You know, what gays object to is that they feel blocked from practicing homosexuality - i.e. being able to go to any baker to get a wedding cake. That’s not the same as simply being homosexual. So their argument is that they have a right to practice thir homosexuality freely.
On the other hand, they say that Christians can be Christian so long as they don’t practice their Christianity openly. In other words, go to church, but don’t run your business based on your beliefs.
So that’s one level of legal contradiction. But it connects to another level of legal hypocrisy when you remember that selling something is not the only aspect of conducting business - shopping for something, offering to buy something, is also a type of conducting business.
It just seems to me that these are arguments that have a possibility of winning in court. You have to remember that the court decisions are based on definitions and perspectives of applying those definitions. Finding direct contradictions in acceptable definitions is how things are actually argued, and I haven’t heard these particular arguments being made.
Perhaps they should be. Freedom of association and freedom of conducting business has to work both ways, and cannot be ruled otherwise when directly addressed - and that’s the key, to figure out a way to directly address them. Gays are winning because what they are actually doing, linguistically with the law, is simply not being addressed - yet.
You make a good point.
The 1st A does two things here.
(1) It prohibits compelled “speech” and this includes “symbolic” speech. Hence someone cannot force me to fly a flag.
(2) It allows for the free exercise of religion.
The baker/photographer/florist will have to show that as opposed to someone coming into their shops and buying flowers or cakes for sale, that if they are however asked to design a floral arrangement or bake a specialty wedding cake for a gay/lesbian wedding, that is different. Why? Because now they are compelled to use their special skills to advance a cause or idea to which they are opposed to.
It’s like asking a former concentration camp Jewish flag maker to stitch a Nazi Flag. This would violate the 1st A.