"Freedom of religion is not freedom from consequences, you can believe in X god but don't be surprised when we do not allow you into our shops and universities"

Do you see a substantial difference between your statement and the one above?

That'd be discrimination against a protected class at a place of public accommodation.

This is more like dropping a person from club membership due to incompatible views or behaviors.

The question is not about what is defined as protected class, but why we needed to start protect religious freedom. Allowing people to escalate disagreements in one issue into sabotage of each other, leads to hostility and all out war.

California makes political view a protected class.

In fact, in 1986, the California ACLU sued a restaurant for excluding Nazis, under California anti-discrimination laws.

The restaurant settled.

http://volokh.com/2006/02/24/a-very-strange-but-true-aclu-ca...

It's not as cut-and-dried as you suggest. Individuals--but not broad classes of people--can be excluded based on their behavior. The Nazis likely could be excluded as long as they insisted on wearing Nazi pins/garb, but not merely on suspicion of their beliefs. A spineless out-of-court settlement by an insurer doesn't tell us that much about how the case might have fared in court, only that the insurer chose to avoid further risk.

I think the more interesting part is that the ACLU was committed so strongly to non-discrimination in 1986.

And I agree the settlement doesn’t prove the claim was valid. But why would protection matter less when you’re wearing the garb of the political view you’re trying to express?

If the law is trying to protect unpopular political views from being excluded in public services, it matters the most precisely when they’re wearing MAGA hats or Newsom 2022 pins.

Yes, it is. It requires some impressive mental gymnastics to claim that on the one hand you have free speech, and on the other you have no realistic ability to exercise it. A right - especially a natural right - is only a right when it can be meaningfully exercised.

In particular, free speech only applies to speech you don't like, because nobody is attempting to shut down memes of cute kittens.

If that's how you define it, nobody will ever have free speech. There are plenty of things people can say that would get them kicked out of my house, de-friended, or fired if they were my employee. I bet you could even think of some scenarios yourself. There will always be the possibility of consequences.

The same thing said in one society can result in people kicking each other, killing each other then causing blood feud for centuries while in another society merely in a lawsuit.

For economy to work, large number of people who dislike each other need to cooperate, so it is generally a good strategy for the society to arrange consequences in such a way as to not cause escalating chain of feud.

This is an excellent point. I've been thinking about how to make it succinctly, I think this is as good a way as any.

But violence is being planned on Parler, today. It is an incubator for the escalation you’re talking about. We’ve left the realm of the hypothetical.

If there’s a bar where the owner lets a gang hang out and recruit members and plans crimes, the thing to do is shut down that bar. Not let it go unchecked because the gang will be mad about it.

'Violence' is probably being planned on Facebook, Signal, text messages etc etc by all sorts of 'evil doers' to quote GW Bush. This doesn't mean you ban the medium. section 230 defines bigTech as platforms, not publishers. You don't close down AT&T because someone organized a punch up via text messages.

All reports of activity on Parler seem to indicate it’s basically a breeding ground for right wing extremism, so I think it’s incumbent on you to show why it’s more like text messaging than the aforementioned gang bar.

That said, Parler is not being shut down.

Also, Section 230 has nothing to do with AWS’s relationship with Parler.

> owner lets a gang hang out and recruit members and plans crime

Then the thing to do is call the police, not gather a mob to shut down the bar.

If people openly plan violence on Parler, then shutting it down will only make it harder for police to prevent it.

No mob has gathered to shut down Parler, so I’m not really sure where that fits in (ironic, though, since people are using Parler to plan literal mob attacks).

Parler’s business partners are abandoning it, sure, but that’s by no means a “mob”. It’s much more akin to the bar’s suppliers refusing to sell it ingredients for drinks, if we want to stick with this analogy.

You kicking someone out of your house doesn't change the fundamental balance of society.

AWS, Apple and Google deciding on behalf of 3 billion people what they're allowed to read, most certainly does.

Ding, ding, ding. No points for abiding viewpoints you don't vehemently object too.

Disagree, loud and resolute by all means, but stifle not the discourse, lest civility lapse to violence.