It’s kind of noticeable in these arguments how the “delicate sensitivities” of bigots are the only sensitivities that matter. They on the other hand are apparently supposed to be able to trample over everyone else regardless of the consequences.
I can respect this. It could legitimately feel galling to good people to have private enterprise regulated in this way.
But as you note, the alternative isn’t particularly admirable either.
Many of us hold that the alternative is much worse, as it allows society to be turned against itself. It allows bigotry to become expressed in the marketplace. It allows “No Irish Need Apply” signs to go up in windows. It creates classes and castes, self-perpetuating divisions in society.
If the libertarians were right, the problem would be self-correcting, as competitors would leap at the opportunity to serve the customers that others turn away. If Joe the Baker won’t sell cakes to gays, I will – your dollars are very welcome in my bakery! But…that isn’t how it turns out. Instead, the competition gets re-cast as “gay vs. straight” and I get labeled “The Queer Baker.” Churchmen recite sermons against me, and church groups organize boycotts against me. It’s just trouble all around.
The libertarian ideal doesn’t work in real life. An ounce of regulation is better than a hundredweight of social disturbance.
You could excuse any act of discrimination with that logic. The Montgomery bus laws weren’t discriminating against black people, just against the action of a black person sitting at the front of the bus. Neighborhoods that wouldn’t sell houses to Jews weren’t discriminating against Jews, just against the action of a Jew buying a house there. The Chinese Exclusion Acts didn’t discriminate against Chinese people, just the action of Chinese people living in the US.
Very few examples of historical discrimination - outside of actual genocide - apply to every member of a disadvantaged group at every possible moment. Most bigots are okay with their victims being around, so long as the “mind their place.” A lot of misogynists are okay with women, so long as they don’t get ideas about working outside the home. A lot of racists are okay with black people, so long as they don’t try to date white women. And a lot of homophobes are okay with gays, just so long as we don’t try to pass our relationships off as equivalent to straight relationships.
I think there will be. The US has pretty extensive protections for religious observance and even today there are parts of the country where you can live your life without coming into contact with minorities of various sorts.
In urban areas there will be more mixing of people with different backgrounds and you will find ministers eating in the same restaurant or even breaking bread with hookers and tax collectors. But I have no doubt that American Christian Fundamentalists will find a way to avoid such indignities.
I have been patiently holding my breath waiting for magellan01 to respond to this little gem. Many others have asked for the same. I fear if we collectively exhale, we’ll set off an atmospheric disturbance.
Actually, this whole thing is based on made-up religious doctrine. It’s total bullshit. The bible says that if two people have homosexual sex, you have to kill them. That is the religious belief. And don’t try to tell me that that law was repealed by Jesus; first of all, Jesus never mentioned homosexuality or gay marriage, and second, Jesus specifically said that people were still to follow every jot and tittle of the law. Not to mention that christians continue to cite New Testament texts that supposedly forbid homosexuality.
The bible doesn’t say “if people have gay sex, don’t bake them a cake.” It says “if people have gay sex, kill them.” So if these bakers were saying that they should be able to stone to death any gay couple that walked in the door, they would at least have a point that they were following their religion. But refusing to bake a cake has nothing to do with religion, and I wish people would stop pretending that there is any truth behind these objections. It’s bigotry, pure and simple, masquerading as religion just as bigotry has for hundreds of years. When are people going to realize that it’s just more of the same?
You know how every so often there’s a thread about “things the SDMB has changed your mind about”? Score one on your tally sheet, please. 
I’d want to make sure we still allow people to throw out disruptive assholes, stalking exes and shoplifters, and ban them from the premises permanently if so desired, though. That’s the slippery slope I fear - that forcing total inclusiveness means that if a customer is being a jerk, and he happens to fall into a protected class category, the shopowner will be unable to see him escorted off the premises for good, out of a legitimate fear that he’ll be sued into oblivion. I imagine it would be awfully hard to prove “I kicked him out 'cause he was a jerk” rather than “I kicked him out 'cause I’m uncomfortable with gay black atheists”.
