| | Criticism of Peikoff's position ignores a significant aspect of context: we live among people whose culture encourages many irrational bigotries, often based on suspicion of conduct that is condemned for religious and other arbitrary "reasons."
So take the most obvious referent for Peikoff's caveat. You are engaged in private conduct that by rational standards is perfectly moral, but which is condemned by the false morality of the dominant religion. The same religion also induces in its adherents an atavistic belief in universal, inborn moral evil - original sin - so that your refusal to disclose your private conduct will place you, in the minds of religious "moralists," under suspicion for whatever "evil" they were inquiring into. And reprisals - not necessarily force, but irrationally reduced opportunity for cooperation and trade - will follow.
The principle of honesty is first a principle of individual cognition, and secondly a principle for acting in one's interest in a social context of mutual rationality. Absent such a context, one needs to act in accordance with reality as it is, and not as one wishes it were. If that includes misleading bigots about matters they should never have dragged into the public sphere, so be it. A rational man is under no obligation to collaborate - even by silence - with inquisitors.
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