Should a Privately-Owned Business Be Able To Refuse Providing a Service To a Customer?

But none of the examples in the news lately are ones where a business is denying business to a group. For example, the couple that didn’t want a gay marriage conducted on their property, but had no problem letting the reception being held there. The bakers, I have no doubt, would not refuse to make a birthday cake for a gay customer, but just didn’t want to make one celebrating something contrary to their beliefs. So, this is not a case of blanket refusal of services to a group.

It is a group, because it’s all wedding cakes to all gay couples.

It could be all wedding cakes to all white supremacists. Should an African American baker be forced to bake those cakes?

No because white supremacists are not a protected class of people

You have never owned a business, obviously.  The owner of a PRIVATE business doesn’t HAVE to do anything.  It’s not our place, as society, to force him.  If you don’t like what he/she does, don’t patron the establishment. 
For instance, I don’t shop at AutoZone, Starbucks, Wal Mart.  I don’t buy anything made by Nike or watch films by people who despise me because I wish to produce a product and service of value and sell it to those who are willing and able to buy it.  Through the unforced judgment of those who wish to deal with me, and I them. 
If I don’t want to buy their product, I won’t.  If I don’t want to sell them my product, I won’t.  That’s called freedom, and liberty. 
If you think it’s acceptable to force someone to do something, go be forced.  Those who advocate slavery should try it first.

The10thMan:   SOOOOOO  well said in VERY way!!!

MattM: excellent points!

This is the point of capitalism. Do what you want and someone can decide whether or not they like the product or even YOU, the producer/seller. If they don’t like it, they can go anywhere else.

It is a group, because it’s all wedding cakes to all gay couples.From PJ Rodriguez

 What about Starbucks refusing to send their product to our Armed Forces overseas?  They are denying an entire group of paying customers based on their ideology.  Think about that when you try and force a business owner while sipping your half and half mocha latte.

How do you know it was all wedding cakes? Maybe this one had two dudes 69ing each other in top

Turk:  SO right!

Turk, the LGBT community does this on a daily basis.  They are well aware of what companies are LGBT friendly and patron them.  Here’s a sample list on my end

Companies I don’t support and a brief why:
1)  AutoZone :  A few Christmas’ ago, one was being robbed.  An employee went to his vehicle, retrieved his weapon and WENT BACK IN to save his manager.  He succeeded and was fired.  This was 10 days before Christmas.  The employee is prior Air Force (as am I).

2)  Starbucks:  They won’t send their product to paying customers because of the companies hatred for the men and women who make them selling a product possible.  Starbucks can rot.

3)  Wal Mart:  Pretty much everything is made in China.

4)  Nike:  Child slavery, ridiculous profit.  Micheal Jordan pockets 70% of the sticker price.  Those of you who cry about gas prices (profit of 8-10%) bitch and moan in your pair of Nike’s made by the finest 7 year old craftsman China can produce.

5)   Home Depot:  Bowing  to Sharia Law in America.  No regard for the fact that every place in the world that Sharia law is practiced, is a place where business can not prosper.

Actually, those are better examples of why the market is not always effective in dealing with issues like this.

1.   Apart from a minor detail (Devin McClean was fired a week before Thanksgiving, not Christmas, 2012), this story is mostly true.  Unfortunately, consumer boycotts have done squat to change Autozone’s policies or anyone else’s.  Only laws forbidding employers to fire their employees under such circumstances do.
2.  This boycott has had no measurable impact on Starbucks’s bottom line, and it’s a good thing too.  It’s based entirely on a hoax.  If you must boycott any coffee company, find out who started this stupid rumor and boycott *them.*  Or boycott Peet’s for forbidding customers to carry weapons in their stories – exactly what the gun grabbers tried and failed to pressure Starbucks to do.
3.  So you buy all your Chinese-manufactured goods at Target instead.  That accomplishes … remind me what, exactly?
4. I think you’d be hard pressed to find evidence Nike’s factories in Third World countries are any more “slave” like than any others in those countries.  Ridiculous profit?  No shoe is worth to me what Nikes go for, but as long as the brand remains that valuable to some, they will (and should) continue selling them for what the market will bear.  Nike’s objective is no differnt than any other for-profit company: to maximize profits.
5.  Another myth.  Boycott Lowe’s instead for starting it.  [Kidding, there’s no evidence anyone in the business had anything to do with this stupid rumor, but shame on you for perpetuating it here.]

