Define “live free”. I refer you to my other posts… particularly the hypothetical scenario where a kosher/halal butcher refuses to butcher a pig for a client? Does the kosher/halal butcher have the right to deny a person food?
If the butcher doesn’t butcher pigs for anyone, regardless of religion, how is she discriminating? It simply isn’t a service offered by that business.
You might as well complain that you’re being discriminated against because the florist won’t sell you a car.
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A little more on that. I didn’t bother to reply to you earlier troll, but since you bothered to bring that back up:
That hypothetical is like a 20 year-old wandering into a bar and asking to be served.
They’ll go thirsty.
A retail business isn’t required to provide anything other than their STANDARD business practices. Kosher meat doesn’t allow for pig blood to mix with the blood of other animals in processing. A business performing this action would lose their certification as a kosher butcher.
Here’s a story about a meat processor who bought a farm specifically to provide kosher and halal meat for a market that was looking for it. He wasn’t going to turn away Christians or Sikhs (among others) who wanted cattle, lambs, goat or chicken - but no pig could be processed on site.
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Fine. If you want to nit-pick… you know what I’m getting at.
African American hotel owner gets approached to host a Klan event( its a progressive Klan chapter). In this case the service is a service provided ordinarily by the business and the refusal would be discriminatory.
In this case I’m sure both of you would agree that the event planner has the right to choose their associations.
That’s much more interesting. I think I would say that businesses should be able to choose their service, and choose to refuse to serve individual customers, but not reject an entire class of people as customers because they were of a particular race, or gender, or sexuality, what have you (for want of a better way of explaining myself)
So they could refuse to host a Klan event because it wasn’t an event they wanted to hold, but not if they were doing so because the customer was white, and not automatically refuse business from all white men.
I think the dressmakers should probably be able to refuse to sell a dress to someone they don’t personally like, but they shouldn’t be able to refuse to sell them to lesbians.
If I have to choose, I’d rather the hotelier had to host the Klan event (so long it was in itself inoffensive and non-discriminatory) than the dressmakers be allowed to refuse to serve lesbians.
When I looked for your scenario, I ended up here:
Which suggests that in WA, the dressmakers would definitely be breaking the law.
It’s late and I’m probably writing this badly. 
And just because it amused me earlier today., presented without comment:
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It’s not a case of nit picking - it’s a case of you having to give me a valid example.
You already wrote the answer to this one in your comment. Of course the hotel should comply. That said, if the Klan has cost other hotels money because of protests or their own behavior, then the hotel owner definitely has the right to include a rider in the contract about possible damages or increased security - but that’s common for “events” at a lot of hotels anyway. It’s not a “normal” service to take on increased risk to your facilities.
BTW - you might be surprised to know that last year, a hotel sponsored a meeting of the KKK and the NAACP.
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Interesting. I didn’t expect you to side with the Klan. Admirable, really, to take sides against discrimination, especially when you probably find the target group reprehensible.
Bonus points for not falling for the trollies trap. 
Case in point.
That finding allows discrimination against “sincerely held religious belief” What the standard for that is, I dont know. But I say that the law forcing a business owner to participate in an activity that they find religiously objectionable is unjust.
You do see that that this is inconsistent in that it specifically allows for discrimination against the religious?
A florist that finds selling flowers to be religiously objectionable is in the wrong business.
I’m not taking sides with the Klan. I’m not taking sides with any particular group. That’s something you should understand about this type of law, and my position when explaining it.
It’s about not “taking sides” at all. I wholeheartedly disapprove of the KKK, and what they stand for, but they are not allowed to be blankly discriminated against by business owners - anymore than gays can be discriminated against by Chik Fil-A.
Other laws and considerations may come into play if a specific person or group’s presence on site causes problems for a business owner (or private individual - the nudist beach argument is that type of claim, but the nudists claim they’re good for the local economy).
If a KKK event was going on, and members were harassing people who worked at the hotel, or the owner’s forefather had been lynched, and a circular went out discussing how the Klan still had control over the black community - my answer would be different.
EDIT: Here’s the “nudist beach” argument I was referring to - it’s a parallel thread here on BB In that topic, a house owner has closed a private beach used for decades by nudists, and claims their presence has made sale of the property a difficulty. (They’ve been there since the 1930s, the new house owner since 2006.)
The nudists have begun swimming at the public beach right next door. They also claim that their presence has encouraged increased tourism to the area, thus increasing the economy, and so their presence is a good thing,
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Religion is a choice.
My first reaction was that kosher/halal butchers are the extreme minority, so picking on them when in fact anyone desiring pork for dinner could go to ANY OTHER grocery, restaurant, or butcher shop on the same street is, well, not kosher.
But I think the better argument is that the rules of kosher/halal mean that once the butcher provided pork to some passing goyim, they could no longer serve their actual clientele, who really don’t have a multitude of other options so it would be denying THEM food from that point forward.
Yes, it’s possible to ritually cleanse a place, but the damage to the butcher’s reputation as someone trustworthy would be irredeemable…so one way or another, he’d be out of business.
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Before this behemoth of a thread ends, I’d like to thank all participants who so eloquently expressed just about everything I would have had to say on the topic. So many people were better able than I to articulate meaningful points in this discussion that I decided to stay silent. I’ve shown my support through likes.
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Also - the butcher wouldn’t be denying them food just the pork.
This is just like the man who bought the meat processing plant on a farm, and intends to only serve kosher and halal meats. There are many types of animal that can be slaughtered and processed for either of those uses. So a person coming to that farm really shouldn’t complain about the fact that no pigs are kept there. The same is true at the butcher shop.
Either way, the customer was going to have to pay for something, so they end up with less - but they’d probably be able to take home some cheapie cuts.
The original argument made about this was “a person demanding a ham sandwich in a kosher deli”. Well, you can’t force any restaurant to sell any particular food. If you want that, you need to open your restaurant.
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Your hypothetical is comparing apples to oranges. The kosher butcher is refusing to provide a specific segment of service to everyone regardless of who the customer is–that decision has come before the customer ever entered the store.
The analogy would be somewhat like a gluten-free baker being asked to bake a cake with gluten as an ingredient–the baker has already decided that she’s not working with gluten, a decision made without regard to whom they will be selling their services or what their customers might practice or believe (or, frankly, what the baker thinks their customers might believe).
Edit: @catgrin beat me to the point.
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Unfortunately, your “organic” community decisions so often and easily shift to persecution, bigotry, and racism. That is not an effective way to run a nation of 300 or 300 million.
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The Civil Rights Act of 1964 clearly established limits to the “freedom of association” thing. You can no longer run a diner that refuses to sell food to dark-skinned people, so why should you be allowed to run a bridal shop that refuses to do business with same-sex couples?
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I don’t believe in “running” 300 million, or 300, or 3. “Running” is what oppressors do to the oppressed.
And here you are talking about your ability to do the oppressing. Thanks for avoiding the issue.
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What are you talking about? I specifically don’t want to oppress anyone. I don’t even want the ability to oppress anyone.
But hey, if you’re just a bystander while some third party is oppressing someone, that ain’t no thang, right?
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