Stigma (Fred Speaking)
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• It is a bad thing for people to stigmatize others.
• Stigmatizing others harms them is some way.
• It is morally wrong to stigmatize others.
• People ought not to stigmatize others.
• People have a moral right not to be stigmatized.
• People ought to try to eliminate stigmatization.
• People are morally obliged to try to eliminate stigmatization.
• The government ought to work in limited ways to reduce stigmatization.
• The government ought to enforce a legal right not to be stigmatized.
• The government ought to do whatever it can, within the ordinary scope of its activities, to eliminate stigmatization.
• The government ought to do whatever is necessary to eliminate stigmatization.

My point is that these claims are all different, and the differences are important. For example, I believe that it is a bad thing to stigmatize others, but I'm not at all sure that people have a right not to be stigmatized. Can I have a right to have people think or speak about me in a certain way? Here's another example. I believe that it is bad for us to stigmatize others, but it doesn't follow that the government ought to prevent me from doing so. It may be wrong for people to lie; but very few of us think there should be laws against lying.

We don't have rights against all the bad things that other people may do. Rights are the big guns of moral systems. Sometimes we have to use the little guns like persuasion, incentives, and education. Getting rid of stigma is important, but I think we must rely mainly on indirect, non-coercive means in achieving the goal.

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