I don’t expect my boycott to change anything.  I just don’t patron them.  It’s not my place to dictate their policy.  It is my place to decide where my earnings are spent. 

That’s the difference.  When I see a company doing something I don’t like, I don’t visit their establishment.  I don’t petition the only group in this country with a legal monopoly on the use of force to push my desires. 

Home Depot…..let me find the link….www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=24838

There are others, I just googled the subject and that was one of many.  I chose it based on the ease of copy/paste in relation to the length of the link.

There is a lot of shit going on in this world, but I’m am not so naive to think that they will go out of business if I stop buying. Or if I and hundreds of thousands of others stop buying. Because there are millions more who WILL buy, who aren’t bothered by a company’s business practices. Does anyone give a shit about pollution that IS actually killing US??? They STILL all buy cars! 

Frankly, I find it annoying and highly self-righteous for those of you banging on your drum about how you boycott stores. They don’t give a shit and you are making NO difference. Moreover, you’re too lazy to ACTUALLY figure out a way to do anything serious. I can assure you, if I gave a shit at all, which I don’t, about the endless number of societal problems, I would create a strategy and impact the business. You people just talk out of your asses. I’m so tired of hearing you say the same thing: I don’t like what they do, so I don’t patronize them. Big deal. This statement is all about YOU, NOT about making any social change.

And you actually believe stuff posted on “www.nowtheendbegins.com?”  Seriously?

Society…..that’s an incredibly vulgar display there.  As a self proclaimed “all red woman”, your response is very blue.  I don’t expect that my small, personal boycott will do anything but deprive those companies of a meager profit.  It’s not supposed to.  Frankly, my profession and career mean far more to me than inciting large scale social change.  I’m not willing to invest the time and resources to change the minds of people who, when so told, believe that starvation is prosperity, that force is acceptable and that theft is profit.  I go about my life in a productive manner and expect those around me to do so.  Those that do, I deal with, those that don’t, I in turn don’t.  I don’t appreciate your holier than thou attitude and, frankly, am surprised that you would promote such an attitude.

Jeff…..like I’d said, I chose that link based on convenience.  Check out the Independent Journal or Home Depot its self.

I expected better from this site.  When I saw the Argue Anything deal on FB, I was excited.  A chance to talk with people and share ideas in an intelligent manner?  Sign me up.  What I’ve found here is the same tripe one can find at a dive bar with bad music and belligerent fools.  No thank you.

“Forced by their own government to violate their religious beliefs” is long on rhetoric and short on substance.  We all have to follow the laws whether we like them or not.  We don’t get a get out of jail free card just because our imaginary friends conveniently don’t like those laws, either.

Nor does your logic follow at all.  The controversy is over whether sex discrimination should be a prohibited category for discrimination, as is currently the case in some states and already is for race and religion everywhere.  It has nothing to do with forcing anyone to express any message they disagree with.  If the Cake Nazi had refused to make a wedding cake for an atheist couple, that would have been religious discrimination.  But she would have been fully within her rights to refuse to write “there is no God” on their cake.

So there is a tactic, Matt. religious bakers should spell out “Gay marriage is wrong” in piping on the cake. That would allow them to express their religious view and still comply with the discrimination laws. And as I noted above, food sabotage will dissuade more customers than outright discrimination, since activists will always challenge the latter.

Clever, but it would never fly unless they wrote “gay marriage is wrong” on all their cakes, in which case few straights would buy them, either.