TSA banned from Seattle area restaurant?

Libertarian News Examiner reader Jason Gonella reported, "There is a story circulating about a restaurant that refuses to serve anyone employed by the TSA. That's a good start."

While it apparently hasn't been picked up by any credible mainstream media outlet (an oxymoron if ever there was one) it is all over the internet at places like The Consumerist and MoxNews.

(Just keep in mind the standing joke, "It's on the internet so it must be true." Translation: caveat emptor.)

Beyond the story's authenticity question, reader comments following The Consumerist article illustrate how far libertarian education still has to go.

Most of the commentary centers on questions of who can legally ban whom and whether discrimination laws that apply to "protected classes" should also apply to the TSA.

No one seems to get that a free society has no government mandated "protected classes," meaning anyone can discriminate against anyone as long as they don't initiate force, intimidation or fraud, and no government has any legitimate say in it.

Discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, and all the rest is disgusting but totally free choice.

And it's a matter of free choice for people – not "government" but people – to fight against it.

What if a restaurant bans gays?

With today's instant communication technology the word can spread almost instantly amongst decent, fair, moral, freedom-loving people of all persuasions to boycott and protest and shun anyone who practices such stupidity.

They can find out the restaurant's suppliers, who's carrying their advertising, who their regular customers are, and without initiating force or intimidation or fraud encourage them to stop.

And anti-gay people are free to continue to support the restaurant because they absolutely have the same freedom of choice as everyone else.

Many people will think it's not fair, but in a free society there will be no coercive government to run to.

Instead of whining, the situation creates a perfect opportunity for people to launch gay-only restaurants or "everyone welcome" restaurants in direct competition with the bigots.

In a free society, the fact that a private business is "open to the public" does not make it "public property" subject to blind bureaucratic one-size-fits-all dictates.

Freedom is a true human value; the whiny emotion-driven mythology of "social justice" rammed down everyone's throats at the point of a gun is not.