Friday, March 29, 2024

Business owners should have the right to deny service

I recently heard a taped conversation between an apparently gay coffee shop owner and some apparently Christian customers. I’m assuming the religious folks’ cover was blown by a poster of some sort that they’d hung in the vicinity. The business owner angrily asked them to get out of his shop when they affirmed that they had indeed hung the offending item.
I’m guessing that this group of Christians was doing some type of baiting to see how the owner would react, and it wasn’t good. I thought he was pretty horrible. However, I believe that as the owner of the business, he has every right to deny service to anyone, for whatever reason.
He is the person who created, labored, stressed, (and most likely paid through the teeth) to provide goods and services to the public in exchange for money. This is his way to make a living. It’s his property (or he at least pays for the privilege of using it), and he shouldn’t have to allow just anyone to come in.
I’ve been a business owner, and I also grew up in a family business. It doesn’t make good business sense to discriminate, and yet a business person is a person. They have rights just like the average citizen. I think forcing anyone to serve or deal with someone that they don’t want to serve or deal with is absolutely wrong and absolutely unconstitutional. It’s taking away one person’s rights to appease another’s demands. Very un-American.
I’m hoping that this incident, which is the flip-side of what has already been occurring for the past few years, will open up some eyes and get more of us on the same sheet of music-whether it be Kid Rock or Clay Aiken.

Audrey Steinfeldt
Reed Point