“We went down the wrong path decades ago when the Supremes upheld legislation requiring private owners to serve people they did not wish to serve.”
What the USSC did back in the ‘60s was to rule that no one could be denied entrance to, or service from, a place of business that is a public accomodation. So, for example, some store on Main Street, USA, or on the interstate, cannot decide to prohibit blacks from entering their store - on the theory that the store itself (and, thus, its owner) was deriving a benefit from being a public accomodation, and therefor had to take the “bad” (admitting blacks) with the “good” (those benefits).
This is in contrast to the present situation, where the 2 homosexuals wanted a special service. If they had come in and said, “Hey, we want to buy that pre-made cake there” or “Hey, we want to order one of your standard make-to-order cakes” then the cake shop (as a place of public accomodation) would have had no choice but to sell to them. HOWEVER, this particular case is distinguishable because the 2 people in question wanted a custom-made cake that offended the person who was asked to create it. It is analogous to 2 Jews or 2 Christians coming into a Moslem-owned bake shop and asking for a cake depicting Mohammed being screwed by a dog. I would not ever expect that shop to make such a cake, any more than I’d have expected Phillips to make the homosexual wedding cake. You CANNOT force someone to go out of their way to accomodate you or your particular beliefs - whatever those beliefs may be. Again, if they’d have asked for a cake off the shelf, he’d have had to sell it to them...but those are not the facts in this EASILY distinguishable case.
One thing that has NOT been explored (at least I don’t believe that it has) at the USSC level is the set of circumstances leading to this case. There was another case in Oregon, with almost identical facts, in which the 2 homosexuals PURPOSELY sought out a Christian-owned/operated bake shop, and when they found one they asked for a similar cake to this case. Oregon shut that place down...but the point is that those 2 particular gays in Oregon were LOOKING to create a case, it didn’t just happen at random. I believe that the facts are similar here, though I will be glad to admit my error if someone can point to some contrary facts. Another issue is the fact that there are other bake shops available fairly close by - these gays could have gone elsewhere, but chose to (quite literally) make a Federal case out of it. If the cake shop were a protected monopoly and there was no competition nearby, I’d say that the shop would have no choice but to make the cake as requested...but there was NO such monopoly. So, what is the real harm? What $0.50 of gasoline?
What the USSC did back in the ‘60s was to rule that no one could be denied entrance to, or service from, a place of business that is a public accomodation.
The Supreme Court did not mandate nondiscrimination in public accomodations - that was the Civil Rights Act of 1964