But who voted for it?

There's a screaming match going on over at Just Left over Stephen Frank's attempt to gut the Human Rights Act by removing marital status and sexual orientation as prohibited grounds of discrimination. The amendments were contained in Supplementary Order Paper 336, and came in two parts. The first would have repealed sections 21(1)(b), 21(1)(m), and 21(1)(l)(iii), governing marital status, sexual orientation, and family status respectively. The second would have inserted a clause into the Human Rights Act specifically allowing individuals - but not the government - to refuse to provide employment or goods and services on the basis of "specified conduct", meaning

extra-marital sex, extra-marital child bearing, the breach of promises exchanged in marriage, desertion, same sex relationships in the nature of marriage, and homosexual sex

The above covers a whole lot more than gays; just off the top of my head, it would also permit refusing accommodation to unmarried couples or others in "immoral" relationships, denying employment to divorcees, adulterers, or anyone who has ever broken an engagement. It would also allow humiliating questions probing into every aspect of someone's sex life to be imposed as a precondition of employment, tenancy or service - and licence discrimination against those of us who think that there are some things that are simply none of an employer's fucking business. But what's really interesting is what it doesn't permit. While Franks justifies this provision on classical liberal grounds - that people should be free to discriminate however they like - his proposal does not permit discrimination against married people. Neither does it permit gay employers or shopkeepers to discriminate against straights, or adulterers or swingers to discriminate against monogamists. It is only those who don't conform to Franks' prejudices that are singled out.

In other words, what we have here is yet another example of Franks' gross intellectual dishonesty: a licensing of private coercion, but not on a level playing field. They guy isn't even a classical liberal; he's just a bigot in liberal clothing.

But it's not just about Franks, either. While he proposed this licence for prejudice, 30 other MPs voted for it. Here's a list of the guilty parties according to the relevant Hansard Advance:

• Adams (UF)
• Alexander (UF)
• Baldock (UF)
• Brash (N)
• Brown (NZF)
• Carter J (N)
• Catchpole (NZF)
• Collins (N)
• Connell (N)
• Donnelly (NZF)
• Eckhoff (ACT)
• Franks (ACT)
• Gudgeon (NZF)
• Jones (NZF)
• Mark (NZF)
• McNair (NZF)
• Newman (ACT)
• Ogilvy (UF)
• Paraone (NZF)
• Perry (NZF)
• Peters J (NZF)
• Peters W (NZF)
• Prebble (ACT)
• Roy (ACT)
• Shirley (ACT)
• Smith M (UF)
• Smith N (N)
• Sowry (N)
• Stewart (NZF)
• Turner (UF)
• Woolerton (NZF)

So, the whole of New Zealand First, two-thirds of ACT (including Ken Shirley, who I'd thought of as a relatively decent liberal), three-quarters of United Future (with the honourable exceptions of Peter Dunne and Gordon Copeland), and the moral ultraconservative rump of National (which now seems to include Don Brash) voted for a return to the morality of the 50's. This is something we should all remember come election-time.

As for the issue of the Human Rights Act itself, I've previously addressed it here. Preventing discrimination is vital to protecting human freedom, and every reason for abhorring it on the part of the government is also a reason for opposing it on the part of individuals. Discrimination is either unjust, or aims to coerce, or both - but injustice does not cease to be injustice, or coercion cease to be coercion simply because the perpetrator is a private individual rather than the state. Rather than offering us freedom, classical liberals are offering us a society where those with social or economic power can victimise or coerce those without, and usurp our autonomy in some of the most central decisions of our lives. That is freedom for the pike, and we are as justified in limiting it as we are in limiting the freedom of the strong to impose their will on the weak by physical violence.