This isn’t someone refusing to hire...it’s someone refusing to take a job. I can’t see any circumstance where the government could force someone to contract to work for someone else.
It’s been that way since the first discrimination lawsuit. It all stems from segregation days, once we decided that whole “black restaurant” “white restaurant” thing was no good it started a whole ball of wax. To me both sides are wrong, wedding photography business is tough enough without ruling out customers (especially a demographic that has more money to spend and is more likely to buy a higher priced package), and the gay couple (like everybody else) should wrap their head around the idea that some people don’t want their business and the proper response it to give somebody else the money.
But given all that it’s an old rule in contract business, going back to the early days of discrimination lawsuits, that you never say you won’t you only say you can’t. Saying you won’t opens the door to possibilities, and in that kind of lawsuit even when you win you lose (bad press, costs, lost opportunity because you’re busy in court). “Sorry booked solid then” is the correct answer.
I don’t understand it either but this isn’t the first business taken to court over this and lost and I’m sure it won’t be the last.
We were opened up for this with our civil rights statutes. We decided that a business would be required to allow a black to sit at a table, and a waitress would be required to take that black person’s lunch order, and the cook would be required to properly prepare that meal, and the waitress would serve it, and the restaurant would not make trouble for that black person as they ate.
At the time this seemed like the only way to purge our racial history. Did it hurt more than help in the long run? In any case, our civil rights amendments did not include gay people.