Ah, the bleating of a conservative who doesn’t feel free to discriminate, so accuses others of oppressing him. Your words are full of sound and fury, but short on substance — they don’t even substantially address my point. All they do is whine aboutr how “social justice” is persecuting you and yours. Boo Hoo.

Let me turn the baker example around for you, so you will understand why businesses can’t discriminate on religious grounds:

Barbara and Jill own a bakery called Labrys in a small town. They are married to each other. Their bakery is the only bakery in that town that does quality wedding cakes and deliver them to weddings along with all of the serving paraphenalia needed. The town’s grocery store does cakes, but doesn’t customize them, has a limited selection, and doesn’t deliver. The nearest other baker who does custom cakes is 100 miles away, but they are there. So people can “find another” baker if they have to.

Barbara and Jill believe, with all of their hearts, that evangelical conservative Christians are trying to destroy the rights of others, and as such are a threat to the Constitution and the American way of life. It is supported by their religion, which teaches that religion and religious practices should never be forced on anyone, because that is not a sincere exercise of the belief and thus false and immoral. Furthermore, they consider proselytization to be immoral as well — religion should be spread by example, not by high pressure sales techniques. So their religion holds that conservative evangelical Christians are immoral, and they naturally deplore that way of life. This is not far fetched.

Gloria is a young evangelical Christian who spends at least one day a week standing on a streetcorner with a sign decrying homosexuality and handing out Chick tracts. She even tries to proselytize employees of every store she goes in to, handing out tracts as part of her daily life. Everyone knows that she is a conservative, evangelical Christian who literally lives according to her beliefs, lives that lifestyle.

Gloria is engaged to be married to a young man named Chris from her church. They’ve set the date and are planning their wedding in the church. Everyone tells them that the best wedding cakes are made by Labrys.

So Gloria comes into the shop to order her cake. She tries to shove a tract at Jill, who politely declines. The cake she wants is mostly traditional, with a bride and groom on top. But she also wants various bible verses on the side, and a figure of Jesus standing with the bride and groom — blatantly evangelical Christian.

By your logic, Barbara and Jill’s “free exercise” of their religion trumps Gloria’s desire for a decent wedding cake. They don’t want to “support” what they see as an immoral lifestyle. Their making and delivering a cake would be “participating” in Gloria’s lifestyle and religion. After all, there is another shop 100 miles away that can do the work, and deliver the cake, or she can go to the grocery store and buy a standard cake and serving stuff.

By my reasoning, Barbara and Jill run a business, and have no say on the rightness or wrongness of Gloria’s lifestyle when it comes to helping put together her wedding. They can not discriminate against Gloria on the basis of her religion or her lifestyle (handing out tracts and proseltyzing is a lifestyle choice, after all.) They should make the cake correctly, and deliver it and the serving stuff to Gloria and Chris’s reception. After all, they don’t even need to take part in the ceremony of a religion that isn’t theirs.

WRT the protest outside a conservative speaker: The proper American response to speech that you don’t agree with is more speech, which is what a protest is. It is not legal to “blockade” the entrance (freedom of association is not trumped by freedom of speech), and any protesters that do are subject to arrest. The person who wants to see the speaker just has to cross the picket line, the same as a person wanting any services from Planned Parenthood. Such big government overreach, the laws against interference with the rights of others. When the shoe is on the other foot conservatives start to whine again. Boo Hoo.

In fact that is my biggest objection to Christian conservatives: The sheer level of hypocrisy that they spew about in their daily lives. They are the majority religion, but they are quick to claim persecution. Christmas is a federal holiday, but they whine when people say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”, even if that person isn’t Christian. They claim that they are being deprived of their right to “spread the word”, but their billboards, signage, crosses and “message” is ubiquitous. They claim they are removed from the public sphere when they can’t force Christian prayers in schools, whereas the Constitution itself prohibits the establishment of any religion by the state, and the school is an institution of the state. They howl in outrage if any other religion is allowed to give a prayer to open a government meeting, when any prayer to open a government meeting is a tacit state approval of that religion.