No, they're not "unique".
13 states and the District of Columbia have laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in public accommodations, interpreted to include access to healthcare facilities:
So, in those states you can't discriminate against me in Public Accommodation...just like I can't against YOU in all ******* 50.
You don't understand those laws, which is what I figured. You can not be denied a seat on a bus or at a restaurant but you are taking it much farther. Yes I know the homosexuals are filing suit but as the thread indicates, there is a backlash going on and I predict it will continue.
I understand the laws just fine. They apply to all except religious or private organizations, period.
A Unique Religious Exemption From Antidiscrimination Laws in the Case of Gays?
Our merchants, including the baker and florist, have strong religious views against integration. They object to integration because they believe it will lead to interracial marriage, and they think that “race mixing” violates God’s word. The merchants are hardly alone in their opposition to interracial marriage. At the time of the Fourteenth Amendment, a substantial majority of states banned interracial marriage.[4] As late as 1950, twenty-nine states still banned interracial marriage.[5] In 1967, when the Supreme Court struck down the Virginia ban in the aptly named case of Loving v. Virginia,[6] sixteen states (including Virginia) still prohibited interracial marriage.[7]
Our merchants claim that their religious views should entitle them to an exemption from generally applicable antidiscrimination laws. After Employment Division v. Smith, as we will see, their federal constitutional claim to an exemption would be a loser.[8] We assume for purposes of our hypothetical, that it would be a loser in 1950 also. So our merchants turn to their state legislature.
At first, our merchants wanted a general exemption from serving, selling to, employing, or renting apartments to black people. But their state supreme court has recently struck down the state ban on interracial marriage.[9] Now, our merchants are confronted with something more troubling to their consciences: a married or marrying interracial couple. The issue was simple: they wanted an exemption in the commercial sphere for general, and religiously inspired race discrimination. Is the issue now different because marriage is involved? Must the restaurateur serve an interracial couple, the landlord rent them an apartment on the same terms as whites, and the employer hire a well-qualified spouse of an interracial couple? Must the baker bake a wedding cake or the hotel owner, who regularly rents out space for wedding receptions, rent space for the interracial wedding? Must the florist provide flowers? When one of the employerÂ’s white employees marries an American of African descent, may the employer discharge her for that reason?
For our merchants, interracial marriage is a grave sin, a violation of God’s word. They do not want to be involved in the sin in any way at all. Still, the law applies. The Constitution does not protect their religiously motivated right to discriminate based on race. On principle these merchants oppose all integration, and they would like a blanket exemption. But as a matter of tactics, they decide to limit their claim initially to interracial marriage—they seek an exemption from facilitating interracial marriage. Interracial marriage strikes them as the most unpopular form of integration, so it seems a good place to start their effort to achieve more general exemptions for race discrimination. So they go to the legislature and seek an exemption for religiously and morally motivated discriminators, at least in the case of any connection with interracial marriage. Should they get one?
They seek an exemption only from facilitating racial intermarriage. Facilitating is a slippery term. The baker, the florist, and the hotel owner suggest we start with freeing them from providing goods or locations for the ceremony. The employer wants a broader exemption, one from employing one spouse from an interracial couple, the landlord wants an exemption from renting to them, and the merchant wants an exemption from selling to them. Simply as a matter of public policy, should the legislature grant the exemptions?
No. The important values underlying the need to destroy the racial caste system militate in favor of maintaining the general law and applying it generally. Religious and moral exemptions will undermine the force of the law. They may do more. They may teach merchants that they have a religious right and duty to discriminate. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (generally without exemptions for religious or moral objectors) helped to solidify public rejection of segregation. A law riddled with exemptions for religiously or morally motivated discriminators would, it is reasonable to suppose, have been far less effective. Indeed, it might have dramatically changed the message sent by the law.
At the other end of the spectrum, as a matter of free speech and freedom of association, a segregationist church need not accept black members, the segregationist minister need not marry them, and the church that has spaces for receptions (limited to its own members) need not accommodate the interracial couple.
