Can you cite the law that kept Woolworth’s lunch counters from serving blacks? As far as I know they had no legal reason for thier policy. They kept the policy in place as it was more profitable to attract a bigoted majority who did not want to eat along side blacks than it was to serve a minority of people.
The free market will never fix a problem if a bigoted majority has more money than the discriminated minority.
I don’t know where these people got the sudden idea that providing a service somehow equals violating their religion. You make cupcakes, and you sell them to the public, you can’t choose which members of the public you sell them to, excepting that you can exclude those members of the public who don’t pay.
I have been having a sort of fight (kind of, mostly via Facebook) with my sister about this. Specifically, a local bakery that didn’t want to provide a cake for a gay wedding. Her counter is, “What if somebody wanted a cake with a swastika on it?” Well, no swastika then, they could say “We don’t make swastika cakes.”
I have to say, though, I don’t get the problem with Chick Fil A (god I hate those people, I hate their name and I hate their logo and I hate their food and I am really beginning to hate their ads, so their bigotry is just one more reason) BUT…they don’t throw people out, do they? It’s just the owners not liking gays. They don’t tell people they can’t eat there if they’re gay–do they?
How do these businesses know who the gay person is when he/she walks in their door?
It truly baffles me why any same-sex couple would WANT someone who opposes same-sex marriage to cater to their wedding. Why would they freely choose to give money to people who will quite possibly use that money to fight against same-sex marriage? Why would they freely choose to create a situation where every memory of their wedding has to include a memory of homophobic caterers? I think it’s rather ridiculous to condemn something as “discrimination” when the only possible way to suffer said discrimination is to go out of your way to be discriminated.
Astonishing how many people don’t comprehend this sort of thing.
(It’s like trying to explain to conservatives that “hate crime laws” do not make hating anyone illegal; they only add penalties to actual crimes – murder, rape, vandalism – that also demonstrate a class hatred intent.)
Some truths have to be taught again and again and again.
To the question in the OP, no, of course they don’t need to be destroyed. They need to be sued and/or fined. A reasonable lawsuit settlement, or a reasonable civic fine, won’t destroy a small business, but it will put them back on the correct course.
You might as well attack speed limit laws as “destroying” a taxi-driver’s livelihood. Hey, guy: don’t speed. And even if he does, the first couple of tickets won’t result in the cancellation of his license.
While it is true that the Woolworth’s in Greensboro was segregated by company policy rather than by law, there were Jim Crow laws throughout the South that applied to restaurants and other public accommodations:
(Oklahoma) Lunch Counters: No persons, firms, or corporations, who or which furnish meals to passengers at station restaurants or station eating houses, in times limited by common carriers of said passengers, shall furnish said meals to white and colored passengers in the same room, or at the same table, or at the same counter.
(Georgia) Restaurants: All persons licensed to conduct a restaurant, shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room or serve the two races anywhere under the same license.
(Alabama) Restaurants: It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment.
They don’t want to have bigots cater their wedding; they want the right to the same level of service as everyone else. Does it also baffle you why African-Americans in Greensboro wanted to eat at Woolworth’s lunch counter when management was so clearly prejudiced against them? They wanted to be treated with dignity, as human beings, and that’s what same-sex couples want.
Sure, in a large city where you have many choices for caterers, photographers, etc. In a small town in (for example) Indiana, there may be only one person, place or thing where you can go, and it seems pretty damn silly that the local country club would host a wedding reception for a seven-month-pregnant teenage bride and her meth-dealing high school dropout husband but not for that nice young homosexual woman who’s fixing up the old coffee shop and her friend from two counties away.
All mom-and-pop businesses forgo gay marriage. The businesses that don’t forgo gay marriage are pop-and-pop or mom-and-mom businesses. Obviously, it would be absurd to boycott everyone who forgoes gay marriage, as that’s somewhere around 90% of the population.
And yes, I do know that that’s not what the OP means, but all of the pro-bigotry arguments are pretending that it is what’s meant.
