Using what factors SHOULD a private business be able to pick and choose its clientele? Race, sex, sexual orientation, something else?

GySgt (Join to see), I understand your argument. A central property right is the right to exclude others from your property.

I think there are critical differences when that property is a business: the excluded person wants to compensate the business for goods provided and services rendered; the business holds itself out to be open to the general public, except for those evil/unclean/lesser people; businesses operate under heavy and necessary government regulation (health, employment, etc.) meaning there is no inherent right to operate such a business.

The thing that truly turns me off to the property rights view of business is the social fracture risked. There could be entire enclaves, cities, or counties where people cannot live because businesses (groceries, gas stations, department stores, etc.) refuse to provide goods or services to them. Those unfortunate people could not live or work there, or even travel through there which denies them the central privilege of interstate travel. There is the slippery slope the law keeps us from. Being paid to relax the right to exclude is a property right infringement most Americans, I think, are OK with.

The Civil Rights Acts are fundamentally about property: the freedom of any class to obtain and hold property. In other words, the Acts allow any person to hold their property for any reason. The only main exclusions are for housing, education, and employment. Even those are limited to corporations that truly put themselves out as "public places" such as apartment complexes and co-ops, universities, and large (more than 20 lives) business. Employment is the only exception for small business - everyone must comply and for good reason. Even then, employment is not a right; but fair consideration of one's talent and capabilities in regard to a job offered to the general public is. But by suing someone who refuses to sell you something, you erode your own rights to exclusive ownership of your own property. The only way to ensure absolute freedom of purchase is to federalize commerce, and we all know how that worked out for the Soviets. We have to be careful about the term "serve the public". Businesses do not and should not be required to serve the public under the same definition as the government.

There have been instances of the enclave effect in our history, but they ended up being fairly short-lived with the exception of the Amish. Even they have relaxed due to the need to compete for resources. The South was another, but anyone who lived there could tell you that it was not as broadly exclusive as it has been portrayed, particularly in lean times. On the other hand, our country is full of the stories of businesses that have opened and thrived because someone couldn't buy something they wanted. There are many more instances of property taken because someone else was deemed to have needed it more, or because it wasn't being put to "proper" use.

In these recent cases, the item wanted could easily be obtained from a large number of other suppliers nearby. I haven't seen one where someone couldn't buy a bag of potatoes or a can of baby formula because they were gay. This leads me, in my humble opinion, to believe that the suits were brought for reasons other than really needing that wedding cake or those pizzas.

From my own perspective, I needed a blower cage for my AC. I live in the Phoenix area, so yes, I really needed it. I knew how to fix it, but fourteen different parts outlets would not sell me one. I didn't sue them to get it, I just found that fifteenth supplier who would sell me one. They are now $175 richer, and my family has a way to avoid the 110 degree heat for $500 less than if I'd had a contractor do it. I doubt if the plaintiffs talked to fifteen different bakers for their wedding cake and were refused.

SSG (Join to see), why didn't the other vendors sell you the parts you needed? Did people donate a million dollars to them *because* they refused to serve you?

Theory is a great starting point, but the economics just do not support the free market solution.

Nobody needed to donate anything because I didn't sue them. I didn't need the attention craved by those who's only real purpose in filing legal actions against a small business is to elevate their cause to a public stage. Those vendors lost my business. That's all it takes. In the real world - not the theoretical - the free market is the only economy. Anything else is artificial and doomed to failure as we can see throughout history.

SFC Jeremy Stocker - The Constitution gave the South the right to secede. The Federal Government stopped them. Was it Constitutional for them to do so? Did the government have any business telling southern businesses how to run their plantations?

I believe that the government has a responsibility to ensure that the people being treated unconstitutionally by the southern plantations be set free. Whether or not they were born in America they were here against their will in the phrase all men are created equal does not mention where they're from..

SFC Jeremy Stocker , I would hold contention with your statement that the Confederates did "rise against" the Union. Instead they sought to peaceably secede from the Union. They did NOT want to go to war with the North, they simply wished to leave, the Union Peacefully.

SSG Gerhard S., I'm sorry, but that is revisionist history. The first shots of the Civil War were fired by South Carolina on a federal installation, Fort Sumter. That isn't peaceful secession.