sigelphoenix

So I lied, and am posting in here after all. This is from a post I made in an online discussion group for my philosophy course. I got a rather disappointing lack of comments, and we only briefly touched on the topic during the follow-up discussion in class, so I'm hoping I'll get some interesting and more substantial responses from this.

I wrote this in response to a question that asked, among other things, if racial preference in dating (either by avoiding members of a race or exclusively pursuing members of a certain race) should be automatically suspect (introductory paragraph only, as the rest of the post was forcibly shortened and poorly developed):

Saying that romantic relationships should be colorblind ought to have the same prescriptive force as saying that "love knows no gender," or any other similar slogan so often used in support of non-heterosexual relationships. What I mean by this is that even though we say that romantic relationships should be, in a sense, "gender-blind," we don’t mean that all people have to ignore gender when choosing their mates. Heterosexuals can still be interested in only members of the opposite gender, and homosexuals in members of the same gender; we just have to refrain from judging anyone else on the basis of the gender of his or her partner. Similarly, interracial relationships should be allowed, and participants should be free from judgment, but colorblindness in relationships does not mean that individuals cannot have preferences in the race of their chosen partners.

Thoughts?