Ending the possibility of civil discourse

Tom Berg and Susan Stabile have raised some important questions about decisions by groups that are eager to boycott the hotel the AALS, long before the California Supreme Court decided that there is a right in law to same-sex marriage, chose to house the organization's January 2009 meeting.  The stated object of the boycott is the hotel owner's use of his personal resources to influence political judgments and law.  I'm sure reasonable minds can differ on many of these questions. 

A statement by my distinguished Villanova colleague Louis Sirico, who in his capacity as an AALS section chair speaks for many, raises a question of a different order of magnitude.  Here's what the National Law Journal Reports:

'Also on Monday, Louis Sirico, chairman of the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Research and Reasoning, said that if the AALS does not move the meeting, his group will not attend events at the hotel.  "It's a matter of principle," he said. "We just don't believe in this kind of discrimination." Sirico is director of the legal writing program at Villanova University School of Law.

"Discrimination?"  Does Professor Sirico -- and do those for whom he (apparently) speaks -- believe that those who adhere to the traditional view that marriage is the union of a man and a woman engage in "discrimination?"  It would seem so, if the NLJ and Professor Sirico are telling the truth. 

But there's discrimination (I discriminate between ripe and overripe tomatoes), and there's discrimination.  The latter is of the sort condemned in Loving v. Virginia (1967), in which the Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute a violation of our Constitution.  Is the suggestion, allegation of Sirico et al.  that those who oppose legal recognition of same-sex marriage engage in the invidious sort of discrimation that Loving outlawed?

Cannot reasonable minds differ on the question of whether same-sex marriage should be recognized in law?  The crazy-quilt of national discourse would indicate a positive answer.  The reactionary hurling of epithets only tends to preempt the possibility of civil discourse on a question that is vigorously and vibrantly disputed in our society. 

But perhaps it's more than the hurling of epithets.  Perhaps Sirico et al. are sitting in solemn moral judgment on all those people who conscientiously conclude that the legal recognition of same-sex marriage is not a morally tenable option.  Perhaps they're sure that the rest of us are surely wrong.

The allegation of "discrimination," when it's not varieties of tomatoes that we're talking about, is a debate stopper.  Should we admire -- or should we not question -- the moral certainty that leads people to rule out the voices of those who are not convinced that same-sex marriage is a morally tenable option?  Has the question tackled by Sirico et al. in fact been decided with the finality and certainty that leave all the others in the realm of moral opprobrium?

John C. Murray was right that civil disagreement is a monumental achievement.  The anti-reasoning sloganism of "discrimination," in advance of deep and certain judgment, prefers intimidation to civic discourse.