Thanks to @RivkahChaya for all the great additional information.
But I think the point I’m making is that there are no end of situations that might arise, or have arisen, where – in the case of a ‘public accommodation --’ we decide in favor of other factors besides personal belief, regardless of how sincerely held the beliefs are or on what they’re premised.
A Jewish restaurateur could prefer to dunk dishes in the ocean or bury silverware in the yard, rather than adhere to secular laws. They could claim religious freedom to do so.
Which is how I view the arguments about providing goods and services to a same-sex couple – the same goods and services that you would happily provide to anybody else without batting an eyelash.
If a Muslim male decides that women are not welcome in his store, are we okay with that ? What if he requires any woman – regardless of religion or ethnicity – to be ‘properly’ covered to enter his store ?
This isn’t about ‘sincerity of beliefs.’ It’s about the nature of public accommodations, and many cases have essentially found the same thing: you agree to some pretty reasonable, pretty basic things when you open one.
It really is Jim Crow redux. Why would any of us do anything that takes us strongly back in that direction ?
It’s really unbelievably difficult for me to get my head around this LGBTQ thing being the source of so much apparent misery for so many people – particularly in the context of religious texts that, last I knew, made no more than a passing reference (at most) to the topic in a very large number of pages.
That we’re still talking about this … that it’s couched in terms of ‘religious liberty …’ just boggles my mind.
That people are offended by hearing “Happy Holidays” (would you walk into a board room with a mix of men and women and say, “Good Morning, Gentlemen !” ??) is really incomprehensible to me.
That “Christians,” particularly, could be so incapable of seeing the forest for the trees vis-a-vis the Bible is an unending source of mind-boggling wonderment for me.