[Maru]

If only religious folk would just get rid of their petty beliefs... seems to be the logic of some of those some who disagree with this position... but that is not seeing the bigger picture.

If for example a group went to a company and asked them to make a cake or an ad campaign for a KKK chapter or for an Anti-gay organization... I would understand completely if those folk refuse such a request on principled grounds. I mean when we talk about hate speech laws, aren't we really discussing discriminating what is and isn't hate speech?... Discrimination is not always bad thing. Sometimes it is just common sense... many companies would refuse this request, and I would refuse this request, absolutely...

It doesn't feel good for the individual when the loudest message they hear from their environment is to "just get over" their life-long culture (and value) structures... but this is what politics now often ask of voters. Pick a side or find yourself standing alone... because we won't protect you if you stray from our political platform...

For me, it's not so simple to just eliminate all discrimination in commercial services. When it involves individuals, we informing them that they must lay down and allow others to impose rules on how they practice their individual customs... this is why intellectual diversity is such a red herring now... because to employ such a heavy hand on custom, is not only authoritative, but eventually eliminates all individual discredition ...

What's worse it's not even enough to say to those who are religious or declining on principled grounds, that they just disagree... but they also tend to declare that the other side has entered a moral danger zone and must be "handled" at all costs... but this is a heavy-handed and contradictory stance to take when we are supposed to be the society that considers individual rights to be the forefront of our government's structure...

Anyway... we have to make room for individuals to live according to their culture and belief structures, with reason, in order to truly exist as a diverse society...

Perhaps the middle ground here is that businesses that have this policy in place company-wide, must alsodeclare their small/big business as an entity with religious status (i.e. Christian)... and I think this is fair, as it would make it fairly transparent to patrons what requests would likely be unreasonable in that capacity.

It would also eliminate the chance of reckless discriminatory practices from arbitrarily being enforced... since they would need legal status in order to "enforce" such a company policy.

In the US, we have something like this for gun laws... there is a sign that the business must put up, it is specific penal code... one is they cannot enter with an open-carry weapon.. the other is they cannot enter those premises with any weapon period... if that sign is disregarded, that violation is considered automatically a felony... (which would bar them from owning at all)