No, no, no, no, and no. I don't give a flying fuck about your religion, but if you use it to deny service or discriminate against another person that's wrong plain and simple. No two ways about it. Freedom of religion does not give you the right to do that only the freedom to worship how you want. Why is that so hard to understand?
And yet, as I pointed out before, you'd likely be fine with a Jewish business owner refusing service to Neo-Nazis or a black business owner refusing service to KKK members.
There is nothing in the Constitution that suggests religious people should be forced by the government or their fellow citizens to participate in something they consider a sinful abomination.
That you won't even admit that the gays who brought the lawsuits in these cases are the
real intolerant ones, as they could have easily gone to another business, shows your lack of honesty about all of this. You want people to respect gay's civil rights but you don't respect other's religious rights. And both could have been served by the gays simply going elsewhere. But that's not what they or you are about, is it?
There were and are people who have firm solid longstanding religious beliefs that women should dress a certain way and should stay in the home or that people of different races are either inferior or should not mix socially or that unmarried cohabitation is sinful or that someone of a different faith or no faith at all is "evil" and going to hell.
This is all fine. They are free to have those beliefs, marry people with similar values and reproduce those ideas in the next generation. What they are less able to do since the 50s and 60s is to use those beliefs as justification to discriminate in housing, employment, public accommodation or business relationships.
There have been a fair number of court cases about this already.
The Federal CRA does not prohibit discrimination based on sexuality but apparently some states do have such laws. If you run a business there's a non-zero chance you will be working with a number of people who do not share your political, religious or social values. And that's ok.
And most Christians are fine with protections for gays as far as housing, employment, visiting rights, etc. Not sure what you mean by public accommodation. But being forced to
take part in something like a gay marriage, whether it's proving flowers or taking photos, crosses the line. It's much like when certain folks, such as the Amish, apply for "conscientious objector" status when it comes to military service.
