Business owners should be able to do business with whomever they want. If they don't want to serve Christians, or gays, or whites, that's fine.
sure. but they will lose money this way...
Heedpantsnow subscribes to the theory that the government should stay out of the businesses and let the free market decide the fate of these businesses. So if the business refuses to deal with a certain group, that group shouldn't deal with those businesses and the people who support those group should follow suit - thereby either the business loses enough money (to their rivals that serve said groups) to rectify their ways (or they don't, but no one cares because the group doesn't deal with the business anyways).
Some of the others subscribe to the theory that there are locations where such businesses are the only said businesses in town, and to deny a group the ability to access those businesses (let's say, a funeral casket business in a town where the next nearest casket store is several hundred miles away) would be unfair to that group. And the argument that said groups should create a competing business is an unreasonable request because of the complications and cost of creating a business to compete with one that is already in place.
no problem, the world is generally unfair.
Right, but this is in the United States, where equality gets just as much airtime as freedom. Hence the whole discussion - does equality trump freedom (businesses must serve all customers equally), or does freedom trump equality (businesses are free to deny certain customers)?
Business do have a choice, but not total freedom of choice.
I remember reading of a story here in the US about cake shop that refused to do a wedding cake for a gay couples wedding because of religion. They took the place to court and the court said they had to make the cake, that sexual preferece of the client was not a valid reason to refuse service. The cake shop just said screw it and closed shop.
Had the couple come in drunk, no clothes on, disruptive, rude, etc, then the shop would have had legal grounds to refuse service. But their reasons were not legal. I say good on the court for standing up to the bigotry.
If you are that narrow minded that you wouldn't service clients for those reasons, then I don't feel a bit sorry when courts make these decisions.
I really hope that the law suit for that indoor gun range owner in South West US gets hammered by the courts. She has publicly stated that she will refuse service to Muslims. This is outright illegal for a public business. Her reasoning is she doesn't want terrorists in here range. If she is that worried about it, then she needs to make it a private club and preform background checks based on the results. And then she can refuse membership based on that. Though I am not sure if a private club can legally refuse membership based on religion, race, sex, creed, and the other terms of illegal discrimination.
For what its worth, in 2014 you had better chances of being killed by a toddler than a terrorist in the USA. There were 3 deaths from terrorists on US soil, and 5 deaths from toddlers on US soil.
