If you want to open a business, hyou should be willing to provide the service without discriminating on what is considered an illegal discriminatory basis.

Most likely this discrimination wasn’t illegal when they opened the business. These laws are fairly new.

At some point, you have to either work for a business or own a business, unless you want to starve. So saying “you shouldn’t own a business” doesn’t help anyway.

… yes. Yes, if it’s really against your beliefs to do so, you should be able to refuse to cater a mixed race marriage. (This is not to say that I think doing so would be a good thing.) And yes, it would be political suicide to take that viewpoint.

There’s a sliding scale of necessity vs luxury, I think. Hospital emergency rooms cannot discriminate on any basis, even an inability to pay, because a refusal of service would often literally lead to someone’s death. But when we’re talking about wedding cakes, it’s all the way up on the “luxury” side of the scale.

I think there’s also a difference between refusing to serve black people or gay people in general, and refusing to serve the wedding itself. It’s literally a celebration of something you find to be immoral.

I just want one libertarian Republican to say it – “I’m in favor of bigots who run businesses being able to refuse service to anyone for any reason”, …….

And I just want one person from the other side of the aisle to say it – “my bigotry which forces people to act against their religious or moral beliefs is superior than a belief that allows people to make their own choices.”

I just want one libertarian Republican to say it – “I’m in favor of bigots who run businesses being able to refuse service to anyone for any reason”, which is the classic Walter Block “defending the undefendable” style libertarian. It’s also political suicide, which is the real reason I suspect no one is willing to trumpet it from their rooftop …

Be well,
Dave H.

Of course not.

If you do not want to provide a service, don’t open a business offering the service. If you want to open a business, hyou should be willing to provide the service without discriminating on what is considered an illegal discriminatory basis.

People have the right not to be discriminated against based on certain factors. That is a societal choice we have made. The same as the societal choice we made to allow religious liberty.

Dem,

What? I don’t think that allowing discrimination on religious grounds will lead us back to Jim Crow days. I do think that it is a legitimate public policy choice. And I note that religious convictions can lead to the argument that anything is ok. We would not allow human sacrifice, even it were part of a religious rite.

your second point is a valid argument. We may not agree as to the strength of the liberties involved. That is a public policy choice. IMHO, if your business is open to the public, it is open to the public. If you sell wedding cakes, you sell them to everyone. If you don’t, you don’t.

What I wonder is what would happen if a gay couple asked for a cake with two guys on top and the baker refused to put them there. That is the sort of speech that probably should be protected.

This is where letting people just get along makes the most sense. If there was demand,, and most demand hor cakes for gay marriage would play out shortly after a change in law to allow gay marriage,.bakeries would advertise for business. “We love serving anyone in love”. for example. If there were only one bakery in town, residents could appeal to it to serve the occasional same sex couple, or some lady could offer to bake the cake as a wedding gift. OK, OK – some resident could so offer.

Huh?

You mean, the right of everyone to confiscate the labor of others?

If that is not what you mean, please explain this fascinating “right”.