Words that denote some abstract concept, even if the concept is generally considered admirable, take on an odious sound when used in the name of a piece of legislation. Governments have a hard enough time providing concrete realities, so suspicion is in order when they aim to provide abstractions.

Britain, beginning in April of this year, will be providing its citizens with equality, and there is cause for suspicion. The “Equality Act,” as it is named, makes various sorts of discrimination illegal. Under certain of its numerous regulations, it will become illegal, in the provision of goods, facilities, and services, to discriminate against a person on the basis of his sexual orientation. The inclusion of sexual orientation along with the typically unacceptable grounds for discrimination–e.g., race, sex, and religion–is a notable extension. It has caused some discord, mainly concerning its application to Catholic adoption agencies.

There is something to be said in favor of laws prohibiting certain forms of discrimination in certain spheres of society–for instance, prohibiting an employer from refusing to hire a person because of his religion; or prohibiting a landlord from refusing to rent to a person because of his race. If laws such as these seem an intrusive abrogation of a person’s freedom to associate with whomever he pleases, it is not necessarily an unwarranted abrogation. It is good for citizens in a society to be able to treat each other with at least a basic, uniform fairness; it is a friendliness that we should expect among fellow citizens. It is not helpful to a society if, in everyday affairs such as business transactions, discrimination on the basis of, for instance, race or religion is widespread; and so a society might understandably make illegal certain sorts of discrimination in certain circumstances, on the grounds that the discrimination is both unjustified and harmful to society.

It is an easy thing, however, for such laws to forbid–most likely in the service of some political agenda–not only debatable, but even legitimate and prudent, forms of discrimination; or, also, for such laws to infiltrate areas of society where they would be an unnecessary and inappropriate intrusion. It would be better not to prohibit, in the issuing of firearms, discrimination on the basis of age. And if a private association–say, a caucus of United States senators–wants to require that its members be of a certain race, it is their affair. When it comes to laws prohibiting discrimination, the presumption must be that the proscribed discrimination is unjust–i.e., that there is no reasonable justification for it; and, furthermore, that the exclusion of this form of unjust discrimination would be so beneficial to society that it warrants the intrusion of law. It is not enough that the discrimination is considered by some to be distasteful or offensive; the best society is not the one devoid of hurt feelings.

What is called “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation” somehow includes discrimination on the basis of certain sexual actions (which, of course, are usually committed by persons of a homosexual orientation). So the Equality Act relies on the presumption that it is unjust to discriminate against a person, in the provision of some service, on the basis of his sexual actions. Western societies have largely come to the conclusion that the sexual actions of consenting adults are outside the scope of the law. This conclusion need not be based on the premise that all such relations are necessarily unobjectionable, but merely on the premise that, even if some such relations might be objectionable, it is nevertheless not the government’s role to prohibit them. If the former, then it is a simple thing to argue that refusing to provide a person with a service on the basis of that sexual action is unjust. If the latter, the argument would have to be that there can be no reasonable justification for refusing to provide a certain service to a person on the basis of such a (possibly reasonable) objection. Let us assume that the British government has not decided that there can be no such thing as an immoral sexual action between two consenting adults. (Admittedly, this charitable assumption is most likely unwarranted.) A case can be made that it should be illegal to deny a service to a person simply on the grounds that certain of his actions, which are legal, are considered immoral. The argument would be that, while such discrimination is not necessarily based on an irrational objection–as in the case, for instance, of discrimination on the basis of the color of a person’s skin–the (possibly reasonable) objection to certain of a person’s actions does not constitute a reasonable justification for not providing the service; and, further, that it is important to society that people carry out at least minimal relations with each other–in this case, business relations–without regard to the morality of each other’s actions.

Such an argument could do something to justify the British law. But, if that were its rationale, it would be disingenuous to say that what the law proscribes is discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The argument that justifies such a proscription would just as easily justify proscribing “discrimination” on the basis of adultery or drunkenness. If the argument is not applied to such cases, it is because adulterers and drunkards do not wield such political power as homosexuals.

