This isn't an easy post to write. Before I write it, I want to get this out on the record. Although I may be an economic hardliner, I am a social liberal. I believe fervently in people's rights to live their lives however they want to, so long as their behaviour doesn't interfere in the private lives of others. And that includes the right of people to be gay.

That said, I've watched with disappointment the media furore over comments made by Chris Grayling about the rights of bed and breakfast owners to refuse to allow gay couples to stay in a single room. The media has presented this as an example ("as if it were needed," I hear you cry) of old-school Tory bigotry. But the issues raised by Grayling's musings are much more finely balanced. He was very careful to stress that he saw a distinction between B&Bs and hotels. This makes it clear that his views aren't prompted by anti-gay sentiment. Instead, he views the rights of the individual in their own home as more important. At the heart is the conflict between the private rights of the individual and the public rights of the state.

Clashes between the rights of individuals and the state aren't always easy to resolve, especially when they involve an individual's home. Take the case last year of two police officers who were collaborating on their childcare arrangements. They thought that their non-cash arrangement should be nobody else's business but their own. Yet Ofsted inspectors disagreed, and asked them to call a halt to their arrangements. Ed Balls later intervened to clarify that he didn't think that had been the law's intention.

Similar arguments were raised in relation to the government's ban on smoking in public places. Although the ban has improved the environment for many millions of workers, it's disingenuous to pretend that the ban covers "public" places. The targets of the ban are largely private businesses. One could argue that these businesses, especially those which adjoin the proprietor's home (such as a public house), should be allowed to determine their own smoking arrangements. [And, indeed, ironically enough, many truly public places - parks, streets, bus stops, etc. - are still not covered by the government's smoking ban, although the government is thinking about going further]

And although one gay couple turned away from a B&B have told the press that they were shocked and embarrassed by the snub, it's unclear that the law is the right way to fix this sort of a problem. Do we really want our police spending time investigating crimes of this sort when they could be focussing their attention on matters that the public would perhaps afford greater priority, such as street robbery or violence? Is this law even enforceable? For example, many pubs require patrons to wear a shirt and shoes, or they won't be served, so we accept in certain (perhaps trivial) situations the rights of the business manager to discriminate. Are there to be no legitimate reasons for a B&B owner to refuse to serve a customer, whether gay or not? As Neil Midgley points out in the Telegraph, gay clubs can - and should be able to - ban bigoted B&B owners, so the rights are hardly symmetrical.

The market solution in this situation would be to allow businesses to choose which segments of the market they wish to sell to. And indeed there are B&Bs which market themselves directly as gay-friendly (look, here's one I picked at random from Google). That would avoid having to impinge upon the private property rights of owners, but marketing alone might not be enough to overcome hardened "no blacks, no Irish" cases. Yet, I find the argument that B&B owners should accept this regulation without question or close down deeply unpalatable.

So there are no easy answers. My personal view is that Grayling is technically right. Yet his views, coming as they do as a general election is about to be announced, are as much lousy politics as they are brilliant philosophy.

But there is one significant good news story as a result of this sorry affair. And that's the very fact that The Guardian, a national newspaper, felt that there was a story there at all, and that the story did indeed have "legs". That suggests that there is, generally speaking, sympathy for gays in modern society. A generation ago, that would have been almost inconceivable. Some have portrayed this change towards more social liberalism as Labour's legacy. I suspect that they rode the wave instead of creating it, but it's certainly a change for the better. Meantime, another Labour legacy - a gradual, creeping, insidious encroachment upon the private sphere by the state - is a lot less welcome.

People who read this post also read:

• First order and second order homophobia
• In which I wonder about that BBC article on the benefit cap
• Get stuffed, ASH
• The curious poverty of thought on the left over the 50p income tax rate
• Flight of the agitator

Filed under: Current issues, Politics with tags chris grayling, gay rights, privacy, public opinion, public places, smoking