From my (gen-ed required) Philosophy of Sexuality class:
Premise 1: We are obligated not to racially select our friends, even if this is motivated by a preference for a certain race of friends.
Premise 2: If we are obligated not to racially select our friends, we're obligated not to racially select our romantic and sexual partners.
Conclusion A: Therefore, we're obligated not to racially select our romantic and sexual partners.
Premise 3: If we're obligated not to racially select our friends, romantic, or sexual partners, this is because race is an immutable characteristic. So, we're also obligated not to select our partners based on any other immutable characteristics. (Modified version: swap "immutable" with "non-desert based") (Modification 2: With one qualification: except in cases where doing so comes at an unreasonably extreme cost to oneself.)*
Conclusion B: Therefore, we must be all-inclusive with respect to immutable characteristics in friendship and dating.
So the implication is that we all have an obligation to become bisexual. Why? Because no one would accept "I just don't desire them as such" as a justification for why one systematically doesn't befriend black people. I'm suspicious of this argument, but I can't identify a knock-down flaw. So maybe I should just accept it? I don't want to, but if I'm being honest I can't find "the problem" yet.
Objection to Premise 3: There's cases where it's wrong to discriminate that aren't based on immutable characteristics (hair color, for example). This implies that the best explanation of what makes discrimination wrong is that it fails to track desert instead. But then, no one deserves to have ASD, and yet I don't think people would agree I am compelled to select friends from a subset of people who are violent and nonverbal due to severe ASD. Maybe this could be dealt with by modifying premise 3 to include a "reasonable burdensomeness qualification": your habits of selective association should track desert unless doing so comes at an unreasonably harsh cost to yourself. So if the boredom of befriending a nonverbal person is too intense, or if their violence is too much for you, you would be excused from the general obligation described by premise 3, but that wouldn't permit racism or ableism in general.
But now I'm puzzled, because A) I feel like I have a moral obligation not to racially discriminate in friendship, but B) I don't feel like I have an obligation not to choose not to befriend a tennis player just because I don't have the necessary desires, even though tennis players don't deserve friendship any less than black people.
Objection to Premise 2: I think romantic/sexual attraction to someone is a lot more immutable than who you're friends with, but to the extent that you can change your preferences without assuming an unreasonably harsh burden, or act despite your desires, shouldn't you? Imagine if you had a mild disgust reaction every time you thought about black people, and for that reason you decided never to befriend black people. Wouldn't it be incumbent on you to repress or replace that disgust reaction if doing so was within your power? How disgusting would black people have to be to you before it was no longer morally necessary for you to suck it up and act inclusively despite it? For whatever reason society has an unspoken agreement that racial dating preferences are okay, especially if it's within race. But maybe there's some independent reason why it's okay in certain contexts, despite being wrong in general?
*The defense of premise 3 is:
A) Since Premise 1 (it's wrong to racially select our friends) is an uncontroversial judgement, an explanation is called for.
B) The best explanation is going to be something that identifies a feature all cases of racial discrimination have in common.
C) Immutable characteristics is the feature my professor thinks most promising.
I objected to this because it seems like someone who thinks racially selecting their friends is wrong also wants to say selecting based on hairstyles or hair color is wrong, even though that could be changed.
But then, my prof replied by saying "in that case, what all the cases have in common is that discrimination is happening without a desert-based justification."
So, she proposes a modified version of premise 3: "If we're obligated not to racially select our friends, romantic, or sexual partners, this is because race is not a desert-relevant characteristic. So, we're also obligated not to select our partners based on any other desert-relevant characteristics."
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Notes -
I assume that you are writing an essay?
All three premises could be disputed, but Premise 3 is most easy to dispute, so I would focus on that. In an argument, it's usually best to focus on the most easily disputed premise of your opponent. They might be wrong about a lot of other things, but your arguments will be better if you focus on developing one point very well, rather than firing out lots of potentially underdeveloped points. Marking essays is one of the ways I put bread on my table, so I know what I'm talking about.
Here are two lines of attack you could take:
(1) You could question that desert is the only reason why it would be wrong to racially choose your friends, and hence show that the premise is false. An alternative explanation is that choosing your friends on racial grounds will always, in practice, be using race as an indicator of other things, e.g. inferring that someone is bad-tempered because they're black or boring because they're white. Since using these stereotypes as indicators is wrong, it follows that choosing your friends on racial grounds is wrong. However, such stereotyping need not be involved in sexual preferences.
Of course, why some generalisations can be used in our reasoning (e.g. a black person is likely to be more resistent to the sun than a white person and more likely to suffer from vitamin D deficiency in some areas) whereas others should not is a very complex problem. However, in this context you aren't obliged to explain why it's wrong: just that it's an alternative explanation. It's always possible to go deeper, and the immutability claim in Premise 3 is also unproven.
(2) The desert claim is also wrong. That a characteristic is unrelated to desert does not explain why we can't discriminate on that basis, because there are plenty of such characteristics that we can reasonably use for discrimination. Imagine that you have a very sensitive sense of smell. You even tend to be violently sick when you smell something bad. Imagine that someone has a genetic condition that makes them smell very bad. They can cover it with perfume, deoderant etc., but that won't stop you from vomiting around them. There's no way they can change this characteristic of themselves, and you can't find a way to stop being sick when they are near. Their bad smell is not a moral fault on their part, nor any other sort of desert-based fault. Is it really wrong for you to choose not to be their friends?
Personally, I would focus on (2), because it's the easiest point to make. However, if you have enough space and time, you could also develop (1). So your argument would be that desert-irrelevance is neither necessary nor sufficient for why we can't discriminate racially when choosing our friends, and hence Premise 3 is false.
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