A room where people mix is how prejudice stops being abstract

The argument

The second argument concerns what contact does. Proponents of this position argue that hostility towards gay people survives best among those who do not knowingly know any, because a group one never encounters can be imagined freely, while a group one drinks alongside cannot. On this account an open door is not merely tolerable but useful, since it puts people in the same room as the lives they have opinions about. Proponents argue that the setting matters as much as the contact. A bar is sociable, unofficial and voluntary, which they argue is where attitudes actually shift, rather than in a lesson or a campaign where the audience knows it is being instructed. Someone who spends an evening in a gay bar is not persuaded of anything; they simply find the place ordinary, and proponents argue that finding it ordinary is the whole of what was wanted. They add that straight people are frequently brought along by gay friends and relatives, so excluding them would mean asking gay patrons to leave their own friends and families outside. Proponents argue that the principle also cuts in a direction its opponents should notice. The case against discrimination has always been that who someone sleeps with is not a reason to keep them out of a place of business, and proponents argue that this principle does not change direction depending on which group is in the majority at the door. On this account a bar that turned away straight customers for being straight would be doing a smaller version of the thing gay bars existed to escape. The argument concludes that straight people should go to gay bars, because open rooms are how a mixed society becomes unremarkable to itself.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics answer that the burden of educating the majority is being placed on a minority at its own leisure venue, and that patrons who came out for an evening did not volunteer to be anyone's exposure therapy. They add that the appeal to non-discrimination mistakes the nature of the objection, which is about numbers and conduct rather than about any individual being refused entry, since no one proposes a door policy. Critics also note that the friends-and-family point is already handled by every bar's actual practice of welcoming guests who come with patrons, which is different from a venue becoming a destination for groups with no connection to it.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Contact reduces prejudice under conditions of equal standing, and a visitor who treats the venue as a curiosity may leave with their assumptions confirmed rather than challenged. [Rejecting P2] Placing the work of changing attitudes in a minority's leisure venue asks its patrons to supply an education they did not volunteer for. [Rejecting P3] The objection concerns numbers and conduct rather than any individual being refused entry, since nobody proposes a door policy, so the appeal to non-discrimination answers a claim that was not made. [Rejecting C] At most it follows that mixed spaces are socially useful, not that this particular room should be one of them.