Calling on government to purify others’ hearts and minds opens Pandora’s box, pushes us farther down a very slippery slope, and invites all sorts of other hackneyed cliches. I hope that people find discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, physical “handicaps,” and other arbitrary criteria morally repugnant. I do. However, my disapproval of another’s attitude does not give me the right to use force to correct their erroneous ways. Indeed, it may backfire. From what I have observed, the conflagration surrounding the antidiscrimination ordinance has reinforced “us versus them” mentalities around Shelby County.

This also addresses another issue of crucial importance. If I give a government the power to force you to accept my values, I also give them the power to force me to accept your values at some point in the future. Another way of saying this is that any government with the power to take an atheist’s money and give it to my church is also a government with the power to take my money and give it to Planned Parenthood. When we use force to restrict others’ liberty, we endanger our own.

Governments coerce others with a two-edged sword: giving the state the power to do things you like necessarily requires giving the state the power to do things you don’t like, and giving the state the power to restrict behavior of which you don’t approve gives them the power to restrict behavior of which you do approve. The right way to change hearts and minds is not coercion. It is persuasion.¹

1. Art Carden – Whose Right Is It, Anyway? [↩]