When it comes to “anti-discrimination” laws, the burden of proof is on the laws’ enactors: They must show that the proposed laws alleviate some pressing discord. In other words, there must be a presumption in favor of freedom and letting citizens decide whom they will associate with. It should not be necessary to show that such laws would prohibit discrimination that is generally approved of. Even if some, or even most, examples of discrimination made illegal by this British law would seem distasteful or inappropriate to many people, that does not mean that the law is warranted.

Yet it is not difficult to imagine a case in which the actions of some person that are considered immoral by the provider of some good or service would have a bearing on the transaction. Not all business relations are so impersonal as buying something at a convenience store. To give just one example, suppose that there were a campground where the campers are predominantly families who consider homosexual actions to be immoral. The owner of the campground is aware of this and is glad that this is the character of his facility. Then suppose that a group of homosexuals, who are quite openly and obviously so, wants to stay at the campground. The owner of the campground thinks that homosexual actions are immoral, and knows that the families at the campground would mostly think the same. The character of the campground is unavoidably shaped by the character of the people who stay there, and so the owner does not want to let the group stay at the campground. Even if one does not agree that homosexual actions are immoral, it must be granted that the owner does not act on the basis of some arbitrary and thoughtless prejudice, but because he considers certain actions immoral and does not want the character of his campground to be shaped by those who commit such actions. Even if it might sometimes seem to some a display of Puritanical moralism, a person should be free not to enter into business relationships with persons whose (supposedly) immoral actions have a bearing on the relationship. To forbid this is an overstep of the law.

In Britain, there is an example of such an overstep, which it is by no means Puritanical to decry. It will soon be illegal there for adoption agencies to refuse to arrange for children to be adopted by a homosexual couple. This is, in effect, to say that the belief that a child is best raised by a married man and woman, and that it is inappropriate for a child to be raised by two men or two women, is illegitimate, baseless, and unjustified, and that it is necessary for the state to forbid actions based on such a belief. Under the guise of forbidding discrimination, British law prosecutes the traditional understanding of what constitutes marriage and a family. An overstep indeed.

The Catholic Church will quite likely be forced to close its adoption agencies–either that, or adapt its moral teachings to the whims of politicians terrified of upsetting homosexuals who would denounce as immoral anything that implies that they do something immoral. There were calls for an exemption of Catholic adoption agencies from this requirement. It will not be granted, it turns out. This is not unreasonable: It is not clear what justification there could be for such an exemption except that the requirement itself is unjustified. And there is good reason for the British government not to get in the habit of exempting religions from following certain of Britain’s laws. How ironic, though, that while Britain makes Christian morality illegal, it does its best to make fundamentalist Muslims feel at home.

If the aim of this British law were merely to ensure that the provider of some good or service cannot refuse to deal with a person because of moral objections to that person’s behavior that are irrelevant to the transaction, it would be a curious law, addressing no obvious problem. As this adoption issue makes clear, the motivation behind this law is the idea that it is wrong to object to homosexual relations, even if only in defense of the traditional understanding of marriage. Tolerance is set up in opposition to traditional Judeo-Christian morality. Homosexuality is welcomed into the public sphere, and traditional morality is restricted to the private sphere. This is a mistaken understanding of tolerance, and its main effect is to root out from society its traditional moral identity.

We are now supposed to believe that “sexual orientation” is like skin color. Yet just as it is unjust to treat similar cases differently, so too it is unjust to treat different cases alike. People generally understand this, which is why this equivocation must be imposed on them by force. It is not remarkable that liberals, for the sake of advancing their misguided agenda, would enlist the power of the state. What is remarkable is the indifference with which such folly is met. Is it out of fear of being vilified by these liberals as intolerant and offensive? One cannot say it is an ineffective strategy that the liberals employ: It shuts up conservative politicians quickly enough, and even gets them parroting lines about the great dangers of discrimination.

—Maximilian Pakaluk is an associate editor at National Review Online.