Another "religious liberty" wedding cake conundrum

[muon2]

If the Christian bake shop had a couple of routine customers who would stop in evenings for coffee and pastries and it eventually became known that this couple were having an affair and cheating on their respective spouses, could the baker throw them out of the shop and refuse to sell them any more pastries because he didn't want his special cupcakes to be their adulterous post-coital treat?

I think this is an interesting hypothetical. The couple is presumably not in a protected class like race, and let me presume that other customers of the baker also know and are offended. If the couple's behavior was bringing negative publicity that cost the baker business, then perhaps the baker could ask them to leave. It seems to me that if a customer is insulting other customers the owner could ask that offending customer to leave due to the negative impact on business. This might be similar.

[muon2]

What makes this different from, say, lunch counters that were famously protested in the Civil Rights era?

There's a difference between discriminating against a class of people and denying an individual based on offensive acts specific to that individual. For instance, a business could ask a patron to leave who flips the bird at every customer who enters.

[muon2]

But those are acts committed in there at the establishment. Being gay in public isn't comparable to flipping off everyone you see.

What made the hypothetical interesting here was that the customers were not gay, but overtly cheating on their spouses and flaunting it with a celebratory cupcake in the store.