A case has recently been in the news and is being decided by the Supreme Court. It concerns a cake designer who doesn’t want to bake cakes for homosexual “marriages.” Is the cakedesigner free to refuse, on grounds of freedom of religion—the designer’s religion doesn’t recognize such “marriages” as legitimate, or must homosexuals be served, because the cake-making service is a public accommodation that must be open to any customer who can pay for the service provided? This question frames the basic issue the wrong way. If you offer a service or sell a good, you should be free to sell it to whomever you want, or to refuse it sell it.A sale and purchase is a voluntary transaction that requires the consent of all the parties to the deal. Thus, if a cake designer doesn’t want to sell cakes to homosexuals, he should be free to refuse. He isn’t required to claim that selling the cake goes against his religion. What if he just doesn’t like homosexuals, but doesn’t allege that his religion backs him up in this dislike? He should be free to “discriminate” in any way he wishes. In arguing in this way, we are following the principles of the greatest twentieth-century theorist of a free society, Murray Rothbard.
In a functioning society we can be honest with each-other and understand we are all different.