected classes, including race, religion and now sexual orientation. Right or wrong, that’s the law. The courts don’t make the law, they just attempt to interpret what Congress meant when they scratched them out.
The courts have consistently ruled that the Web is public domiane. Not quite public airways, more like a public utility.
If you’re gay and looking for a gay roomie, ask the respondent to the add in person. It’s that simple. That’s exercising your individual right to free association. Or in your add looking for a straight roomie, state that you are straight and want a straight roomie.
Your personal freedoms have not been touched. What has been protected is one of the few legislatively protected classes’ right not to state but to still access a public utility. That is indeed, and increase in the freedoms and rights of all, not just for the segment of the population with which you most identify.
It’s not that the court got it wrong in this case, it’s that the law is not necessarily useful in this day and age. People will always either integrate or segregate themselves based on their own preference. What I have a problem with is non-public entities being forced to do things they don’t want to do based on an outmoded concept of “fairness”. I can support non-discrimination for public entities – those owned and/or operated by the public or those publically traded on the stock market or other exchange, since they too can be seen as being owned by the public. But a private person, with their own business, should be allowed to do what they will with that business. Economics will either reward or punish their decisions.
I’m greedy, so if I owned a business I’d transact with anyone that could pay me and treated me well. But if I only wanted to transact business with left-handed, blond-haired people from Spain I should have that right. I should be able to turn away anybody for any reason. That includes employment relations. Yes there would be some upheaval, but resources are now distributed in such a way that economics alone would force most people to continue as they have been for the past 40 years. Those that didn’t want to would suffer whatever consequences – good or bad. And don’t assume it would be SWASPs that would benefit since there are billions of dollars being controlled by “minorities”. Everyone would have a chance to run their business the way they want to.
roomate.com is a business providing more access to those seeking a roomate. if that roomate has some restrictions to whom it will allow to share the rent/home with, then as an individual i can do that. it would be different if it was a business whom had several apartments and are trying to fill the so called empty beds but is being discreet whom is with whom. now that is illegal. but if the website is helping individuals find a roomate, then that is ok.
in our own industry we do discriminate (under the rules of large numbers) and we can legally get away with it. in the housing industry there is now way to prove that one set of folks are not able to pay their bill based on their social behavior w/in that apartment.
now as a roomate, we can control any behavior in my apartment or house because my name is on the title or lease. here’s the reason why it is so important as the head of that particular household, because it creates an enviroment that i am willing to share with my family (especially those of single parents).
basically the roomate.com is providing an additional outlet for the person looking for an additional roomate to whom meets their own criteria as well as being able to share in the costs and rewards of being in a shared home.
problem that we are dealing with is that judges are elected and appointed. some of the judges are looking to make a settlement based on it’s backing constituents and possible voting gains. others are truly striving to see that the evidence of the truth in the passed laws are truly equal to all and judged accordingly. in this case, i think they may have gotten it wrong. like the person said earlier, this kind of thing is advertised in the paper with acrynoms.
as a society are we prepared to truly controlled by the government? are we prepared to start giving our freedoms away? why are we so afraid to speak? if the voice and freedom of speech does not prevail, where will our small voices go? if we can not blog and say how we feel, then why did collaborate on the internet?
i hope that this has opened up a few minds and inspired a few thoughts. because is that not what we intended? laws are passed after a long discussions some are tabled for later, others scrapped and some actually have meaning and pass. where do we end on this?
Sexual orientation is not covered under Title VII, so the court has again decided to make a law that the people would never approve under the legislative process. This is known as tyranny.
If I’m interested in finding a roomate and engage a web-service I don’t expect state or federal interference with my rights as a private citizen. Employers and business are fine, but this is too much. Selecting a roomate is a personal decision and implying discrimination is nonsensical an insulting. People want to know who they’ll be sharing space with and have the right to describe their requirements. That’s preference, not discrimination. And even if it were, that’s a personal right.