I’m seeing in this issue something that’s become a big concern to me: the wide acceptance of the line of thinking that says “We’re [not “I’m”, NEVER “I’m”, but “we’re”] for tolerance and respect, and if you don’t feel exactly the same as we do, we’ll apply social and financial pressure to you under you knuckle under”. No discussion, no negotiation, no even trying to talk things out- and, by extension, no logic and no reason. It’s a combination of Boomer-style absolutist righteous anger and Millennial-style echo chamber ideology, expressed by a growing crowd who somehow got it into their heads that the problem with conservative totalitarianism was that it was conservative.
We have these giant-even-by-primate-standard brains; could we at least TRY to use them before we resort to screaming and flinging poo?
BTW, sexual orientation is not a protected class everywhere. It is in some states, and it’s not in others (such as Indiana). It’s not a protected class at the federal level, as far as I know.
In addition to wanting to be treated with dignity, there’s also the situation where there may not be a non-bigoted bakery or photographer nearby. I can certainly imagine a small town in the Midwest or West (things get pretty spread out there), where there may not be an open-minded service provider for many miles.
ETA: ninja’d at least once about the small town thing.
No one is forcing anyone to think or not think anything. We’re just interested in seeing that a public accommodation accommodate the public.
As an atheist I might think the woman with the Jesus saves shirt (or worse a Jesus fish shirt) is a total idiot - but I should serve her anyway.
Lucky they weren’t asked to cater that wedding in Cana. But it was okay - some bootlegger dude supplied the wine. I guess the people running that restaurant you mention would have really hated that guy.
Bolding mine.
Bingo.
IMO that’s the problem here. At least in the more extreme “liberal” viewpoints on the topic.
Its awfully easy to say “hey, this tatic X is okay, because, hey its for the winning side and we are winning and we are in the right”.
Basically, plenty of folks are fine with mob rule as long as the mob is on their side.
Good thing for many folks here that the internet, facebook, twitter etc didn’t become entrenched in the 50’s.
There was plenty of discussion and negotiation before the law was passed. Legislators and others in Indiana tried to have the law amended to ensure that LGBT rights would be protected. The CEO’s of major companies wrote a politely worded letter to the governor asking him to veto the law. But once the law was signed, the only option was to try to get it fixed through outcry, protest and boycott. Those techniques were effective enough that the laws in both Indiana and Arkansas were revised.
I am opposed to some of the harassment and threats that certain individuals used as part of their protest. But if you’re saying that we should be tolerant of the intolerant, that’s not something I can support. There was a middle ground here – it was an RFRA that included the protections included in the Federal law. Ultimately, because enough people rose up and expressed their opinions, that’s exactly what we got.
Did the “liberal side” behave differently when we weren’t winning?
Perhaps there is a difference between treating people based on what they do versus who they are?
If the owners of the store served the customers, but said horrible things about them in the back room, they might be jerks but no one would be protesting.
Does everyone have the right to discriminate except against those who discriminate?
It would be more like a catering place run by the KKK being asked to serve African Americans.
Apparently, mom-and-pop are financially profiting from the new law.
Equally important running a small business doesn’t mean a person gives up their right to be treated with dignity. And there’s a big difference between a large corporation and two people running a bakery out of a storefront. The thing is when ordering products or services with a small, intimate business being subjected to the random opinions, phobias, prejudices, etc. of the business owner is part of the experience. That’s the downside of dealing with vendors on such a personal level. Sometimes it means being exposed to an unvarnished opinion you don’t like (so act like an adult and walk away) or dealing with a merchant that does not want your business (once again act like an adult and walk away). One of the reasons people start these little businesses is the freedom to choose their clientele and that includes refusing customers they find unpleasant for whatever reason.
Yes I’m aware some states did have segregation laws. My point remains the same. The claim the presence of such laws prevented the free market from resolving the issue is untrue as Greensboro is an example of a place where no such laws were applied so the free market should have solve the problem. It didn’t work. It wasn’t until the government enforced equal protection laws that the private companies stopped discriminating.