And again I ask you:
Nobody needs to bake wedding cakes, either.
Actually, that’s pretty easy to do, which is why discrimination lawsuits are very difficult to win.
Nobody needs to get married, either. Why are the gays so persistent on doing it?
The point is that equality and nondiscrimination ought to apply to most things that aren’t strictly needed for survival.
Well, at least you’re consistent. How far are you prepared to take this, though? Should a hospital be able to refuse service to blacks (or gays)? What about a private train operator?
I tried (and failed) to sound sarcastic.
It seems to me that some people here on both sides of this question have lost sight of the purpose and scope of anti-discrimination laws. On one hand, some people think it’s OK for a business owner to choose who he serves under any circumstances. On the other hand, some are advocating that it’s never allowable for a business to discriminate for any reason whatsoever. Neither of these is the actual state of the law.
Businesses are free to discriminate for various reasons. I can have a cake-baking service that refuses to sell to people who smoke. It might be dumb and arbitrary for me to operate it that way, but it’s my business and I can do that. So it’s not true that a public business has to serve equally any person who walks through the door.
However, our society many years ago decided that certain classes of people had been discriminated against so much that it wasn’t acceptable anymore. Civil rights laws were passed to help remedy this - a business that’s a public accommodation can’t discriminate based on a list of criteria, including race and religion. We decided that a business owner should be able to choose whom to serve up to a point, but that it’s not OK to use race or religion as a criteria anymore.
Increasingly, many states and municipalities are extending these civil rights laws to include sexual orientation in that list. If we’re talking about a business in one of those places, then a business can’t refuse to serve someone using sexual orientation as a criteria any more than they could use race as a criteria.
I guess the debate is whether the criteria of sexual orientation should be added to the list in those places that haven’t added it already. It’s inevitable that it will be done everywhere eventually.
You know that we’ve had laws like this for more than forty years, right? I don’t think the slope is going to start now, just because we’ve added gays to the list.
There you are with a bunch of savings. No one thinks you are morally compelled to build a public place of accommodation with it, you could buy take all your money and buy beanie babies and then light them on fire. But instead you decide to build a hotel. Or, there you are, a person with great cake-making ability, not making any cakes, yet you are not morally condemned for not exercising your baking talents. However, once you do decide to open a bakery, you are morally condemned for …<not doing what the liberals tell you to do>. If you do open a yoga studio, you must allow the smelly, the noisy, the gay, the Lutheran, etc. all to enter.
Why the switch from not being morally obligated to do anything, to being morally obligated to do everything those in power demand? (I don’t think Steven Landsburg would say I have mis-characterized this, his argument.)
What! Allow racial discrimination! I think if pressed I can find evidence to show that Jim Crow discrimination was not a universal preference of all (possible) business in the South. There were entrepreneurs that wanted to open diners, hotels, and other businesses allowing both black and white customers. They were prevented from this policy (i.e. they were forced to discriminate) by the law.
I can’t figure out what your argument is. The people in power–that is, elected legislators–have decided that you may not exercise your bigotry against protected classes in the context of public accommodation. They don’t tell you what kind of cake to make, what flavors, how much, where to set up your bakery; but if you do make cakes, you can’t make your decisions about whom to serve based on race, religion, sex, sexual preference, and similar traits. In no way is this “being morally obligated to do everything those in power demand,” except in the most tautological way imaginable.
So what?
In many cases they were prevented from this policy by the free market. If most of a town doesn’t want you to serve black people, and won’t give you business if you do, then you go out of business. Many business owners were forced by the market into racist policies.
Opening the bakery is not the source of any condemnation, except from the very, very small number of celiac-rights extremists who carry out acts of considerable violence against the gluten-industrial complex. But, the thing is, that acting like a bigot is the source of the condemnation for acting like a bigot, and that’s what we’re talking about here. You really don’t help your argument by making up silly arguments to the effect of “opening a bakery makes liberals mad at you.”
Smelly and noisy are not protected classes. But yes, you should not kick Lutherans out of your yoga studio on the basis that you don’t favor their religion.