Normally I’m a believer that if you’re open
for business, you’re open to servicing everyone, but that concept is changing
for many of us. Thanks to the right-leaning Supreme Court allowing a baker to
refuse service to a same-sex couple, supposedly due to his religious beliefs,
then why can’t a restaurant owner, who is a conscientious objector to the Trump
administration, ask his excuser-in-chief to leave the restaurant? Making
discrimination legal and valid in one case just opens the floodgate for more.
It’s going to be hard to put this genie back in the bottle.
I’m sure the right wing will claim they are
only following their deeply-held religious beliefs, but what about deeply-held
environmental beliefs, or fashion style beliefs? My experience with religion is
that this discrimination won’t stop at LGBTQ individuals, but will soon target women,
minorities, people of other religions (ironic, I know), and all sorts of other “others.”
After all, look at Mississippi’s HB 1523.
If we’re lucky, people will begin to
understand why our Founding Fathers believed in separation of church and state
because so-called religious liberty won’t provide liberty for all religions or
for all people.