Pence signed it: Add Indiana to the list of states with "religious freedom" laws

[anvi]

Quite the society we're building here.  Let's protect by law the severing of all commercial, social and civil ties between us whenever one of us has religious objections to what another group is doing.  Just don't be surprised when you find that, as time passes, building national unity around anything becomes more and more impossible.

If I was thinking about opening a business that designed t-shirts, posters and signs, and then realized I might have profound moral objections with the social and political uses to which customers would put my products, then I'd think about running a different business, not ask the state to allow me to discriminate against my customers. 

The big cause of "religious freedom" now is allowing people to discriminate against others outside church, mosque and temple?  Seems pretty sad, and not particularly morally effective, to me.

[anvi]

Have you ever seen the "we reserve the right to refuse service" signs? Those signs allow the owner to turn away clients he/she doesn't want to serve; take, for example, a bar with a customer with a history of starting fights. Does this bar not have the right to refuse service to this man? Why should a florist who happens to be an Evangelical Christian have to serve a gay wedding if it goes against her (wrongly held) religious beliefs? Should this woman I am using as an example have to service the couple just because they approached her first?

These cases aren't comparable.  In the case of the bar owner above, he is refusing to serve prospective customers because the latter may represent a threat to his other patrons or his property.  The couple in the second case represents no such threats to the owner.  The couple are willing to pay the price the business owner sets for services the owner otherwise provides equitably to the public.  

[anvi]

It seems to me that government power can be used to protect things like freedom of speech or right to assemble, even when restrictions on freedom of speech or assembly may not directly cause physical or economic harm.  Even if one individual's freedom or speech or assembly rights are impinged, I don't think the individual's case so trivial that they can't bring a case against that impingement.  Why then would defending people's rights to be treated equitably in business transactions need to pass some kind of critical mass test before such defense can be undertaken?  And I still fail to see how expecting the owner of a cake store to sell already available products to customers willing to pay the seller's price for them as the imposition of a "substantial burden" on them.  But now Indiana and some 19 other states protect the cake store owner.