I have mixed feelings about this issue.

On the one hand, racism and (what is the ism for this … sexualism?) are shockingly ignorant and, in their application, often the earth from which horrible acts of violence can (and do) grow. Clearly, the world would be a better place if we could somehow make these cancers go away.

The question is how? The Civil Rights Act of 1964 seemed to be a big step in the right direction, along with various court decisions that upheld the ideas of equality under the law regardless of one’s ethnic background and, more recently, sexual orientation. Lots or wrongs got righted relatively quickly using the force of the State.

But, from our historical perspective it’s also clear that this did little to get at the root of the problem. Racism and sexualism remain as deeply embedded as ever, perhaps analogous to the way a cancer appears to go into remission while quietly metastasizing and preparing to explode again when the time is right.

I think there’s a case to be made that using the force of the State to address this cancer actually made things worse. We’ll never know, of course, how things would have proceeded had there been no Civil Rights Act or its complementary legal proceedings, but I think both the positive and negative results of the use of force need to be considered.

When you force people to do things they object to, they’ll go along because they have to, but they’ll be burying resentment and anger in the process. Will the anger eventually subside, and they’ll come to realize they were wrong? I don’t see a lot of evidence of this. What I do see is the anger festering and then exploding, sometimes in violent ways.

Clearly, racism and sexualism have no place in the conduct of the official business of the State, which is supposed to offer its services to everyone on an equal basis. To the extent that the laws have been and still are being updated to reflect that principle, it seems like an overdue step in the right direction.

But when it comes to making laws that regulate people’s private, non-violent choices, I have a feeling that we’re only making things worse. If Bob Jones University wasn’t taking any government money (maybe they were, I don’t know; if they were, my point here would be moot), I don’t think it did or does any good to force them to behave in ways they don’t want to with regard to race or sex or handedness or hair color astrological sign or anything else. Because you’re just driving the ignorance cancer deeper, and we can already see what comes of that.

Maybe the best thing would be to draw a bright line in the matter, making the principle clear about the even-handed functioning of government while allowing private ignorance to run its course. That way, the ignorati will have no one to blame but themselves for the failures that will inevitably arise from their decisions about whom not to serve or associate with. Turning away business has never proven to be a successful policy in a market where others are free and happy to accept it and get rich from it.