The AALS boycotters and those pesky details

A couple of weeks ago I asked some questions about the AALS boycott of a Hyatt hotel owned by same sex marriage opponent Douglas Manchester, including:

• What if Mr. Manchester didn’t contribute money to oppose same sex marriage cause, but supported it vocally? Of course contributions are a form of expression. Would or should these groups make a distinction between contributions and other expression of belief?

• What if Mr. Manchester were only a majority shareholder? A minority shareholder? Vice president? CFO? Since the protest here isn’t over the hotel’s policies, control would seem to be irrelevant. What if he had only invested a lot of his money in the holding company of the hotel? The franchisor?

Today a roundup of posts from Paul Caron reports that Manchester developed the Marriott to which the AALS convention activities have been moved. He sold his interest in the hotel but is a shareholder in a company that has a possible 2% stake in it.  Of course he makes more from the Hyatt.  But why not boycott both hotels? 

Meanwhile, Gordon Smith reports that Bill Marriott, the CEO of Marriott International, is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which, like Manchester, supports the California anti-same-sex-marriage amendment. So is that enough to justify a boycott of the Marriott? What if Manchester had simply actively and financially supported the Catholic Church's opposition to same sex marriage instead of contributing directly to the cause? Isn't coordinating with a large group a more effective method of opposition? 

Let me emphasize that I, personally, am in favor of permitting same sex marriage, and have no problem with market actions such as boycotts to effectuate political views. Also, in my writings I have argued that unleashing both political and economic markets at the state level is a good way to work out this issue.

But having said that, I gotta wonder whether the people behind this boycott, and the AALS executive committee which gave it credence, have any idea what they are doing. And, given their role as legal educators, shouldn't we expect them to have some clue?  Again, the key distinction, which they apparently ignored, is between the hotel itself discriminating and discrimination one or more levels back. 

Comments

[Pender]

This slippery slope you're trying to draw doesn't seem all that compelling. Yes, the AALS is drawing a distinction between donating six figures to oppose marriage equality and being a member of a religious organization which opposes marriage equality. Yes, the AALS is drawing a distinction between patronizing a hotel that a person wholly owns and patronizing a hotel of which a person holds shares of another company that "possibly" owns 2%.

Are these distinctions really that untenable? Is the GOP irrational for considering George Soros a bigger threat than an individual run-of-the-mill member of MoveOn.org?

"What if Manchester had simply actively and financially supported the Catholic Church's opposition to same sex marriage instead of contributing directly to the cause? Isn't coordinating with a large group a more effective method of opposition? "

If the funds were specifically earmarked for the Catholic Church's campaign against marriage equality rather than a gift to the Church generally, and if his donation were discovered and publicized as this one was, then it would be exactly the same situation.

Besides, what do you even mean by your comment about "coordinating with a large group"? Manchester gave the money to the campaign to get the amendment on the ballot. His donation was pooled with others'. I don't see why a donation to the Catholic Church would necessarily have been more effective.

[Larry Ribstein]

The comparison between George Soros and others is irrelevant to my comparison between Manchester as 2% owner and precisely the same Manchester as larger owner. As for the Catholic Church donation, what exactly does Manchester have to do to earmark it? If he's an active opponent of same sex marriage, can he avoid the boycotters' censure by contributing $125,000 to the Catholic Church instead of directly supporting the ballot initiative? Perhaps there are distinctions here, but they are too subtle to motivate differences in political action. In any event, I would have expected a group of law professors to have at least considered these issues before blundering into or bowing to this boycott.

[Pender]

"The comparison between George Soros and others is irrelevant to my comparison between Manchester as 2% owner and precisely the same Manchester as larger owner."

Admittedly. The George Soros versus MoveOn.org member analogy was a response to what I perceived as your first slippery slope problem: that the AALS is drawing a distinction between donating six figures to oppose marriage versus being a member of an organization which opposes marriage equality.

As regards the Manchester as 2% owner and Manchester as sole owner distinction, AALS performs a cost-benefit analysis, taking into account on the one hand the magnitude of the social transgression they would be supporting and on the other hand the cost the AALS would bear by refusing to support it. It seems completely reasonable that boycotting a single hotel that is 100% owned by an anti-gay bigot passes the test while boycotting any hotel even 2% owned by an anti-gay bigot fails, especially since they can do the former simply by shifting their official events between the hotels they have already reserved, while the latter would require making arrangements at entirely new hotels at a very late date.

"As for the Catholic Church donation, what exactly does Manchester have to do to earmark it? "

He has to make reasonably clear that opposing marriage equality is the purpose of his donation.

"If he's an active opponent of same sex marriage, can he avoid the boycotters' censure by contributing $125,000 to the Catholic Church instead of directly supporting the ballot initiative?"

Yeah, probably. If the rest of the world can't discover the existence or purpose of the donation, obviously we can't censure him for it. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't censure those donations whose existence or purpose we CAN discover. At the risk of overextending myself with analogies, there isn't much we can do about tacit racism, but that doesn't mean we should stop censuring explicit racism too. Both are wrong, but one cannot practically be policed.

It seems to me that your underlying objection to the AALS's activism is a belief that the group should be apolitical. I think that's what the casebook analogy tries to get at. I have no good arguments to make on that issue, and it seems like a fair one to debate. But that's a separate issue from whether there is an intractable slippery slope implicated by censuring the Manchester Hyatt, and so far I just don't see one.