Agreed Dread. There is nothing wrong with the roommates asking these questions to find a roommate and the web site is not doing anything wrong here. I certainly would not want to find out my future roommate is like Al (old, bigoted, un-american, breeder, homophobic, etc.). Freedom – why so self-hating and why are you afraid of acknowledging your homosexuality? If you are one….
If my roomie were a bugger, he might sneeze on me and give me AIDS. Then until I died a horrible death ppeople might wonder if I got AIDS the typical way or was one of sodomy’s many innocent victims.
seems like we are all on the same page. why should the government control my individual action? it’s my house i live in and pay rent for. i am allowing someone to live in my house, so i should be able to control that environment. it’s like living in a messy world or clean one? i can’t control the business and whom that company makes money with, but i know i control my own household. just makes it more convenient if i can make access to the whole country.
Here’s the rub for me – I don’t think the government should be in the business of telling me who I can rent my rooms to. It’s one thing if I own an apartment complex, or have other rental property, to tell me I can’t discriminate (though I don’t agree with that either on a gut level) but to tell me I can’t discriminate when I’m bringing somebody into my own home (or apartment, or whatever) is wrong. But that’s what the law is. If I only want a roommate who is a homosexual Guatamalen(sp?) male between the ages of 23 and 34 in their second or third year of law school, I should be able to discriminate against everybody who doesn’t meet that criteria.
That being said, since roommates.com hooks people up with roommates, they need as much information as possible and sexual orientation is a piece of information that some people seeking roommates might be concerned about. The law needs to be changed so this ruling can go away.
This just provides more affirmation of my policy of never living with somebody. Sheesh.
The question is not discriminatory and requiring an answer is not discriminatory based on sexual preference. Refusing service for failure to answer is perfectly valid. Refusing service based on the answer could be problematic. Perhaps Roommates should have 3 categories – queer, straight and refused to answer.
Re-read the ruling. The court says a web site open to the public can’t prohibit services based on answers to questions that involve, here, sexual orientation, and by extrapolation, any protected Title 7 category like race, religion, etc.
Hardly ground breaking, particularly liberal, or nanny-like.
It in fact affirms immunities already granted that it customers volunteer personal information, there is protection from libel, slander or false advertising. So, simply ask the question, don’t mandate. The result will be that people looking for roommates will want to provide that information in order to better match with a room. Now that’s capitalism at it’s most elemental.
As an example, look at personal ads: SWJM seeks GHF couple for Passover tacos. That’s covered and protected all day in every corner of the USA, Kansas perhaps excluded.
The 9th actually got this one right.
This used to be a free country. It is indeed “nanny like” for the govt to interfere with the right of the people to associate with whom they wish, and avoid whom they wish wo avoid. If the ruling was in accord with the law, then the law is an @ss.
Look at the title of the article; it doesn’t say “Al must live with homosexuals.” The ruling doesn’t require you to share an apartment with anyone you don’t want to. It addresses the legality of a website requiring someone to reveal sexual orientation before agreeing to do business with that person. Try filtering out your emotions before you post.
If the site can’t ask the question and require an answer, it can’t tell Al if his potential roommate is a sodomite or not. Why is it discriminatory to ask the question and require an answer? If the person says I’m a sodomite and the site then refuses to do business with him, that’s discriminatory. But to simply require an answer so they can provide complete information so Al can make an informed decision is not.
So sorry to get emotional while discussing yet another example of freedom going down the tubes so as not to make sodomists feel bad.
My point is this: in a free country, the govt doesn’t force people to associate with people they would rather have nothing to do with. Please explain whether in your view this ruling,
A) enhances freedom
B) restricts freedom, or
C) has no impact on our ability to plan our lives
D) is perfectly in accordance with the 1st, 9th, and 10th Amendments.
Exactly, thanks Ned. Isn’t it odd that the 1st Amendment supposedly protects the vilest pornography on web sites, while at the same time forbiding the free flow of information on a web site. I’m sure this is what James Madison had in mind.
