I own my house. What business, then, does the government (any government, from the federal level down to my city) in regulating who I may or may not sell my house to? That is not a rhetorical question, given the nature of this case in Virginia.

In the first case of its kind, the Alexandria Human Rights Commission unanimously agreed Monday night that Long & Foster Real Estate Co. discriminated against a single gay man who wanted to buy a home in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood.

Instead, the house went to a young married couple, who continue to own it.
The commission cited the McLean-based real estate company for discriminating against Lawrence Cummings, 52, because of his marital status or his sexual orientation. The basis for its decision won't be made public for 30 days.
Long & Foster could be required to pay up to $5,000 in fines to the city of Alexandria.

Cummings has already paid thousands of dollars in attorney's fees since he learned that his offer on the house in the Beverly Forest area had been rejected in February 2004.

"It is for the cause. For the principle," he said. "I don't believe you can discriminate against someone for their martial status or sexual preference and be able to get away with it."

Actually, Mr. Cummings, you are exactly wrong in every moral sense. You have no right to buy a house if the owner is unwilling to sell it to you. And that is the case even if you are willing to meet the price set by the owner – because the right to determine who one does business with is a matter of fundamental human rights that pre-exists any statute.

LetÂ’s look at the particulars of the case.

In February 2004, Cummings and his partner had already made offers on six houses and were getting tired of looking. When he saw the ranch-style house on Pullman Lane on a Saturday, he thought he had found what he was looking for. "I thought, 'Oooooh, cute,' " he explained. He met the sellers briefly and made an offer for the asking price -- $555,000 -- that same day.
"I thought surely I was going to get this house," he said.

But two days later, his agent called and said the owner had chosen a young married couple who had made an offer of $45,000 less. "She said it was the fact that I'm single and they sensed that I'm gay," Cummings said. And so he filed his complaint.

At the hearing, Cummings's attorney played a tape of a voice-mail message from a Long & Foster agent to a Realtor for McEnearney Associates, who was representing Cummings, describing the seller as a "fuddy-duddy" and explaining who she wanted to own the house:

"She was just extremely concerned that a young family, who would love the house and care for it, just like they did, down to the last curtain, which had been made from a wedding dress from one of their children, [would] love the house as much as they did," Anise Snyder of Long & Foster left in the message to David Howell of McEnearney, according to the case file.

Brien Roche, attorney for Long & Foster, said that the young couple who bought the house had made an equal offer, put down more earnest money and were chosen because they had shown more enthusiasm, even writing a letter about how much they liked the house and the curtains. Cummings, an interior designer, loved the house, too, but not the curtains, he would say later. "Old, dirty drapes? I don't think so," he said.

"There were both business and emotional reasons as to why the seller chose the people," Roche said in the case file. "It had nothing to do with marital status, nothing to do with anything other than the facts I just mentioned."

But ultimately, who cares if it was marital status or sexual orientation – or even race? The ultimate right regarding the conveyance of the home to another individual belongs not to the buyer, but to the seller. The house was hers, and she had every right to decide that she wanted to see a traditional family in that house rather than a childless pair of homosexuals. She had every right to arrange her business affairs in such a way that the house went to such a family – even if the decision made no sense from a purely economic standpoint. The right to make such a decision is essential to any meaningful concept of economic liberty.

More to the point, no one can point to a natural right – as opposed to a government-decreed positive right – to acquire a particular piece of property. That government believes it has any sort of moral right to regulate or penalize the decision of an owner to sell to a preferred buyer is corrosive of the right to own and dispose of property – and with it, the capitalist system.

Now some may argue that I am supporting housing discrimination. They are right. But as long as that discrimination is engaged in by a private party, I don't see a compelling government interest in stopping it that in any way justifies the infringement of property rights stopping it would entail.

Posted by: Greg at 02:12 PM | Comments (86) | Add Comment
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