[ This is not about WHAT you make — it about is for WHOM. Civil rights laws for 50+ years have firmly held that businesses can pick their products, but they don’t have the freedom of conscience to pick their customers. In other words, a Muslim doesn’t have to make a ham sandwich, but if chooses to make turkey sandwiches, he can’t refuse to sell them to a Jew who walks in and orders one. ]
Jewish sculptor has a sign saying they make custom busts from any photograph... Can a KKK Kreep or NeoNazi walk in there and order “A Custom Bust” then?
Can a homosexual couple walk into a Muslim Owned Cake shop and demand that they make a Wedding cake for them? How about an Orthodox Jewish ran bakery?
Also you forgot a LOT of the Civil Right issues inthe 50’s and 60’s was to fight Discrimination BY THE STATE and LOCAL governments. Sure there were some businessses that were insane and dicriminated, but a LOT of the discrimination in the south was government directed.
There is a big difference between not serving something you already have on the menu or a premade product and refusing to do a contracted out job because it violates a person’s religious and/or cultural standards.
A Jewish shop can certainly refuse to make a bust of Hitler — for anyone.
A Muslim- or Orthodox Jewish-owned baker certainly CANNOT refuse to make a gay wedding cake in places where civil rights laws extend to gays. If gays choose to let Muslims or Orthodox Jews discriminate against them, that’s the gays’ problem. It doesn’t give impunity to the Christians.
I certainly don’t forget that much civil rights laws were about the government’s discriminatory conduct. However, that’s an entirely separate analysis from the civil rights laws applicable to private persons and businesses, and the extension of those laws in this context are quite clear.
Executive summary — Christian business people who believed there would be any sort of “conscience” exception to gay rights laws were stupid to think so.