While I normally somehow find myself at loggerheads with Al, this time I’m kind of with him.
While I understand where the court is coming from with their ruling, roommates.com did not discontinue conducting business with people for answering the question one way or the other, they simply required an answer. Any discrimination would come from those advertising with/through roommates.com. What the website was doing was providing an affirmitive tool for its users. Simply requiring an answer to a question does not in itself constitute discrimination. You can equate the sexuality question with any other – gender for example. They can require that questions about gender be answered because some people are looking for a specific gender in a roommate; well, some people are looking for a specific sexual orientation.
I do believe in discriminating, because we have to. I don’t want a fighter pilot with bad vision. I don’t want a beat cop in a wheelchair (Family Guy’s Joe aside). I don’t want a female urologist (at least not at this point in my life). There are times when factors interfere with our desire to be “equal-opportunity”, and when it comes to sharing housing with someone, comfort is one of those factors.
This decision shows how our laws and judges are perverted devoid of wisdom and brains.
Al, if you were on this site looking for a roommate and the question had three possible answers “straight, gay or refuse to answer” and you were very concerned that “refuse to answer” meant you might end up with a gay roommate, couldn’t you just look at the people who asnwered the question “straight?”
Of course. That’s the point: freedom is better than having judges micromanaging things.
Al, don’t I deserve the freedom NOT to have to reveal my sexual orientation if I don’t want to?
Yes you do Freedom and the website deserves the freedom to not do business with someone who makes it difficult to provide its service, in this case information to those seeking a roommate. Bringing it back to insurance, a company can refuse to write a risk who refuses to disclose the information necessary to properly underwrite that risk.
Sure, on someone else’s web site. But the owners of this site have a right to run their business as they see fit. Go start your own web site.
Liberals do not want freedom. They want to punish people who do not agree with them, even if that disagreement harms them not a whit. You would rather force these business owners to conform their business to your values even though you have taken no risk, you are not working fourteen hour days for this business, you do not have a second mortgage on your house to fund capital improvements – they do – that’s just tough.
So some perverts sued this business to make a point, and the 9th Circuit is the willing tool in this monstrous little game. That’s great. That’s what America is all about.
I agree, Al. My understanding, though, was that the website can still ask the question, they just can’t require an answer to the question in order to use the website.
On the one hand, knowing that someone has refused to answer the question sort of answers the question. However, the fact that a circuit court deems it their responsibility to intervene in such a trivial, private matter is disgusting.
While I agree there was a point in time when these laws were necessary due to a huge disparity in control of resources, I’m not convinced we need them now. I do believe that for the most part they’ve gone the way of the union – hanging around because we’re used to them but ultimately getting in the way.
Yes, we all have the right to discriminate, albiet with certain limitations since 1965. If you’re in the ins industry, you probably get paid well to discriminate. We also all individually, and in some circumstances en masse, have the right to freedom of association.
There are however, a few areas in the practice of those in alienable rights that Congress and the courts have identified as so egregious and pernicious that they need to be further defined. This was Title VII of the Civil Rights Code. Those are the limited and defined protected classes, including race, religion and now sexual orientation. Right or wrong, that’s the law. The courts don’t make the law, they just attempt to interpret what Congress meant when they scratched them out.
The courts have consistently ruled that the Web is public domiane. Not quite public airways, more like a public utility.
If you’re gay and looking for a gay roomie, ask the respondent to the add in person. It’s that simple. That’s exercising your individual right to free association. Or in your add looking for a straight roomie, state that you are straight and want a straight roomie.
Your personal freedoms have not been touched. What has been protected is one of the few legislatively protected classes’ right not to state but to still access a public utility. That is indeed, and increase in the freedoms and rights of all, not just for the segment of the population with which you most identify.
