Each and every human being is unique – unique physically, intellectually, emotionally, and of course in their own experience.
Especially in a society which claims to honor individual liberty, the public policy effect of this basic truth should be to recognize it and, while protecting people from harmful acts of others, to honor and protect people’s uniqueness – people’s right to be themselves even when they are very different from most people.
The public policy effect of individual uniqueness should never be to condemn it, or its harmless expression, particularly when individual differences make us uncomfortable. The emotional or intellectual comfort of individuals in a society, even of most people, is not a sound or just basis for condemning, let alone punishing, harmless expression of a person’s uniqueness. Indeed, some discomfort, some grumbling, on the way to acceptance of basic social values is inevitable in a society where no one gets to have things exactly as they would like all the time.
Any public policy based not on risk, or acts, of harm to others, or to society as a whole, but on rejection of individual uniqueness – on conformity to perceived norms including physical or mental health, political or religious views, race, appearance, gender identity, or who one associates with – is fundamentally contrary to individual liberty, to the Golden Rule, and in some respects to the United States Constitution.
Imagining being condemned for something about us which is perceived by someone else as “different,” but which doesn’t harm anyone, can help us understand that to deny another person’s right to be as they are, and to believe as they do, is unjust and ultimately as futile as their denial of our uniqueness would be.
