When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, there were a few people like Barry Goldwater who opposed it on principled libertarian grounds. These were not southern rednecks or Dixiecrats, and they were glad to see the end of Jim Crow. But they were concerned about giving the state a new power to dictate who people have to do business with. Jim Crow had violated the freedom of association in order to make racial integration illegal. But the new system violated the freedom of association in order to make discrimination illegal.
The current argument about gay marriage vindicates those concerns.
—Robert Tracinski, “Gay Marriage And The Right To Be Wrong”
R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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Rand Paul brought up this very point on Rachel Maddow’s program in 2010 (I think?) – she HAMMERED him as a racist for “opposing” the 1964 CRA, though his issue was that mentioned here in the Heidelblog: good intentions, when handed to the gov’t in the form of coercive control over the civil liberties of individual members of society, are always turned to tyranny in the name of fairness. This particular discussion is anathema to the miseducated AmeriKan publiK.