"Until relatively recently, the law said you had to ride at the back of the bus. When you cede the Government the authority to enforce and impose social values by statute, what happens when those statutes are written that destroy societal fabrics?"
But that's what statutes are: the enforcement of social values by government. You can't date women under 18 (or 17, or 16, depending on where you are). Why? Because the social mores are such that a statute has been made to say so. Of course, you still CAN, but then the government will punish you if you're caught. You can't look at child porn, legally, or smoke dope, legally, because of two social values enacted into statutes. You can't drive 50 in a school zone or run red lights, because society prizes its safety, has made the statutory rules of the road, and enforces them with government power.
In the United States, well nigh 1 million people have died as a direct or indirect result of racist laws and bad policies, and the efforts to change them. We fought a Civil War over this, not to mention the long and sorry saga of thousands of lynchings. The treatment of Indians in certain cases was brutal and unconscionable. Those bad things happened, and we amended the Constitution right after the Civil War to try and do the right thing on race issues...only to find ourselves as a country not good enough to stick to our resolution.
Black and Indian race issues have killed too many people in our American history to treat these as just like any other ho-hum property rights and association matter. Now yes, if you're talking offended Italian-Americans because of the Sopranos, or offended Latinos at racial insensitivity, or even offended Japanese at the World War II internments, you are talking about issues that properly belong in the normal scheme of things. But when we speak of black-white issues or Indian affairs, we are not talking about things that stand on the same footing as other theoreticals or irritants. We are talking about flaming sins of our past that cost a million lives.
Taking the "it's private property, you have the right to exclude blacks from businesses" line is a very good way for that be extended into the present.
We amended the Constitution 4 times to protect blacks, in particular, because they needed protection. Nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of that.
The only way that we got to liberty in the first place was by law and statute. There isn't any way to get away from them. That's what government does. The only thing that matters is the CONTENT of the laws. Civilization cannot endure without laws and statutes.
To degrade others is a terrible thing, but I am not of the opinion that governmental regulation is the best way to address it. The flaws in our culture need to be solved from within, not imposed from outside.
But that's what statutes are: the enforcement of social values by government.
Some are, some are not. There is a difference between laws that protect us from actual harm (murder, rape, child abuse, etc.), and laws that, when it comes down to it, promote one person's rights at the expense of another's. When it comes to the latter, it becomes a balance between whose rights are circumscribed more: one person's right to run a business as they wish vs. another's right to equal use of publicly offered services.
The only way that we got to liberty in the first place was by law and statute.
No, the way we got to liberty was by revolting against unjust laws and statutes, and seizing back our God-given rights from the hands of mortal Kings.