Is the Privilege of Private Discrimination an Artifact of an Icon?

Most of what Professor Zwolinski says about the three plausible grounds for private discrimination's privileged position seems to me persuasive. I do, however, offer three observations about the prospects of justifying the prevailing distinction. First, as a methodological matter, there are many settled rules and institutions that are, from the standpoint of moral theory, not quite justified by any single normative theory. Second, an attempt to redistribute the goods now distributed by persons exercising the privilege of private discrimination is normatively problematic.

Third, the privilege for private discrimination indeed tends to track a widely-felt sense that autonomy has special value in some spheres of human life.