Ok, let's take this one step further:  How about have businesses post a list of the people they won't serve in front of their establishment?

I mean let's suppose you own a hardware store and some guy comes in and wants to buy a lawnmower.  But you have a sign posted on your door that says you will not do business with homosexuals, short people, Amish, Jews, or Muslims.  There you go.  Then when someone enters the store, you have them sign a document that states they are not one of the groups of people you choose to do business with.

Then you follow up by hiring a private detective to make sure they didn't lie to you.  If they did, you have the right to confiscate the lawn mower.

Sounds like a solid business model to me. 

Just Fred wrote:

Ok, let's take this one step further:  How about have businesses post a list of the people they won't serve in front of their establishment?

I mean let's suppose you own a hardware store and some guy comes in and wants to buy a lawnmower.  But you have a sign posted on your door that says you will not do business with homosexuals, short people, Amish, Jews, or Muslims.  There you go.  Then when someone enters the store, you have them sign a document that states they are not one of the groups of people you choose to do business with.

Then you follow up by hiring a private detective to make sure they didn't lie to you.  If they did, you have the right to confiscate the lawn mower.

Sounds like a solid business model to me. 

Like the bill proposed in post #8.
 

Turns out, not for the first time,I was wrong in my understanding of this bill.

There’s a factual dispute about the new Indiana law. It is called a “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” like the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed in 1993.* Thus a number of its defenders have claimed it is really the same law. Here, for example, is the Weekly Standard’s John McCormack: “Is there any difference between Indiana's law and the federal law? Nothing significant.” I am not sure what McCormack was thinking; but even my old employer, The Washington Post, seems to believe that if a law has a similar title as another law, they must be identical. “Indiana is actually soon to be just one of 20 states with a version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA,” the Post’s Hunter Schwarz wrote, linking to this map created by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The problem with this statement is that, well, it’s false. That becomes clear when you read and compare those tedious state statutes.  If you do that, you will find that the Indiana statute has two features the federal RFRA—and most state RFRAs—do not. First, the Indiana law explicitly allows any for-profit business to assert a right to “the free exercise of religion.” The federal RFRA doesn’t contain such language, and neither does any of the state RFRAs except South Carolina’s; in fact, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, explicitly exclude for-profit businesses from the protection of their RFRAs.

The new Indiana statute also contains this odd language: “A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding, regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding.” Neither the federal RFRA, nor 18 of the 19 state statutes cited by the Post, says anything like this; only the Texas RFRA, passed in 1999, contains similar language.

What these words mean is, first, that the Indiana statute explicitly recognizes that a for-profit corporation has “free exercise” rights matching those of individuals or churches. A lot of legal thinkers thought that idea was outlandish until last year’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, in which the Court’s five conservatives interpreted the federal RFRA to give some corporate employers a religious veto over their employees’ statutory right to contraceptive coverage.

Second, the Indiana statute explicitly makes a business’s “free exercise” right a defense against a private lawsuit by another person, rather than simply against actions brought by government. Why does this matter? Well, there’s a lot of evidence that the new wave of “religious freedom” legislation was impelled, at least in part, by a panic over a New Mexico state-court decision, Elane Photography v. Willock. In that case, a same-sex couple sued a professional photography studio that refused to photograph the couple’s wedding. New Mexico law bars discrimination in “public accommodations” on the basis of sexual orientation. The studio said that New Mexico’s RFRA nonetheless barred the suit; but the state’s Supreme Court held that the RFRA did not apply “because the government is not a party.”

Remarkably enough, soon after, language found its way into the Indiana statute to make sure that no Indiana court could ever make a similar decision.  Democrats also offered the Republican legislative majority a chance to amend the new act to say that it did not permit businesses to discriminate; they voted that amendment down.

This bill is ridiculous.  I get the argument where people say 'just let companies do what they want, and the companies who discriminate will naturally go out of business', but, what about businesses like cable internet companies where there is a monopoly? If someone is discriminated against, there is no competition to go to.

The cover of this mornings Indianapolis Star and thecorresponding editorial