Tennessee Hardware Store puts up "no gays allowed" sign

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Indeed - Sanchez is dead wrong here. A private institution like a country club or even a university, makes clear there are qualifications for access and inclusion. A store, whilst being privately owned, still has no expectation of denying access based on any qualifier.

The store is being actively discriminatory and is now throwing up "muh religins freedumz" to get the usual suspects to back him.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Are people under the impression that gays are a protected class under the 1964 Civil Rights Act? They are not. You can legally turn the gays away all day long if you choose to do so. Also, the racial segregation that existed in the lunch counters of the 1950s existed because of local and state laws. Stores would have been breaking the law not to segregate their facilities. The free market had no role to play. How businesses would have acted without those laws is mere speculation.

Of course, it's not about whether they legally can turn customers away, considering you have marriage equality nation-wide but still have a majority of stares where you can still be fired for being thought of as gay... But whether it's "right"

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Freedom of association is a two way street. People are free to boycott this store, and I am sure the public outrage and typical hysterical reaction of the media will be more than enough to take down this sign.

Are you being serious?

Partly. I don't want to see the Civil Rights Act repealed, though in an ideal world, people should be free to discriminate in their personal lives if they choose to live life like an ass-wipe. CNN will talk about this story for a week, people will shame the owner, and the sign will come down. It's a pretty simple chain of events.

You could also legalize punching your customers in the face under the same theory. 

As for freedom of association, that's not under threat here.  This person opened a store that caters to anyone who walks by.  So, he chose to associate with anyone who walks by, aka the general public.   Running a store is not "your personal life" at all.  It's public. 

I walk by the local country club a lot. But I can't golf there whenever I want. The owners of the country club "associate with the general public." What is the difference? They both are private, for profit establishments and should be allowed to cater to whomever they want.

A country club is a private club.  A hardware store is not a private club. 

And why can't this idiot in TN operate his business as a private club? Who gets to decide what is private and what isn't?

Indeed - Sanchez is dead wrong here. A private institution like a country club or even a university, makes clear there are qualifications for access and inclusion. A store, whilst being privately owned, still has no expectation of denying access based on any qualifier.

The store is being actively discriminatory and is now throwing up "muh religins freedumz" to get the usual suspects to back him.

Freedom of association is a two way street. People are free to boycott this store, and I am sure the public outrage and typical hysterical reaction of the media will be more than enough to take down this sign.

Are you being serious?

Partly. I don't want to see the Civil Rights Act repealed, though in an ideal world, people should be free to discriminate in their personal lives if they choose to live life like an ass-wipe. CNN will talk about this story for a week, people will shame the owner, and the sign will come down. It's a pretty simple chain of events.

You could also legalize punching your customers in the face under the same theory. 

As for freedom of association, that's not under threat here.  This person opened a store that caters to anyone who walks by.  So, he chose to associate with anyone who walks by, aka the general public.   Running a store is not "your personal life" at all.  It's public. 

I walk by the local country club a lot. But I can't golf there whenever I want. The owners of the country club "associate with the general public." What is the difference? They both are private, for profit establishments and should be allowed to cater to whomever they want.

The country club owner is clear from the beginning that the business does not intend to serve 100% of the public, and defines clear requirements for membership that can be met regardless of sexuality.

The Hardware store owner serves everyone for x years, then suddenly adopts a new requirement for service that certain people cannot meet because of how they were born, as a clear overreaction to a court action that he disagreed with yet had absolutely nothing to do with his business. If he had been asked to come to a wedding and perform a service, or if he had been asked to make something that had an explicit "gay" theme, that's one thing and I think there are legitimate issues of religious freedom to address there. But that's not what is happening here.

Have you ever seen a sign at McDonalds saying "we reserve the right to refuse service?" They have a choice to refuse service for whatever reason. When they do refuse service, it happens after the customer enters the store expecting service.

Sure, the point of those signs are to prevent unruly customers from remaining in the establishment after being asked to leave, but the point is they exist to give the owner options. And in this situation, the owner is using those options.

Of course, this isn't an issue of religious freedom. Its an issue of economic freedom. People have the right to be assholes. And people don't have the right to not get their feelings hurt.

 I try to avoid McDonalds - as you pointed out, the right to refuse service is based almost entirely on mitigating liability. A bar has a right, as well as a responsibility, to refuse service to the already intoxicated. A restaurant has the right to refuse you service if it feels you are a threat to the comfort of fellow customers.  A cab has the right to refuse to pick you up etc etc. But this is overt discrimination towards a particular group, even before entering a store. If the sign said "no blacks" or "no Jews", I mean, you're at least consistent in the mindlessness of your ideology, but if the owner said, as the owner of several lunch counters in the South said, that integration was an affront to his religious beliefs, would the same knee-jerks be defending him?