Bigots are switching to "creative expression" instead of religion as the club they'll use to beat down public accommodation laws.
The Supreme Court appears hell-bent on making America bigoted again. Step-by-step, they're undoing every bit of progressive legislation from the past 80 years that they can find.Now they're going after the right of gays and lesbians who want to get married to shop for a website, or pretty much anything else that requires "creative" effort.
There was a time in America when any retail business could, as the old sign said, "reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason." Often such proclamations were just slightly more subtle than the "No Negros," "No Jews," or "No Irishmen" signs they replaced, although they still pepper retail establishments across the nation.
And it's true that if you run a "public accommodation," you're welcome to toss out drunk, belligerent, naked, high, or otherwise offensive customers. Bars and airlines — clearly public accommodations — do it daily.
But, particularly since passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, there are boundaries around who you can and can't refuse to serve. Under federal law, you can toss out somebody because they're wearing a tee-shirt that has offensive language printed on it, but you can't toss out somebody because they're Black or wearing a yarmulke.Read more at
HartmannReport.com.
-Thom
