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

[julieisafemme]

Ok but what if you make the 100 cupcakes and they are a huge hit and then the rest of the bigot brigade is beating down your door for more cupcakes with ever increasing demands for horribly offensive sweets?

The bakery owner is self-employed and not working as part of a system or for the state. If I work for someone else then I am under their values and morals. Would you work for the confederate flag making baker?

Originally Posted by betenoire

You know, maybe this is my Canadian perspective - because I know with the laws that are in place I am safe from ever being asked to do something SUPER heinous. But you know what? If I owned a bakery and some loser asked me to make him 100 cupcakes with little confederate flags on it - I'd do it. Because that's my job. And because making the cupcakes is not the same as getting a bad haircut and then attending the bigot hoe-down (how do you spell that anyway?) where the cupcakes will be consumed. It's just not.

In my line of work I have to provide services to people who are actively using drugs (like, I show up and the crack pipe is sitting on the table beside the chair - that's what I mean by actively) people who I know are abusing the system, and even people who I just find really distasteful in general. I don't get to refuse those services - because it's my job not my personal life. How I feel about the personalities and actions of the people of the people I support DOES NOT GET to effect how I do my job - and if it DID then I would be pretty shitty at my job and I wouldn't deserve to have the job that I have.

Even rapists and murderers get defense lawyers. That doesn't make the lawyer complicit in the rape or murder - it makes the lawyer a person who is doing her or his job.