Originally Posted by
nykid
Ha. I don't see why that is so. I'm not saying every business has to serve everyone all the time no matter what - not even close.
When you brought up the coercion of the baker via force, you compared an emotional harm (the "inconvenience" of being refused service) to a material harm (paying legal fees). That's not the correct comparison. The correct comparison is between the emotional harm to the customer refused service and the emotional harm to the baker of baking a cake for someone whom he prefers not to serve. The customer could go to another bakery, okay, but the baker could just bake the cake, also. Those are the two harms that are relevant here, neither of them material. And I don't think there's a strong case to make that one is merely an "inconvenience" while the other is not.
All I'm saying is that, as a matter of principle, public businesses in this country should be constrained from discriminating against people on the basis of "identity." That's it. If a business owner doesn't like [type of person] and one walks into his bakery, he has several options. A) Serve that person as he would serve any other customer (the easiest choice, and while it may constitute some kind of emotional harm, I'd argue it's not greater than the harm caused to the customer by refusing service). B) Refuse them service based on their specific conduct/actions (they were rude, etc). C) Refuse them service on the basis of their identity, in violation of the law, and risk the consequences.
If they choose C, that doesn't mean I think they should be sued out of house and home -- in most cases, I think the consequences will be negligible. But I do think it's important that the law of the land not be that it is permissible to discriminate based on identity.