Do Businesses Have the Right to Refuse Service Based on Moral/Religious Objections?

[EnderD_503]

Originally Posted by DomnNC

[B]What is confusing to me is that ya'll want a law or something that says No one can refuse to provide a service to anyone, doesn't matter who they are or what they do! So therefore if we had that law then legally, I, like the woman in the flower shop (as the example) ya'll are using WOULD have to provide my service to ANYONE that wants it, period, end of story or face the legal consequences like the flower shop woman did!

There have been a number of posts in this thread making explicitly clear that this is not what happens when laws are put into place that do not allow a private business owner to legally refuse service. Quite a few posts have pointed out that there is a distinct difference between refusing service based on who the person is, and refusing service based on what the person does or what that person intends to do with that service.

A law that states that private business owners may not refuse service, does not prevent them from refusing service due to some sort of misconduct or an act of discrimination. The law is more specifically in place to protect people from being denied service based on who they are.

So to go back to your example again: You would not be able to deny service to a religious group because they are a religious group. You would be able to deny service to a religious group if they were using your services to directly commit an act of discrimination against a certain group or if they partook in any misconduct in general.

The refusal of service in the second instances would not necessarily be from a personal moral standpoint, but from the stand point of protecting a minority group from discrimination (and whether or not this constitutes morality is debatable).

In the case of the florist, she refused service to the gay couple because they were gay, and because the mere fact that they were gay and getting married went against her personal/religious morals. However, if they walked into her flower shop and started stomping on her flowers, harassing her employees and yelling at her about being Christian and how much they hate all Christians and want them dead...then she'd definitely have grounds to deny them service. A law that denies a business owner the right to refuse service defends people from being denied service on the basis of who they are, even if the denial of service stems from personal/religious morality.

So if Fred Phelps comes into my coffee shop and wants to buy a cup of coffee, I cannot deny him coffee just because he is Fred Phelps and I think he's a douche. But if he began defaming, insulting or generally inciting hatred toward gays, Jews or any other such group, then I would have the right to demand that he leave the shop.

Now I have a feeling that it'll once more come back to the fact that some States don't have these anti-discrimination laws for LGBT folks. However, that has little to do with retaining laws that allow private business owners to deny service on any grounds, be they moral/religious or otherwise. By allowing small businesses to do so, you set up that precedent for discrimination, when in fact there should not only be laws defending citizens from discrimination in the work place and elsewhere, but also laws defending people from being denied service based on who they are simply because the owner disapproves of who they are. Hence the repeated response over and over: fighting for equal rights on all fronts rather than giving up your right to protection entirely just so you can deny a bigot service if they want to use your services for some kind of discriminatory act (which you would be able to do even if the law stated you could not deny service based on moral/religious reasons, because you're denying them service based on their plan to use your services to discriminate.)