It’s not that the court got it wrong in this case, it’s that the law is not necessarily useful in this day and age. People will always either integrate or segregate themselves based on their own preference. What I have a problem with is non-public entities being forced to do things they don’t want to do based on an outmoded concept of “fairness”. I can support non-discrimination for public entities – those owned and/or operated by the public or those publically traded on the stock market or other exchange, since they too can be seen as being owned by the public. But a private person, with their own business, should be allowed to do what they will with that business. Economics will either reward or punish their decisions.
I’m greedy, so if I owned a business I’d transact with anyone that could pay me and treated me well. But if I only wanted to transact business with left-handed, blond-haired people from Spain I should have that right. I should be able to turn away anybody for any reason. That includes employment relations. Yes there would be some upheaval, but resources are now distributed in such a way that economics alone would force most people to continue as they have been for the past 40 years. Those that didn’t want to would suffer whatever consequences – good or bad. And don’t assume it would be SWASPs that would benefit since there are billions of dollars being controlled by “minorities”. Everyone would have a chance to run their business the way they want to.
Just my opinion.
roomate.com is a business providing more access to those seeking a roomate. if that roomate has some restrictions to whom it will allow to share the rent/home with, then as an individual i can do that. it would be different if it was a business whom had several apartments and are trying to fill the so called empty beds but is being discreet whom is with whom. now that is illegal. but if the website is helping individuals find a roomate, then that is ok.
in our own industry we do discriminate (under the rules of large numbers) and we can legally get away with it. in the housing industry there is now way to prove that one set of folks are not able to pay their bill based on their social behavior w/in that apartment.
now as a roomate, we can control any behavior in my apartment or house because my name is on the title or lease. here’s the reason why it is so important as the head of that particular household, because it creates an enviroment that i am willing to share with my family (especially those of single parents).
basically the roomate.com is providing an additional outlet for the person looking for an additional roomate to whom meets their own criteria as well as being able to share in the costs and rewards of being in a shared home.
problem that we are dealing with is that judges are elected and appointed. some of the judges are looking to make a settlement based on it’s backing constituents and possible voting gains. others are truly striving to see that the evidence of the truth in the passed laws are truly equal to all and judged accordingly. in this case, i think they may have gotten it wrong. like the person said earlier, this kind of thing is advertised in the paper with acrynoms.
as a society are we prepared to truly controlled by the government? are we prepared to start giving our freedoms away? why are we so afraid to speak? if the voice and freedom of speech does not prevail, where will our small voices go? if we can not blog and say how we feel, then why did collaborate on the internet?
i hope that this has opened up a few minds and inspired a few thoughts. because is that not what we intended? laws are passed after a long discussions some are tabled for later, others scrapped and some actually have meaning and pass. where do we end on this?
Sexual orientation is not covered under Title VII, so the court has again decided to make a law that the people would never approve under the legislative process. This is known as tyranny.
If I’m interested in finding a roomate and engage a web-service I don’t expect state or federal interference with my rights as a private citizen. Employers and business are fine, but this is too much. Selecting a roomate is a personal decision and implying discrimination is nonsensical an insulting. People want to know who they’ll be sharing space with and have the right to describe their requirements. That’s preference, not discrimination. And even if it were, that’s a personal right.
Agreed Dread. There is nothing wrong with the roommates asking these questions to find a roommate and the web site is not doing anything wrong here. I certainly would not want to find out my future roommate is like Al (old, bigoted, un-american, breeder, homophobic, etc.). Freedom – why so self-hating and why are you afraid of acknowledging your homosexuality? If you are one….
If my roomie were a bugger, he might sneeze on me and give me AIDS. Then until I died a horrible death ppeople might wonder if I got AIDS the typical way or was one of sodomy’s many innocent victims.
It’s my right to discrimiate.
seems like we are all on the same page. why should the government control my individual action? it’s my house i live in and pay rent for. i am allowing someone to live in my house, so i should be able to control that environment. it’s like living in a messy world or clean one? i can’t control the business and whom that company makes money with, but i know i control my own household. just makes it more convenient if i can make access to the whole country.